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Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

annoying.technology

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Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#72
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be much easier to script that all out and have a single Bluetooth device. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack#how-to-track-othe...

Do you know if I can use this to track a tag from the web if I don't own a recent Apple device?

Probably using QEMU and an macOS VM.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Find My network can be opted out of in the settings [1]. And if I remember correctly, it asks you to opt in (but I might be remembering wrong) I have somewhat the opposite opinion though that there are way too many settings in iOS now and it does get difficult to dive through all the menus. Best thing I can recommend is to use the search in the settings. [1] https://www.howtogeek.com/725664/how-to-opt-out-of-appl…

Seems kind of ridiculous that in order to opt out of Apple's airtag network you essentially have to give up the ability to find your phone if it gets lost.

This is not how it works. There are two different toggles, one for the Find My system, and one for just having your iPhone report its last condition. If you dont care about being able to find your phone/devices when theyre off, then you can simply opt out of the Find My network and rely on the basic position reporting.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#74

There are some battery draining tricks you can do with Bluetooth apps on a phone to drain the device batteries. Essentially if you did a ton of device queries to every BLE device visible, you could drain the batteries of every device in range. Transmission is probably a heavier battery drain so just making them talk to your phone creates drain. It’s a single device example, but in a bar once I was showing a co-worker…

I just tried this with the LightBlue app. Interrogated an iPhone. Reported 0% battery then disconnected. lol

Update: now I know exactly which model macbook and iphone my neighbor has, whom I have never met. That doesn't feel right somehow.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#75
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if I can use this to track a tag from the web if I don't own a recent Apple device?

Probably using QEMU and an macOS VM.

Oh interesting, thanks. Might require a TPM though.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#76

These AirTags keep looking like a really bad idea. Wasn't there a story recently where someone managed to use one of these as a tracking device for a person and their car, because any nearby iphone and ipad would respond to the tag or something?

Given that they announce their presence, perhaps it is a net positive. Real stalkers will be using old phones, GPS trackers, or some other solution that doesn't tell the victim what's happening.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#77

These AirTags keep looking like a really bad idea. Wasn't there a story recently where someone managed to use one of these as a tracking device for a person and their car, because any nearby iphone and ipad would respond to the tag or something?

Yeah there's been a bunch of cases of people getting stalked by air tags which has produced the need for these types of articles: https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-tell-if-airtag-stalk...

And here I thought it was the need for clicks that produced the need for such articles.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#78
post #50

My AirTags, via the Find My app are draining my iPad’s battery. It’s very annoying.

Maybe an update would help? I haven't had any problem with Find My on my iPad draining the battery, and we have a half dozen AirTags. But, I also have auto update turned on for iOS.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#80
post #4

An annoyance that is driving me away from the Apple ecosystem is the lack of choice when it comes to these new features - they are forced onto you with no way to disable them and sometimes radically modify the behavior of the device you purchased and may make it unsuitable for the original purpose you bought it for. I'm still using an iPhone and plan to get the new SE (and only because of Touch ID is back - Face ID w…

re: AirPlay speakers, if you really never want to use AirPlay you can apply a configuration profile that disables it entirely. These are the profiles that allow IT departments to enforce all sorts of policies on employee computers. You could use ProfileCreator to make one: https://github.com/ProfileCreator/ProfileCreator

Increasingly it feels like powerful configuration settings are only available via IT management profiles like these. I use one to enabling full system logging since that’s the only way.

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