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An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

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Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#191

Post by jeromegv »

Wiseacre wrote: post #178
lm28469 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airtags were never supposed to be used to track stolen things, but to retrieve lost things. People complaining about airtags being nerfed were misusing them in the first place

Surely you can see how that would be a poor design choice. It's quite a common use case for tracking devices like the AirTag.

How is that a poor design? How would you design it to not alert the thief but alert someone they are being stalked?

You can only have 1. Can’t have both.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#192

Post by chroma »

missedthecue wrote: post #130
chroma wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chefs knives are great for cooking and are inexpensive and easy to purchase; they can be very dangerous weapons in the wrong hands so we make it against the law to use them in that manner. What? I've lived in several western countries and I've never had a knife purchase that was tracked or controlled in some way. There's only one place I know of that controls ownership of chef's knives: the Xinjiang region of China…

I believe he's saying that stabbing someone is illegal

Current stalking laws already cover such abuses of airtags. I see quite a few comments in this thread proposing a total ban of airtags, which makes about as much sense to me as wanting to restrict chef knives.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#193

Post by FabHK »

Syonyk wrote: post #18

> ...and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products. Then subject them to malicious users before releasing them to see what sort of ideas they can come up with in a few days, and mitigate those before general release. Go schedule a room at Defcon, give people AirTags, and see what they do. If they neutralized your mitigations in an hour, well... other people can figure that out too.…

There are lots of tracking solutions out there, most of which do not even attempt to protect against abuse. So, Apple seems one step ahead of the competition here.

Regarding CSAM, I have not seen any credible threat model with those hash collisions.

> "Buy an iPhone to prevent people from tracking you, and if you want to see where the tracker is, buy a really new one!"

The tracker beeps, and displays information to Android phones, also. They did what they could to make it easily findable.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#194

Post by nomel »

ungoogled wrote: post #7

I'm sure they're frustrated that people keep using AirTags as tracking devices rather than local thing-finders, but I think there are good reasons for that. Local trackers have been around for a long time. I had a "TV remote finder" years ago that you'd stick to a TV remote (or keys), and it would beep when activated by a second device. More recently, Tiles work pretty well, assuming you don't need direction finding.…

I have an AirTag in my car. I can always find my parking spot. I use this more often than to find my keys.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#195

Post by sfifs »

First apple creates a cheap spying tool that makes it simple to break the law and then "condems" its illegal usage. How is this any different from groups that sell hacking tools?

If they were really concerned about privacy, they'd make set a higher bar to track things across their network - eg. Require Filing an official police complaint of the loss and submit the paperwork to get access to the tracking - win/win. You could still allow local Bluetooth tracking within range of the phone like Tile as that can conceivably be used only for personal items.

Instead, they're pushing the responsibility of safeguarding from their spying tools back to people

I'm sure they're going to be very soon be hit by a lawsuit from someone rich who doesn't really care about how much it costs to take them on. Their legal seems to have been asleep at the wheels.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#196

Post by camdat »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #187
paxys wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You personally may not have to worry about it, but a handful of well publicized cases of misuse (say someone getting stalked/murdered) will probably be a bigger monetary hit to Apple than their profit from this entire line.

Then that is Apple's concern, in the meantime I'll enjoy using their product for legitimate purposes.

Reminder that the OP of this chain is explicitly coming at this question from Apple's POV.

>I continue to think Apple should have never released AirTags to the public, and should discontinue it

This discussion is specifically about what Apple should do, so I don't see how this is relevant.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#197

Post by rootusrootus »

vestrigi wrote: post #186
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trackers have been around for years . Tile came out in 2014, and Samsung has their own Galaxy tracker line for a while now. Neither have anti-stalking features of any kind to this day. If one was stuck on your car, you wouldn't get an alert or any info on who placed it there, be you an iPhone user or an Android user. And before that, there were GPS trackers which have bigger batteries and were more accurate (if a bit…

The barrier of entrance has not only been lowered on the cost side but also on the opportunity side. If people already own AirTags and know how to use them for legitimate purposes they just have to hide them somewhere to track somebody opposed to deciding to get a proper GPS tracker „just to find out where X is going to“.

The risk of getting caught has also been raised considerably, however. An anonymous GPS tracker won't easily lead back to you personally, but an AirTag used for stalking will lead police to your door.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#198

Post by rootusrootus »

newsclues wrote: post #180
FabHK wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AirTags are explicitly designed to track lost items, not stolen items.

Can probably track the iPhone that the AirTag notified. If apple and law enforcement (private?) want to…

Nope, Apple can't tell you where an AirTag is nor can they tell you what iOS device relayed the location.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#199

Post by rootusrootus »

sfifs wrote: post #195

First apple creates a cheap spying tool that makes it simple to break the law and then "condems" its illegal usage. How is this any different from groups that sell hacking tools? If they were really concerned about privacy, they'd make set a higher bar to track things across their network - eg. Require Filing an official police complaint of the loss and submit the paperwork to get access to the tracking - win/win. Yo…

> How is this any different from groups that sell hacking tools?

You can use a hammer to break into a house. Still legal to buy and sell hammers.

Re: An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking

#200

Post by WheatM »

colinmhayes wrote: post #153
concinds wrote: post #119

Android users are still vulnerable, and these announcements do nothing to reduce that. All a stalker needs to do, is remove the speaker. To detect a rogue AirTag, an Android owner needs to: 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, si…

Maybe you don't lose stuff as much as other people? My brother was always complaining about losing his wallet, his keys, anything you can think of. I got him a tile, but their product wasn't very accurate. Got him airtags and the problem is solved. Not only are air tags useful, but I'm sure that there are people who would be willing to switch to iOS solely to get access to airtags. That seems pretty valuable to apple…

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