Apple’s AirTag trackers made it frighteningly easy to ‘stalk’ me in a test | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s AirTag trackers made it frighteningly easy to ‘stalk’ me in a test

washingtonpost.com

15 pointsa4isms15 comments

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Is there even a way to make a tracker that couldn’t be used for stalking?

Have it chirp every time the owner views the location of the tracker.

Every phone should have a UWB scanner, to scan for these things.

UWB equipped Samsung phones wouldn't be able to scan for apple tags, and vice versa.

Any reason for that, other than lack of political will?

I don't think so. Everybody wants to create their own walled garden nowadays.

This is about privacy and security concerns which should outweigh Apple's need for lock-in. Even BT scanning would be a good start.

A GPS-only tracker would raise the bar a bit, more expensive+power use. With the Find My network and UWB, it just seems like bar has been lowered without adequate protections.

I’ve been able to track my SO using an AirTag registered to me. My SO did not mention if they got alerts, but I was able to see where they were at any given notice with my tag.

Upvoted for the honesty, but god damn, that sounds sinister.

Why are you stalking your SO?

I use something similar with my wife for years (Google Maps location sharing). Just gives us an easy way to know if the other left the house or if one of us is on the way home or something and also we feel safer being able to know if something wrong happened to one of us.

The problem is that the use case for tracking stolen items and the use case for tracking a person without their consent are identical, except for which side of the transaction the bad actor is on.

I cannot think of a resolution to this, but think the 3 day compromise is a fair start.

There are many, many more thieves than stalkers, but stalkers can do arguably much more harm per incident.

Stalkers case will also be a very bad publicity for Apple. 3 days isn't fair as that's enough to will allow a stalker to find home and office of a person. While most (~90%) thefts should be covered within <6 hrs timeline.

3 days of stalking someone is going to make robbing houses very easy.

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