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Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

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Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#101

Post by y4mi »

daenz wrote: post #88
KennyBlanken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it never happened.

I'm trying really hard not to come to this conclusion, but the tweet thread doesn't make any sense. >I didn’t wanna go home, so I spent the night somewhere and just said I’d figure it out in the morning. So they stayed somewhere and said they would figure it out in the morning. Ok, that's reasonable. >this morning while I was asleep I had someone close to me check my car How did they tell someone to search the car wh…

its quite easy to imagine in my opinion.

she drives home and gets these notifications, which clearly spook her, which is why she made extra turns etc.

she sends a few messages to friends and/or family, because she's freaking out about it, but goes to sleep because she doesn't know what to do

one of these friends or family comes by in the morning, sees her car and checks it out before ringing her door bell

the given facts are quite believeable, though i doubt there is a human trafficing relation which she seems to think. its more likely a potential stalker, upset boyfriend or similar.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#102

Post by xwdv »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #76
beaconstudios wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The danger is that predators could track a child to a secluded area and abduct them.

The vast majority of abductions of children are by family. Same with other crimes against children. People they know are far more dangerous than people they don’t. The predators aren’t hiding in the bushes, they are already in the house.

This is some kind of bias, the reason this is true is because it’s far easier for those people to abduct a child whose habits they know well. Now that the technology to track anyone is far easier to come by, maybe that will change.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#103

Post by celsoazevedo »

2-718-281-828 wrote: post #85
after_care wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhone will send an alert to you if unknown AirTag is following you around.

then I don't see how this is a problem having someone else's airtag on the car. the owner of the car is the only person being "followed" by it.

The owner of the tag knows, in real time, where the tag is and only iPhones receive the tracking notifications.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#104

Post by ghaff »

endisneigh wrote: post #89

Are people against the idea of GPS trackers? Lightbug uses GPS and has a 6 year battery with a size smaller than a credit card. Ultimately there's no way to put the cat in the bag. I'd argue it's not possible for a tracker to exist that cannot be used for bad purposes.

Arguably AirTags raised the awareness that you can pretty trivially plant a tracker on someone's bag or car. But given that the technology exists, I'm not sure what everyone outraged expects to happen. Being able to track things and people (with their permission of course) is actually genuinely useful. So it's not reasonable (and of course ultimately unworkable with respect to nefarious purposes) to block this technology.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#105

Post by tinus_hn »

ahepp wrote: post #8

Surely Apple can use information from their Find My account to figure out who the AirTag was registered to. Even if the tag has been destroyed. That should be trivially easy, right?

The AirTag was conveniently discarded by an unnamed third party.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#106

Post by CPLX »

As someone who has been around message boards and forums since the late 90’s one thing that has really surprised me is the degree to which people have started taking first person online stories seriously.

Reddit of course is full of them, as is Twitter and lots of other places. Meanwhile the incentives to successfully tell a just-so story that goes viral have never been higher. Youtube money, GoFundme, influencer opportunities, etc.

The post we are all responding to is super low effort, not even a photo, and not even a first person account. Her “friend” found an AirTag and threw it away.

Meanwhile there’s a GoFundme link right on the profile.

Just saying.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#107

Post by daenz »

y4mi wrote: post #101
daenz wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying really hard not to come to this conclusion, but the tweet thread doesn't make any sense. >I didn’t wanna go home, so I spent the night somewhere and just said I’d figure it out in the morning. So they stayed somewhere and said they would figure it out in the morning. Ok, that's reasonable. >this morning while I was asleep I had someone close to me check my car How did they tell someone to search the car wh…

its quite easy to imagine in my opinion. she drives home and gets these notifications, which clearly spook her, which is why she made extra turns etc. she sends a few messages to friends and/or family, because she's freaking out about it, but goes to sleep because she doesn't know what to do one of these friends or family comes by in the morning, sees her car and checks it out before ringing her door bell the given f…

That's believable, but it contradicts "this morning while I was asleep I had someone". Her asking someone to search her car before she went to sleep to "figure it out in the morning" is more believable.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#108

Post by tshaddox »

jonpurdy wrote: post #82

So I and my wife both have AirTags. Every time we take a walk together, we both get notifications that there's an unknown AirTag with us (each others'). You can pause these notifications for just one day, which means we get notified every single day. Does anyone know how to disable this for specific known AirTags?

Are your Apple accounts in a Family Sharing group? I have no idea if that would affect this feature, but my wife and I also have AirTags on our keys and we travel together plenty and have never received this notification.

Re: Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar

#110

Post by raydev »

kemayo wrote: post #86

This is news just because it's an Apple device being used for something that was already trivially possible. GPS trackers designed to be magnet-attached to a car which report their location via cell signal cost ~$20 on Amazon. You then tend to need to pay for either a SIM card or a subscription to the device maker's service -- bringing you up to about the cost of an AirTag. These are much harder to detect, as you mig…

> This is news just because it's an Apple device being used for something that was already trivially possible.

> GPS trackers designed to be magnet-attached to a car which report their location via cell signal cost ~$20 on Amazon. You then tend to need to pay for either a SIM card or a subscription to the device maker's service -- bringing you up to about the cost of an AirTag.

So you're saying Apple made it even more trivially possible. Not only does it cost the same, it now requires less effort.

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