I tracked my kid with Apple's Airtags to test its privacy features | Hacker News Reader

I tracked my kid with Apple's Airtags to test its privacy features

cnn.com

13 pointsembit32 comments

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Clickbait alert spreading FUD.

> The safeguards are a work in progress

They aren't, the safeguards existed from day 1.

> After another 10 minutes, my heart started to race; still nothing.

Author seems to not understand how AirTags work by communicating with other devices?

My impression from “work in progress” was that they’ll continue to be evaluated and evolve as time goes on.

Seemed like a decent faith attempt to try the things out.

I didn’t know, for instance, that without upgrading iOS they wouldn’t work, although of course that makes sense. Or about the three day beeping feature.

Or even that they only communicate with the network via other devices. Presumably the kids on the school bus didn’t have updated iPhones I guess.

The find my network has existed for some time (2019 if I recall correctly) and was originally introduced so that the network of iPhones could locate lost MacBooks. Airtags can be located by the find my network using devices running older ios versions.

It is only the Airtag specific features which require 14.5 (I.e privacy features, pairing, identifying found airtag). I

More importantly, it doesn't appear to actually do what the title says? Did the privacy features (AirTag popping notification on iOS device and making a sound after three days) actually work?

It did not because the author had not updated the user’s device (aka the babysitter) to iOS 14.5. Either the author doesn’t understand that 14.5 is required or they are being deliberately misleading for views.

It sounds like this was still the same day (did his kid not return home for three days), so even on 14.5 it wouldn't have triggered this.

So much for testing

IS iOS 14.5 required to get notified? I'm having trouble finding information on that.

I know iOS 14.5 is required to setup AirTags.

> The safeguards are a work in progress

I find it curious that I've never seen any such articles for Tile and co. It really feels like that by taking any steps to solve it at all, all Apple have actually achieved is to bring awareness to an issue which either already existed, or never existed?

Why are airtags being treated specially here?

Getting super-high levels of press attention is both a blessing and a curse for Apple.

A blessing because they get loads of hype and attention when they release a new laptop or cell phone - far more than Dell or HTC product releases do.

A curse because it's been possible to buy generic GPS tracker modules on ebay for years, and yet the moment Apple starts selling trackers they get far more attention than ebay sellers ever did. And stories about chinese factory worker suicides, right-to-repair and environmental damage from raw material mining all like to mention Apple by name.

Probably for the same reason why Apple added additional measures that Tile and co. didn't - Apple is placed on a higher pedestal and has a lot more attention focused on it.

Put bluntly, people don't care about Tile as much as they care about Apple (in both a positive and negative way).

Apple's surveillance network is a lot bigger.

> After another 10 minutes, my heart started to race; still nothing.

This one line of faux drama and true ignorance perfectly illustrates what’s wrong with journalism today.

Why does any site believe that playing video at me without giving me a chance to consent to it or an obvious "stop doing this" button is a good idea?

How does anyone come to the conclusion that this will increase their ad revenue/interaction/readability/whatever metric they want to measure?

I'm fascinated by what they think will be their reader's reaction to this. Did they do any research? If so, who did they pick as subjects? Does anyone like having a website play video automatically?

Firefox has a feature where you can block audio/audio&video from autoplaying, works really well.

That's enabled by default, on all major browsers, I'm fairly certain. Unless you click or have autoplayed in the past from that site it's a policy to not allow autoplaying video/audio unless the video is muted (<video> tag specifically)

As far as I'm aware I've never allowed anything to autoplay video. If a site has video on it then I immediately try to mute/stop it (hence my frustration with this site where there doesn't appear to be any way of stopping the video. I ended up closing the tab).

I'd suspect you clicked on something and they have `onclick=play()` or something.

Well darn. All I want is something really thin I can attach to my Kindle, and track down where I left it in my house, using some kind of local wireless transmission. Something that could receive a signal and beep would work, too.

I thought Airtags might be a solution but it turns out it's trackable from miles away and reports to iCloud? I have no need for that and whatever safeguards they put in place, it's a potential privacy hole with no benefit to me.

What's on the market that does nothing but help you find it when it's kicked under the couch?

I guess what did you think airtags were? They emit out a uuid and other iOS devices will process it in the background to let the owner know where they are, but not random users.

I think in terms of actual security risks it’s not worse then anything else you have. If it’s only in your house then you never need to worry about it pinging another users iOS device.

It's not only in my house, I carry it everywhere. I just don't lose it except in my house.

I think the high majority of lost items intended for airtags is when they are lost in home. That’s the most common use case and what airtags are designed to be very effective to handle. But there’s the less common, but much worse outcome of losing something away from home. Airtags then provide a marginally better way of finding your items.

The privacy concerns feel so overblown.

" track down where I left it in my house, using some kind of local wireless transmission"

it does exactly that https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/ipha779f0c10/io...

But it doesn't do only that and I want something that does only that. I don't see why this is so hard for people here to wrap their head around.

That is the only thing what it does.

Except it does "only" local wireless transmission with _every_ iPhone, not just yours. It's exactly what Tile does, except just built into the OS.

I'm going to give up after one last try: I want something that only communicates with my phone with nothing contacting Apple.

People keep telling me "well yeah it only does that, except also this other stuff," right after I explicitly say I don't want that other stuff. This is the weirdest HN discussion I've had all year.

Maybe you can stick an Estimote UWB beacon on the back and build something yourself?

You probably won't lose your Kindle then, but not for technical reasons.

I put mine on a specific bookshelf when I'm done reading. Sometimes habits are more reliable and more practical than technology.

This is literally what AirTags are.

It's literally the opposite, if it can be tracked by the owner because it contacted another device miles away. I want a local ping to my own phone, nothing else.

The product does both.

Tile?

Just checked their website and they do collect information centrally, by having everyone with the app notice any nearby Tile. I don't want that, I want to find it with my own phone or not at all.

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