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Comment by prionassembly | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking about a solution that would let me find a 4-10 year old child that gets lost in a big city crowd. Like a bracelet or something. Is the AirTag truly first or best in class?

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Apple Watch for kids launched last fall with cellular and GPS support. You probably want something like it for kids in the older end of that range.

I wouldn't put a magnet for theft on my child's wrist in effort to keep them from getting lost.

I find it hard to imagine that a $400 device is worth the risk of being caught accosting or kidnapping a child. Society doesn’t look kindly on people who threaten children.

Kinda think kid would loose it quicker, but it really depends where you live. In some places their books might be worth more. In some it's 3 months salary.

Watch does sound like a good fit for kids - enough to get information, but not screen size to lurk on it all day.

A stolen apple watch is pretty much useless. A stolen iPhone can be sold for parts, as there's a big market for original screens, but apple watch parts are in not as big a demand (I think).

Stick an old phone into their pocket/bagpack, sim ideal but not required.

Connect that phone to your phone hotspot, so you can turn on your hotspot and, if the phone connects, it's nearby plus you can use Find My to track it from there, play sound... etc.

Bonus if you have access to e.g. XFinity or whichever is the most prevalent free wifi around, so your phone can come online occasionally.

I appreciate this as a hack but it:

1) does not sound reliable or easy

2) fails open (if something doesn’t happen, that means something bad happened)

Oh it's absolutely a hack for the better-than-having nothing scenario :)

My main issue was remembering to charge the old phone every few days as I'm not in need of this regularly, so more of an occasional thing like to an unfamiliar place/country, or on a trip to Disney.

Would like to know this as well.

The deciding factor would be the responsiveness of a lookup. How quick can one locate the tag when it is out of reach of your iPhone and needs to be located through the "public network"?

Not suitable for purpose. AirTags are for objects which will stay in one place when lost. They aren't appropriate for tracking "objects" which will move on their own, like pets or people, nor are they likely to work on the time scale that you'd need to find a lost child.

I'm not sure why you say that. There is no evidence supporting this in Apple's documentation or any protocol reverse-engineering literature I've read on this. Further, Apple's own marketing shows an AirTag being tracked around San Francisco.

Apple's said as much themselves to the press:

> When I asked Drance about parents using AirTags to track their small children (such as during an outing at an amusement park) or pets (we know you’re up to something shady, Fluffy) she was quick to stress that the company designed the AirTag to track items, not people or pets. If parents would like to safely track their young children, she suggests an Apple Watch with Family Setup might be a better choice.

> As for strapping an AirTag to a pet, Drance says, “If people do that, they just have to make sure that their moving pet gets into range of a device in the Find My network” so its location can be tracked.

-- https://www.fastcompany.com/90628073/apple-airtag-privacy-se...

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