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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

#291
Help an ignorant person. Wouldn’t this kind of alert let a thief know that whatever they stole has an airtag attached to it? I know it’s probably not marketed as an anti-theft device, but isn’t this anti-stalking measure also a ”pro-theft” measure?

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

#292
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to disagree with your overall point, but on #2 magnets work well for this and there are a lot of “hide-a-key” type things on the market that are often used in wheel wells by people who have a history of locking their keys in their car.

Good point, but may I add 5) AirTags are a very expensive way of stalking someone. Surely, there may be some creeps willing to put up this sort of money. But some random guy who sees her on a night out and who happens to have an AirTag with attached magnet with him? And if that was indeed the case, wouldn’t there be some pretext to this, like someone hitting on her that night and she turned him away? She doesn’t ment…

Back in my cab driving days I would occasionally pick up women from a shelter (for medical appointments and whatnot) and some of the stories they told me about their stalker exes make a $30 investment basically nothing.

The amount of effort they would put into stalking is mind blowing.

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

#293
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…

I see some parallels here to cases like "Google Glassholes"[1] or the "Sony see through camera" [2]. Both turned to be PR problems, even though technically the companies did not do anything that was not already otherwise possible.

[1] https://nypost.com/2014/07/14/is-google-glass-cool-or-just-p... [2]https://bettermarketing.pub/sonys-see-through-camera-disaste...

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

#294
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, that was overly provocative and arguably unjustifiably personal. I apologize. The point is that the statistics do not back up many fears. > And why did you pick "Assault by sharp object: 1,805" instead of "Assault by firearm: 10,801" or just "Assault: 16,765"? The example was a 'stabbing rampage', that was specifically to try and find the number of knife attacks in the US resulting in fatality, and out of thos…

> The point is that the statistics do not back up many fears There is a saying, Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. Or "tell me what you want the conclusion to be and I'll tell you what statistical method to apply to the data". Also known as "torturing the data". In the case of bathtub fatality, the majority of them are either very young or very old (kind of like covid): > Drowning occurred most often in a bath tub for p…

I do not know much about Nassim Taleb. According to the wiki article on him his main thesis is that societies are more robust when they plan for and can handle black swan events. Please let me know if that is an incorrect impression.

To me that sounds somewhat different from irrational rational fears and also as somewhat reasonable. Irrational rational fear attributes greater danger to an unlikely event due to ignorance of how unlikely that event is. While Nassim Taleb's thesis (AFAIK) acknowledges the events are extremely unlikely but posits a system is more robust if such events can be handled. That seems to make some sense to me, but I would be concerned if such counter measures become prohibitive. For example, I suspect we no longer need to restrict knives on airplanes. No plane is ever again going to be hijacked with just a knife. We should though continue screening for bombs and plastic explosives, an attacker would be more likely and be more interested to depressurize the cabin and try to crash the plane and kill those onboard via a bomb than to hijack it (where everyone now knows they should rush a hijacker no matter the cost).

A good analogy, a computer system that can handle errors that occur in 0.001% of cases is more robust than one that cannot. Particularly with large numbers thrown at it. The contra-point though is that real life is not large numbers, worrying more about a 0.001% probability compared to a 0.1% probability is generally misguided, particularly when a person believes that 0.001% probability is more like 10%.

Though, that is where conditional probability kicks in and here is why I agree regarding "damn lies and statistics". Hence, even if the odds are 1 vs 500 or 1 vs 5000, these are all negligibly frequent events for the average person. Though, if you are over 85, in a bathtub, perhaps on some new medication, recently recovered from a surgery, and there is nobody else at home, then I would suspect odds of dying in that bathtub are far greater than they would be otherwise.

As another example, it's kinda the same for Texas Hold'em, the odds of a 4 of a kind are generally low - but if the first 3 flop cards are all the same rank, the odds of someone having a 4 of a kind suddenly become reasonably quite good.

So, I think the interesting conversation is around conditional odds and when as humans we accurately recognize those conditions. For example, many cyclists ride to the extreme right of roads fearing getting hit from behind. The statistics for that do not support that behavior, it's really rare for a driver to hit a cyclist from behind ("eyes on the road"). It turns out the majority of those kinds of collisions occur at night and when the cyclist has no lights on their bicycle. Meanwhile that misconception of the danger puts the cyclist in a more dangerous location, the further to the edge of the road the less visible from turning traffic (the real danger to cyclists), greater danger from road debris, pot holes, bad pavement, and getting doored and pedestrians popping out from between cars and getting doored (tl;dr, it's much safer for a cyclist to be a couple feet into the lane than immediately adjacent the gutter). Though the irrational rational fear has that person riding next to the gutter, putting them in greater overall danger.

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

#295
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…

In Australia to activate a sim you need a form of ID, if you were to put a sim card in a GPS tracker you could easily be identified. air tags not so much.

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

#296
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that better that just stealing a car without the airtag?

You can steal the car in a quiet area at night when the odds of being caught are much lower. It allows the criminal to pick the time and place of the crime, rather than it being dictated by luck and coincidence.

Why not drive through a random suburb at night and randomly pick a car?

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

#297
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true but I don't see how it negates my point.

Do you go around telling people they should be worried about shark attacks, because someone could put a shark in their pool without telling them?

shark attacks in pools never happen where as abduction by strangers does.

Just because something happens at a lower frequency than something else doesn't mean we shouldn't protect against it or that it is not a danger to a particular person.

The fact that most abductions happen by family members has nothing to do with OPs point.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Amsterdam I once met an Eastern European career criminal who followed people driving home after work hours and waited for them to get into the shower. Then he'd pick their front door lock and take the keys. Unrelated, he also had a room in his apartment set up to grow weed, with some serious climate control and artificial lighting. He was dealing this pot. He had no papers or permit to stay... what crazy folk.

Pretty bold. I don't know much about Amsterdam, but I've heard burglars in the USA are usually very careful not to break into a house when people are home, as the consequences are much more severe compared to burglarizing an unoccupied house.

> when people are home, as the consequences are much more severe compared to burglarizing an unoccupied house.

Yes, because unlike in Europe, people in USA have the right to shoot you dead if you're trespassing in their property.

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

#299
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling the interaction with the police in a lot of jurisdictions would go something like: “This person at this address tried to track me without my consent! Here’s the documentation from Apple!” “Ma’am, has the person at this address murdered you?” “No.” “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do right now. If this person does murder you, please call 911 immediately.”

That is, if you're lucky and they understand what you're talking about. You'll probably have to spend some time explaining how it works, why it is a serious issue, and then probably be dismissed.

You'd have to explain to the police why a device that's designed for tracking things being placed on your car is a serious issue?

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

#300
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the street. If you are in downtown San Francisco for example, all bets are off...

At the risk of being offensive, it does not matter if you are in downtown SF - stop being afraid of the homeless and black people and assuming that they are more likely to harm you than someone you know. That statistics are not with you there. But let's look at some statistics: https://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm Bathtub: 341 Assault by sharp object: 1,805 From that, assuming their data is correct, for every…

Not really, these statistics arguments are inane.

A bathtub you have control over may not be especially risky. The stat itself probably includes unsupervised kids, elderly, etc. Take those out because they don't apply to me.

You don't have as much control over strangers. And any given homeless person may or may not be judged as especially risky - that's up for the person there to decide. There's also little downside to just avoiding them entirely.

To me, it seems like it can be completely rational.

Individual events don't happen with dice like you seem to be implying.

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