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Comment by xeromal | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I'm wondering if the 3 days rule is for being around a certain iphone for 3 days. Otherwise, every person coming in contact with an old airtag would be notified as soon as they come in contact with it.

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AFAIK if the owner iPhone checks in with the tag, then everything's fine again.

So if you're a jealous husband who wants to track your wife's whereabouts as she goes through the day before returning to your home every night, well Apple has the product for you!

Or if you're stalking Cindy, just walk by her place every few days... until she spends the night at Peter's, but hey, your iPhone will tell you that, and where to find them.

If you’re stalking someone there are effective alternatives with much lower exposure risk.

I'm hesitant to ask because of the implication, but also slightly afraid of not know about these threat vectors.

So what methods are you talking about?

As others have said, there are widely available GPS trackers with cellular connections. There are, of course, also all the ways people did such things pre-GPS. i.e. just finding out where a person lives which is mostly pretty easy.

The GPS locators are heavier with shorter battery life. This has been my experience from GPS pet trackers. Since Bluetooth Low Energy does not require as much energy or range, the form factor is greatly decreased.

You might realize this, but just for clarity, Bluetooth LE has similar range to Classic Bluetooth, with the exception of 125kbps LE long range coded PHY, introduced with BT5.0. You can potentially reach from 1km away outdoors.

The Nordic Semiconductor NRF52832 used in the airtag, unlike NRF52840, does not support this.

https://colinoflynn.com/2021/05/apple-airtag-teardown-test-p...

https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Low-power-short-range-wi...

Apple seems to have removed support for long range coded PHY from iOS as well, so other vendors can't make use of coded PHY either. It was present in iOS 13, seems to be absent from iOS 14.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/665542

yes but if you just want to find where someone leves or goes, you don't need a device following them for a year. Ar day or two is enough, and GPS trackers give you that and a much greater accuracy.

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