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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

#271

Post by howinteresting »

Aeolun wrote: post #225
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #208

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.

But you can use any of a wide variety of actually useful messenger applications with no platform limitations… Line, Telegram, Signal, Whatsapp, Messenger. Why do these people insist on iMessage?

Americans are lazy status-seeking morons is why.

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

#272

Post by c0llision »

schwartzworld wrote: post #253
crhulls wrote: post #236

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…

I bought a bunch of Tiles, and after a year the non-replaceable batteries failed and I got an offer to replace them at 15% off. Talk about garbage. Your product isn't good for anything if it just stops working after a year and needs a full replacement.

The newer models have replaceable batteries

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

#273

Post by woodruffw »

Aeolun wrote: post #266
shigawire wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is the default.

Yeah, but you’d think they could be bothered to switch so that all their friends can participate equally. Especially considering the burdensome cost of absolutely free.

Half of the engineers I (want to) talk to refuse to switch from IRC, and the other half refuse to use it. In the end, I use both, and so do lots of other people.

Should we expect ordinary, non-technical users to behave substantially different? It's not clear to me that we should; most people find the status quo "good enough," and the activation energy for switching is higher than the minor inconvenience of some of your social circle having a slightly worse user experience.

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

#274

Post by c0llision »

scrapcode wrote: post #248
crhulls wrote: post #236

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?

I don't have an AirTag, but I think if you get the notification you can make the tag play noise to help find it.

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

#275

Post by brasic »

culi wrote: post #238

We use an airtag to track our cat who we allow outdoors every day until an hour before sunset. We initially used a Tile which I hated and would constantly try to get us to buy more tiles in their crappy app. After 4 months of the air tag we're looking to switch back. The larger network is barely noticeable. Most of what the tags do is allow us to know when we're within X number of feet of our cat. The Tile had a bett…

  > From what I've read the Apple AirTag network is actually quite insecure and can even be used to send arbitrary HTTP packets.
Mind sharing a link on this? It doesn’t match the technical descriptions Apple has published about how the AirTag network operates. On the other hand I can see it being true about Tile…

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

#276

Post by crhulls »

schwartzworld wrote: post #253
crhulls wrote: post #236

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…

I bought a bunch of Tiles, and after a year the non-replaceable batteries failed and I got an offer to replace them at 15% off. Talk about garbage. Your product isn't good for anything if it just stops working after a year and needs a full replacement.

We have updated all models to have either replaceable batteries or a 3-year life. Given how beaten up devices on things like keys get we are getting very good feedback on the 3 year models.

We are also giving away free tiles to paid Life360 members, which is probably not as relevant to the hacker news crowd but we do have over 20% of US families using our service. We think tiles should be free with membership, including getting new devices.

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

#277

Post by crhulls »

culi wrote: post #252
crhulls wrote: post #236

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…

We use a tracker to track our cat who we allow outdoors every day until an hour before sunset. We initially used a Tile and then decided to switch to an AirTag since it had a larger network. After 4 months of the air tag we're looking to switch back. Most of what the tags do is allow us to know when we're within X number of feet of our cat. The Tile had a better range and was lighter. But most importantly, we could h…

We just launched Tile for cats and you can share your Tile devices and have them appear in Life360 along with your family members. Give it a go!

https://www.tile.com/product/tile-for-cats-white

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

#278

Post by crhulls »

bckygldstn wrote: post #254
crhulls wrote: post #236

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…

What legal basis do you have for enforcing a $1mil civil penalty on stalkers? I'm not a lawyer, but it seems out of proportion to any damages sustained to Tile and likely unenforceable (not to mention uncollectable)? (FWIW: I think ID verification is a good non-technical deterrent to what is largely a non-techincal problem!)

It’s a terms of service you opt in to. Unclear how well it holds up in court but I dare anyone to try! We will go all out making an example out of people who abuse the system. So far we have not had a single report of misuse of the anti-theft feature.

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

#279

Post by crhulls »

reaperducer wrote: post #257
crhulls wrote: post #236

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…

stringent penalties for misuse, including a large fine. How exactly does a non-government entity impose a fine?

It’s a terms of service agreement. We would have to sue

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

#280

Post by senkora »

bhaney wrote: post #262
scrapcode wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The notification doesn't fire until you've been moving along with the tag for a while, so the vehicle has already been stolen by the time the thieves are aware there's an AirTag present. I guess it might encourage them to dump the vehicle somewhere and abandon it, and you can then go pick it up using the AirTag's last known location. Doesn't really prevent the initial theft, but improves your chances for recovering t…

In my experience they just rip the AirTag off once it notifies them and then continue on their merry way.
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