731–740 of 966 posts
"The Find My network is approaching a billion Apple devices..." If I buy an iPhone, will Apple use my iPhone to provide their "Find My" service to other customers?
> AirTag is designed for over a year’s worth of battery life with everyday use. The CR2032 battery is user-replaceable and widely available. Replacement batteries are sold separately. That's the piece of information I wanted to know first. Devices like this can be built, but those can't run on batteries for a reasonable time frame. Apple made it practical.
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I wonder how this works in practice? My main use for an AirTag would be to put on my cat’s collar. But if it starts beeping randomly that’s going to be a problem.
Please, if possible, do not put collars on cats :( If they're outside they can get gravely injured as they pass through the smallest holes and cracks. There are very NSFL images of resulting injuries. The collars often lead to suffocation or very bloody scenes - no matter how well they seem to fit. https://www.pdsa.org.uk/taking-care-of-your-pet/looking-afte...
> AirTag is designed for over a year’s worth of battery life with everyday use. The CR2032 battery is user-replaceable and widely available. Replacement batteries are sold separately. That's the piece of information I wanted to know first. Devices like this can be built, but those can't run on batteries for a reasonable time frame. Apple made it practical.
So if the battery is replaceable I can simply remove the battery to disable the AirTag once I steal the item it is "tracking" ?
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You keep repeating this data is shared without a warrant message. I don't believe you are correct in this assessment. The legal definition of a warrant is a written order issued by a judicial officer or other authorized person for the purpose of the administration of justice. A written request by the FISA court, which is staffed by eleven federal district court judges, is de facto a warrant. What I think you really o…
The problem lies with the companies. They have full knowledge that their datasets can and will be queried without limit by the US federal government without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, and they still collect and store the data, after being in full possession of these facts. In Apple's case, they even preserve vulnerabilities in the system to aid the state in exploiting this circumstance. It's to the point…
If you look at the history, and I think you are referring to iCloud data, Apple designed a way to protect existing iCloud data. From what has been published, Apple made a mistake in letting the US Government know in advance -- before the software was released.
Because Apple then did not continue and protect the data, the story was spun, by "the media", that Apple has somehow "collaborated" with allowing data collection. I don't think that is the true story.
If you look at every other new product or service that has been introduced even before and after the iCloud backup incident, privacy and not being able to obtain data is / was an inherent feature.
What I think most likely happened with iCloud data is that Apple was "coerced" into capitulation -- explicitly not collaboration. A threat was made, if you go forward with your plan, we will do this.
What was the threat? Something possible - Apple ships devices that depend on strong encryption. Strong encryption is still regulated by the US Commerce department -- a US Government agency.
Even the most recent event when OCSP checks failed -- the developer certificate ID check, Apple's response was to say that they stopped logging the IP addresses. This was also mis-represented, likely by folks that did / do not understand that OCSP requests are made via HTTP requests and almost every HTTP server, by default, logs the client IP address. You have to actively not log the addresses -- which is what Apple's apology statement said they changed.
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Didn't expect user replaceable commodity batteries from Apple. That's nice.
Throwback to that AA battery charger Apple released in 2010 [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Battery_Charger
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It would make sense to do the anti stalking notification after say 4 days. This would make stalking labor intensive since the stalker has to swap tags frequently. So if you leave one in someone's car or drop it in a bag, you'd have to steal it back and replace it. Also if the stalker is unable to track it down, the victim gets notified automatically which makes stalking with these much more dangerous for the stalker.…
It would make sense to do the anti stalking notification after say 4 days "Your privacy and safety are important to Apple. We won't let anybody use these devices to stalk you for more than 96 hours." You haven't thought this through! Seriously, the use cases for 96 hours of tracking are frightening. 1. Meet victim in club/bus/supermarket/wherever 2. Drop AirTag in their bag/pocket/whatever. 3. Now you know where they…
Meet victim in club/bus/supermarket/wherever
I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is how stalking works in practice. People don't stalk random strangers they meet in the supermarket. They stalk former partners, and (more rarely) people they've developed an obsession about. That means the stalker has to worry about being recognized by the victim, and consequently will have fewer opportunities to plant a device and retrieve a device than you imagine.
Furthermore, while being tracked for up to 96 hours indeed is a frightening thought, the typical stalker's goal is to track their victim at all times. Having to plant and retrieve a device at least every four days, without being detected by the victim, makes for a very impractical way to achieve that goal.
I thought one of the big use cases for this was to track stolen items, like a backpack or maybe even a bicycle. But the "anti-stalking" feature will notify someone if an AirTag they don't own appears to be traveling with them. Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then? Since it will just notify a thief that the bike they just stole is being tracked, and they can look for the AirTag and throw it in the nearest…
So if a friend lends me some keys with one of these attached and I don't have the right kind of phone on me, the keys will start beeping incessantly? That seems pretty darn annoying.