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

arstechnica.com

241–250 of 439 posts

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

#241
post #228
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again... this level of ignorance and short-sightedness is surprising coming from someone in such a position of authority He was making a joke, playing into the Android vs iPhone eternal war. But as someone who spent years on iPhone, then switched fully to Android for 5 devices across 4 years, and now back to iPhone..... I actually think the ignorance is the other way (Android users who have never tried iPhone as th…

Serious question: when some app sends you somewhere after a click/tap on iOS, but doesn't leave you the breadcrumb back link in the upper left corner, how do you go back? Is there no shortcut or gesture? Drives me crazy I can't figure it out every time I grab my son's or my parents' phone to help them with something.

Just a note that apps are not responsible for that breadcrumb and have no control over it (if you are meaning the little one that lives in the status bar?). The OS adds that in cases where apps link out to other apps

To go back in all cases you can swipe the home indicator to the right to go back to the previous app you were in. Or you can fling it up to about half way to see all previous apps

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By far the biggest barrier is group chats with others who are on iphone. Not only is the experience pretty broken for you, it essentially ends up breaking the experience for everyone else. This AirTags example just highlights that to a large portion of the US populace, Android is essentially a joke.

How is the experience broken for anybody? I've been on group chats with my wife and parents (all iPhoners) for years and it's totally fine. I recently got a Pixel and now even the stupid emotes display properly (though it was easy to know what they meant before). I had an iphone forever ago (when my parents were paying for it), and I don't recall the experience of group chats being notably better or worse. It's more…

Have you never sent a video?

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

#243

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?

My boy had this in his integra ,it got broken into the other day, he has a kill switch on the ignition though, so the thief kinda just sat there in the car.

Kick your local thief in the face, ya?

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

#244

I'm the CEO of Life360, Tile's parent company. I chimed in on another comment but adding to the conversation directly here. I'm biased, but I am surprised how little pushback this is getting as AirTags explicitly are NOT meant to deter theft - to combat stalking (which is exceedingly rare) Apple notifies you if a tag you do not own is near you. That goes for thieves - they will be told an AirTag is nearby. At Tile we…

1000% self serving.

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple does not spy on me There's something ironic to find this comment on a video of a former cop surrounded by other cops touting the surveillance features Apple's product offers exclusively.

Is it even true? It seems hard to believe Apple doesn't spy on people or sell information to advertisers.

As far as I am aware, they do not sell information to advertisers. Doing so would be a bad business move for them, anyway (ditching long term brand trust for short term profit?)

On AirTag location privacy, from Apple's site [1]:

> Only you can see where your AirTag is. Your location data and history are never stored on the AirTag itself. Devices that relay the location of your AirTag also stay anonymous, and that location data is encrypted every step of the way. So not even Apple knows the location of your AirTag or the identity of the device that helps find it.

I don't think they're lying about this.

[1] https://www.apple.com/airtag/

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

#246

I mean you can also go low tech with stuff like a hidden kill switch and all sorts of things that would actually prevent the theft.

For real, I used to just take off an ignition cable (vehicle rarely driven). Good luck driving that one lol

My dad used to do something like this in Philly in the 80s.

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

#247
post #11

who here can already see clearly the NYPD officer's completely blank stare when you show them exactly where the car thief took your car. "did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem"

> did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem If we're trading anecdotes, I had two laptops lifted from my apartment. The NYPD's detectives followed up with the building for footage, identified a suspect, followed up with the resident they were seen with, got the suspect's Instagram and got an arrest warrant. That resulted in them nabbing the guy when he was ticketed for jumping a subway turnstile.

if your building had "footage"...and the NYPD actually cared about a non-violent theft, with "detectives" no less....wow....well we would assume you were living in a pretty "uptown" neighborhood.

where we lived, there were of course lots of "detectives", but they had a single purpose which was to arrest black people for drug possession. Other than murders, that was pretty much it.

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

#248

I'm the CEO of Life360, Tile's parent company. I chimed in on another comment but adding to the conversation directly here. I'm biased, but I am surprised how little pushback this is getting as AirTags explicitly are NOT meant to deter theft - to combat stalking (which is exceedingly rare) Apple notifies you if a tag you do not own is near you. That goes for thieves - they will be told an AirTag is nearby. At Tile we…

Wouldn't the notification that an AirTag is located somewhere in the vehicle they're thinking of stealing deter them from stealing it?

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

#249

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?

> Apple does not spy on me Apple can be compelled to spy on you[0]. > and does not sell my information to advertisers Apple is an advertiser. [0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

In the case of AirTags, Apple simply does not have that information to give:

> Devices that relay the location of your AirTag also stay anonymous, and that location data is encrypted every step of the way. So not even Apple knows the location of your AirTag or the identity of the device that helps find it.

They can be compelled to spy on you. They have also clearly put systems in place that make it very hard or impossible for them to do so without re-architecting their entire ecosystem of devices

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

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric adams does recommend confronting a car thief I guess. Really it just depends on the situation, plenty of New Yorkers would be game. Might even prefer it to hoping the cops deal with it. Personally if my only choice was ask cops for help I'd consider the car gone. I can round up a few of the boys and confront the thief given an hour or two, and at least I'd get my car back. No idea if NYPD is as worthless as my p…

> Really it just depends on the situation, plenty of New Yorkers would be game. You kiddin me? Hell no. There are a lot of guns out there and we know it.

Supreme Court says guns aren’t only for the rich in nyc anymore. Maybe the thief has one, maybe the car owners does too.
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