111–120 of 508 posts
The funny thing is that people just remove the speakers of that small thingy and hence it should just be banned as a whole
Hot take: There is no conceivable way to make Airtags safe, and they should be banned entirely. The problem is that by leveraging Apple devices to get worldwide geolocation and data service effectively for free, they make tracking trivially easy in a way that no other entity could.
Should all GPS trackers be banned then? The problem with AirTags is they're accessible; these problems have always existed with any kind of GPS tracking.
Now you just have to walk into an Apple Store with $20 cash and set up a fake Apple ID.
Hot take: There is no conceivable way to make Airtags safe, and they should be banned entirely. The problem is that by leveraging Apple devices to get worldwide geolocation and data service effectively for free, they make tracking trivially easy in a way that no other entity could.
I don't see how you can ban AirTags without also banning products like Tile
> New privacy warnings during AirTag setup: In an upcoming software update, every user setting up their AirTag for the first time will see a message that clearly states that AirTag is meant to track their own belongings, that using AirTag to track people without consent is a crime in many regions around the world, that AirTag is designed to be detected by victims, I expect that this will be about as effective as the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being in an iCloud family does suppress the tracking notifications.
That must be recent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Should all GPS trackers be banned then? The problem with AirTags is they're accessible; these problems have always existed with any kind of GPS tracking.
GPS trackers require that you sign up for cell service, which is a non-trivial obstacle to overcome, and opens the user up to tracking by law enforcement. Thanks to Apple's usage of their own proprietary network, both difficulties are automatically negated.
In principle, Apple has the ability to match the AirTag to a phone number (if they do this or not, I don't know).
1) know AirTags exist (many obviously don't)
2) go out of their way to install Apple's Android AirTag scanner app (only 100k-500k worldwide have done so according to Google Play stats)
3) manually open the scanner app and scan, since it doesn't scan passively in the background; and even then, it won't help you find the speaker-less AirTag, since it doesn't tell you proximity & direction.
I continue to think Apple should have never released AirTags to the public, and should discontinue it. It's a very limited income stream, with limited use cases, and significantly increases the average person's risk of stalking.
Practically all positive social media coverage of AirTags involves someone tracking a stolen stolen items (car, bike). Those use cases are dead, since thieves with iPhones will get alerts, and most thieves with Android will know to scan for AirTags. And since most lost items turn into stolen items after a few hours, that removes most use cases involving losing objects in public.
That leaves "finding your keys within your home" as the only truly "officially supported" use case. Is that worth all the problems, and brand damage?
People will argue that stalkers could always buy trackers, but Apple increased their availability, ease-of-acquisition and ease-of-use by orders of magnitude. AirTags are cheaper than competing GPS trackers, most of which require subscriptions.
I remember seeing a chills-down-your-spine Apple Watch Series 7 TV ad, that featured beautiful remote nature landscapes, with the audio of 911 calls made from people's Apple Watches whose lives were saved by their Watch. Probably one of Apple's best and most impactful ad in the past decade. Compare that to AirTag's impact on Apple's brand. Why did Apple even bother?
Are airtags still useful for eg. tracking a stolen bike? Or will it now alert the thief within minutes that the bike contains a tracker?
I mean the thief will get notified, but what are they going to do? Dismount tires, disassemble steering assembly, remove the grips, undo the saddle, bottle mount, Garmin mount, bash guard, lights, etc? This all takes time and skill, it can’t be done on the spot and if they dragged the bike home or to a fence they have already disclosed the location.