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NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

arstechnica.com

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Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#141

Post by noduerme »

Animats wrote: post #112

LoJack used to be the go-to company for this. No more. Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for th…

Just a thought here... Why not just write a simple script that collects GPS location, host it on a private server, point an old Android phone at that page, and wire the phone under the dashboard?

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#142

Post by alfalfasprout »

true_religion wrote: post #91
crhulls wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad someone brought this up. I'm the CEO of Tile and we launched an anti-theft feature for this reason. We allow you to turn off anti-stalking features if you agree to strict penalties for misuse and verify yourself with a real ID. https://chrishulls.medium.com/tile-is-taking-a-different-app...

Apple in most cases already has our real ID. And stalkers are already determined to commit crimes. Agreeing to civil penalties isn’t going to deter someone who already doesn’t fear criminal imprisonment.

And those stalkers could just buy any other GPS tracker out there which would be more effective than an airtag anyways.

It's all just posturing by Apple and all to the detriment of 99.99% of their user base.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#143

Post by briandear »

dheera wrote: post #76
vkou wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's ridiculous. No, it's just how the world works. The unfortunate thing about property crime is that frequently, $50 worth of gain often results in $500-$5,000 worth of damages and costs. Just ask anyone who's had a catalytic converter stolen, or their copper ripped out. > But seriously, there should be mechanisms to report your license plate as stolen and have traffic cameras automatically deploy spike strips…

> Just ask anyone who's had a catalytic converter stolen The difference is when someone's catalytic converter is stolen, we don't spend $5000 of taxpayer money on it. More often than not, we spend $0 of taxpayer money, and the angry owner spends $5000. I read the parent comment as meaning we're spending 4-5 figures of taxpayer money every time a car is stolen, in which case I'd rather we just buy 2-3 more cars with t…

https://www.choicehacking.com/2022/01/04/what-is-the-cobra-e...

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#144

Post by firmnoodle »

version_five wrote: post #98
politelemon wrote: post #3

This article throws up many flags for me, not necessarily red, but of a worrying color. It first celebrates surveillance devices as a net positive and hand-waves away its problems. But most importantly, it is awfully shortsighted to allow a single company to entrench itself further into societal transactions. However, hearing it is inconvenient, so I am often dismissed for saying so. > They're made by Apple, which me…

All that stupidity aside, how are AirTags actually supposed to help, even if we all had an iPhone and were happy to live under apple's benevolent rule? Most cars have a gps tracker now anyway. Mine was stolen last year, during the night. I was told it would have been put into a shipping container within an hour, where it wouldn't be accessible to radio waves anyway. Maybe they work for casual joyriding. At least wher…

AirTags will report their last known location. This is very likely to be the point it was driven into a container. If the container wasn't moved or loaded onto a ship yet it could be found. Additionally, while containers do a really good job and of blocking RF, they aren't perfect and they only need to get a little Bluetooth to a phone nearby. So even an iPhone on a crane operator could expose the stolen car's location. It may not be perfect but it could help. I use them on a classic car and on hidden on two trailers I own.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#145

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

bell-cot wrote: post #65
tehjoker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On apple's website, that's about $25 per an airtag and unless they got a deal, this is $12,500 in funds or free assets from Apple to do promotion. Skating close to corruption.

By the standards of either the NYC budget, or Apple's finances, $12,500 is a rounding error.

They can send all their rounding errors to me then, I'll happily take them.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#146

Post by alfalfasprout »

thepasswordis wrote: post #114
nwellinghoff wrote: post #110

Better idea. Maybe car manufacturers could introduce 2 factor to start your car. Of course one could disable this. But when you feel you are in a shady spot. Your car prompts your phone to enable two factor to start etc

Here's an even better idea: car theft should be practically non-existent in a modern, western city and instead of the mayor telling people to put airtags in their car he should be announcing how the literal armed police force he commands will be dealing with the issue.

After years of being subjected to property crime including multiple car breakins, getting threatened at knife point by crazy folks on the street, and seeing a woman on my street get forcibly abducted into a car with the police refusing to even report the crimes in all cases we left San Francisco. What's worse is bringing up how this is not OK gets you called some extremist nutjob.

Sad to see NYC is now in a similar state where they'd rather penalize the victims than the perpetrators.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#147

Post by jcrawfordor »

noduerme wrote: post #141
Animats wrote: post #112

LoJack used to be the go-to company for this. No more. Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for th…

Just a thought here... Why not just write a simple script that collects GPS location, host it on a private server, point an old Android phone at that page, and wire the phone under the dashboard?

That could work fine, but dedicated GPS tracker hardware isn't that expensive and will be more robust and reliable than an old phone (simpler software, heat and vibration tolerant) - plus there's usually IOT-NB/LTE Cat-1 support so you can use less expensive cellular providers and most trackers have at least one dry contact output for remote immobilization. The main downside to hardware GPS trackers is that they're mostly sold "to the trade," so you get a reference manual for their often AT-based communications protocol and you're left to your own devices. There are open-source backend servers around but I feel they're often too genericized to work well with the features of any one tracker, so big incentive to write your own software.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#148

Post by glogla »

circuit10 wrote: post #61
catiopatio wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I choose an Android phone? Apple does not spy on me, and does not sell my information to advertisers. An iPhone SE is $429, or can be financed at the same price , with zero interest, at $17.87 for 24 months. Why would I want to join Google’s advertiser-driven ecosystem, and voluntarily make myself into Google’s product?

If that's your main concern you'd be better off with a "degoogled" OS on an Android phone with an unlocked bootloader. iOS is locked down and you can't really see or control what information is being sent. Here are some other reasons why you or other people might choose Android phones: - Generally cheaper/better value, especially on the low end - Less locked down (e.g. you can actually choose what browser engine you…

How are degoogled phones nowadays?

Last time I tried that, it was very limited. No paying by phone, no banking apps (and most banks require app as second factor), no proper maps with navigation and routing, no streaming music, no "work" apps like Teams or Slack, no utility apps like taxis or public transport. Even messaging apps wouldn't work well due to lack of push notifications.

Degoogled Android was basically touch display dumbphone. Which is perfect for some people who want it that way, but I like the ability to use public transport, get a cab or message people by something else than a text.

edit: I think there might be a difference between degoogled as in not registered to play store but still having play services install, and degoogled as using shim play services? I honestly don't remember.

Re: NYPD urges citizens to buy AirTags to fight surge in car thefts

#150

Post by Traubenfuchs »

Animats wrote: post #112

LoJack used to be the go-to company for this. No more. Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for th…

The first one is... incredibly convoluted. Like reaching your right arm over your head to touch your left esr (try it!). The second one sounds like it sucks.

With the pay-once AirTags you can just find the car thief yourself and shoot them.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/02/texas-man-used-apple-airtag-to...

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