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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

#91

Post by pugworthy »

pugworthy wrote: post #19

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…

Another thing that's basically a real security hole/opportunity with BLE sniffing is to record the unique IDs of all the BLE devices you can see, along with geo-location data.

Do this enough places and over time, and you get a map of what devices are where and at what time, with the assumption that the devices are probably linked to people.

Expand that to a government placing little innocuous BLE sniffers all over the place collecting data has some pretty evil big brother vibes. Or on everyone's phone so we are all sniffers.

But it kind of goes both ways. You could sniff outside a police station and just skim all the BLE devices you can find, and assume with enough data over time the frequent ones are mostly owned by police officers. Then have an app that alerts you any time one of those LEO BLE devices is in range of you. Basically an undercover LEO's Fitbit could give them up.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#93

Post by LordDragonfang »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #88
stavros wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the author is talking about devices that are asleep/off? They mention "weeks" at one point, making me think that the AirTags wake the devices from sleep often, which you'll notice in an iPad that dies after one week instead of a month while sleeping, but not in a phone that you charge every day.

I've actually had exactly this problem with a really old iPad recently. It would last 2-3 months if I never touched it, now it's always dead when I go to reach for it, which is maybe every 2 weeks-ish. Just assumed the battery hit some sort of cliff but now this article has me wondering if my neighbors got an airtag.

Airtags are based off of Apple's existing BLE Find My network, so it might not necessarily have to be an airtag. Off the top of my head, I know that airpods had a similar functionality enabled a while back.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#94

Post by bleah1000 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #81
tedunangst wrote: post #53

I must spend time near hundreds of AirTags each day, yet my battery doesn't seem to be affected. Is it possible somebody is exaggerating? Or omitting relevant info?

And we still wonder why misinformation moves so much faster than truth. It has to be some kind of emotional thing. How many people just saw the headline, immediately decided it must be true, and will now be sure to mention it any time someone mentions AirTags in the future. I doubt this is exactly a new phenomenon, but it sure seems surprising the human race has made it as far as we have successfully.

To be fair, you've fallen into the same trap. One person says they don't have a problem, you believe them and start saying the first statement must be misinformation.

It's possible that both people are correct and the circumstances that cause the battery to drain require being connected to a AirTag, not just near any old AirTag. Or there are other circumstances that cause the battery to drain.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#95

Post by bgro »

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works...

My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for example, and it's using like 500 MB a year of cell data. So the cumulative data it uses per year is about half of that plan's budget.

Settings uses like 1/5 of a month of data. What does settings even use cell data for? Every random app has data usage like this. Sure, you can turn it off but why should that be the user's problem in the first place? We don't live in an opt-out society.

If you're a cargo delivery guy and someone decides to ship 500 airtags for fun that you walk by, are you now just screwed in over charges because Apple decided it was OK to use your cell data for whatever purposes that have no benefit to you?

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#96

Post by K7PJP »

Aerroon wrote: post #40

I was under the impression that having Bluetooth enabled at all was a security risk. Do people actually use Bluetooth?

Apple along has sold over well over 100 million AirPods, and there's a large market of other Bluetooth accessories. So, yes, Bluetooth is a very widely used popular wireless technology.

I'm typing this on a Bluetooth keyboard, while wearing an Bluetooth-connected Watch. Apple's Handoff and Continuity features across devices are of great benefit to me every day.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#97

Post by aryamaan »

IntrepidWorm wrote: post #59
tapoxi wrote: post #41

Could you theoretically fill a backpack with a few hundred of these and piss off everyone around you? Asking for a friend.

Right- I feel a Raspberry Pi and a bluetooth module (or a handful of them) would be a lot cheaper. Set it up to repeatedly ping everything in range, stick it to a battery pack, and just go about your business. It would certainly illustrate some of the many shortcomings of Bluetooth, and always-listening services. I'm not advocating that you should, keep in mind. It certainly seems to be in poor taste, but there may b…

Why are not seeing the next evolution of whatever bluetooth (a hardware device and a standard to talk to similar devices in cross vicinity?) is

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#98

Post by least »

bgro wrote: post #95

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works... My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for…

It does provide a benefit to you. You get to use the Find My network to help locate any missing devices you have and in exchange your devices also work as a node in the Find My network to help other people locate their devices. You can disable this by disabling Find My.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#99

Post by RF_Savage »

cwkoss wrote: post #69
jimrandomh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my case, the audio devices menu on Mac/iOS displays nearby AirPlay targets, including those not on the LAN. My neighbors got their misconfigured so it always pollutes my menus with no way to disable this even though I never use AirPlay and don't have any compatible hardware (nor intend to get any). Make it play Rick Astley until they fix it.

Play the russian national anthem on loop if you really want to make them hustle

Or the shitty fluted version to extra grating (and extra speed!).

Could be a fun wardriving project to do.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#100

Post by encryptluks2 »

bgro wrote: post #95

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works... My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for…

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