Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewmunsell | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I just left my dog (her leash has an AirTag on it) with my parents on 5/8, and presumably the leash was sitting in their home somewhere.

They took her to the dog park on 5/9, and got the notification that an AirTag was following them. So I was gone for a little over 24 hours, but they only got the notification after they took the leash with them for a couple hours and then went home.

https://imgur.com/a/RawzEP9

I believe the 3 days is for the audible beeping when it's moved, but they haven't seen that yet and they marked it as "pause safety alerts" so I'm not sure if it'll still beep.

Edit: Also, I have a bag at home with an AirTag and it's constantly updating location, so presumably one of my neighbors has an iPhone that's nearby. Kind of cool that it updates so frequently, and I'd say it was worth replacing my Tiles because of it.

View on HN

For something more real-time, I really like the Whistle that our dog uses. It's a GPS-tracker that uses a cellular connection. You do pay a monthly fee (so more expensive for sure than an AirTag), but if the dog is running in a field you can find it. It also lives on the collar and includes an activity monitor, which has been helpful to know in the past that previous dog walkers didn't really do much with the dog.

I had the Whistle 2 but it was too heavy for my cat to wear comfortably.

And that's what happens when you skip leg day.

Collars go around necks..

Those are great for medium and large dogs, but too big for cats and small dogs. AirTags have a lot of potential in that regard. Even products without Apple's network like Tile are invaluable, because when a cat is lost and hiding it's much easier to come within a hundred feet of it and detect the tag than it is to spot it with your eyes.

Curious, do you find an Airtag on your dog's leash to be effective?

It's just to see what they're doing with her, not really to track the dog if she runs away (she's a pug, she doesn't move far or fast). My parents are on my Find My Friends so it's not like I can't see where they are, but it's just peace of mind to know if the dog is with them.

I used to have a Tile and the AirTag is so much better with updating location just because the sheer number of iPhones.

Interestingly, this is exactly the type of behavior I would find distasteful.

If I do you the favor of watching your dog, I'm going to be pissed if you're spying on me during the process.

I'm sure they knew about it, so I don't think it's unethical, just sort of ugly.

That's a perfectly fine opinion, but not one my family subscribes to. We're all on each others' Find My Friends, and have no problem knowing who is where. I even have non-blood-related friends on there, as do some of my other family members.

It's more useful to know when someone is X minutes away when you're being picked up or whatever, so it's certainly not "ugly" to anyone that watches my dog either.

Okay I'll ask... Did you at least get their consent before tracking them?

If they're on Find My Friends, they had to consent to that proactively. The dog's AirTag is less accurate or constant than what they're providing already.

Consent isn't universal or eternal. Without commenting on the relationship the commenter has with their family, in general, whenever you give someone something that leaks information, it's worth letting them know and allowing them to make a choice.

The opt-in party can withdraw at any time. Here's more information about how it works: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201087

My whole family have this sharing on Google Maps. It's becoming more common.

I always wonder how this sort of situation can happen. I kind of can understand it a little bit within a family, but how do you ask a friend if you can track them 24/7 without sounding like a giant creep?

At least here in Germany I would imagine that the only answer to a question like that would be "do you want to resurrect the stasi?".

> It's more useful to know when someone is X minutes away

Usually a quick message is enough for something like this.

A thing I and some friends do is use the “share location for 1 hour” before we meet.

I have several friends on Find My; it's just much easier when someone is driving or biking than texting them/knowing if they got home safely. Plus, who cares if my good friend knows where I am at any time? If I didn't want them to, I'd just disable the location. Imo, nobody is looking at my location constantly, and the convenience is worth it.

This isn't to say I'd allow this with anyone, or that everyone should do this—far from it—but it's a convenient tradeoff in this case, at least, for my friends.

> Plus, who cares if my good friend knows where I am at any time?

I would guess that my father would have also said "who cares" if his best friend knew where he was at all times. Until he found out that his "best friend" did detailed reports on him to the stasi for Years. You never know with these kind of things.

Giving up your privacy for the tiny convenience of not needing to spend 5 seconds to write a message after you arrived home sounds insane to me.

> If I didn't want them to, I'd just disable the location.

Why is that the logic you apply here? It could easily be applied the other way around: If I want them to know, then I can enable it temporarily.

Doesn't that make much more sense than the opposite?

Nowadays people carry thier cell phone with them at all times, so whats your point?

Yes, they do, but they don't usually share their location to other people 24/7.

What would be the point of that?

Carrying around your phone is sharing your location with your cellphone provider and thus the government. The stasi analogy doesn't make a lot of sense anymore at that point.

Speaking as a fellow German, I would never share that info with friends, but using that feature with my SO or future kids, sure. Not to spy on them, but e.g. to know they're safe when I expected them to be home already.

Which is why you decide to just say "fuck it" and share your information with even more people? Did I understand you point right?

There are much more dangers than just the government even if I chose to use the stasi as an example. I just thought that it makes for a good example where you can know a person for years and still get betrayed by them.

To your edit: Especially using this with kids (probably pressured to do so) is icky. You can claim that you are not spying on them, but you are. Maybe for their safety, but safety is often used to remove rights like this. You still spy on them.

I don’t see anything wrong with giving an air tag to a child who doesn’t have their own phone. Even if you think modern parents are overprotective (and I do), there’s nothing constricting about giving your child a small trinket that lets you see their location. It’s a small bit of extra security for everyone involved.

I remember my cousin and I got lost in Disneyland once, because we both somehow forgot where the meeting spot was. We didn’t have phones, and we were, of course, fine—truth be told, Disneyland is probably among the safest places to get lost. But it would have been nice if we’d had a tracker that could just tell Dad where we were.

> I don’t see anything wrong with giving an air tag to a child who doesn’t have their own phone.

The negative I see here is that it teaches your child that giving up rights for the promise of more safety (or more likely just because an authority figure says so) is something good and normal.

Also teaching that the concept of constant surveillance is good and normal.

I don't understand why you would like to do this just in case or because "it would have been nice".

I have a non verbal special needs child. I will definitely be putting an itag on his shoes

Would you say that is somewhat of a special case and that different considerations apply for this special case?

It should be implemented though that looking up one's location also notifies the person being looked up. That way there is a social barrier to looking up the location indiscriminately.

There's also the opposite scenario, willingly sharing location. This is pretty reasonable for a few reasons, but thinking of some for my female best friend:

- Going on a date

- While out running

- Going to a bar

Plenty of other things too but those come to mind first

I am not against location sharing for limited amounts of time. It could be reasonable to do, but for that you don't need to share your location 24/7 as some people here imply.

Do it enough and it's just easier to leave it on. Especially for females.

My wife likes sharing her phone's location with me full-time just in case she's ever in trouble, I'll know where to look for her. I, in turn, share my location with her. She's not very specific about what kind of "trouble" she's expecting, but it makes her more comfortable knowing that I know where she is.

It also comes in handy if, for example, she goes to the store and I realized I forgot something and want to see if she's still there so she can pick it up. Or when she wants to know how soon I'll be home so she knows when to start dinner (my bike ride from work is around an hour)

I have some very close female friends that sometimes go on dates with new people. They gave me the ability to see where they are so if I don’t hear from them I could find them.

I kind of can understand it a little bit within a family, but how do you ask a friend if you can track them 24/7 without sounding like a giant creep?

My dog has a "Whistle" GPS tracker on her collar. Friends have no problem with it when they watch her even though they know what it is and that it can track them every time they take the dog out. They even keep it charged.

You are tracking your dog and not your friends though.

That is a little bit of a different context to what the comment above claimed.

This is the thread I'm replying to:

"Curious, do you find an Airtag on your dog's leash to be effective?"

"It's just to see what they're doing with her"

"If I do you the favor of watching your dog, I'm going to be pissed if you're spying on me during the process."

"but how do you ask a friend if you can track them 24/7 without sounding like a giant creep?"

So it's not clear how a GPS tracker on the dog's collar is different than an air-tag on the leash?

You skipped over the Comment I replied to which contains the following:

> We're all on each others' Find My Friends, and have no problem knowing who is where. I even have non-blood-related friends on there, as do some of my other family members.

Along with a lot of replies that try to explain how constant surveillance of their friends is fine.

You tracking your dog and incidentally tracking a friend while they are walking said dog is completely different then tracking your friends 24/7 via their iPhone.

It does not make a difference if you track your dog with a GPS tracker or AirTag, but it is fundamentally different than what the comment was about.

It does not make a difference if you track your dog with a GPS tracker or AirTag, but it is fundamentally different than what the comment was about.

I'd find that more invasive if I was worried about tracking. At least with an app in my control, I can turn off tracking when I want to, but if I watch my friend's dog while he's out of town and he sees me walking the dog to his girlfriend's house every night, he's going to ask questions.

Why?

Would you really prefer to be tracked by your friend every hour of every day instead of only when you are walking their dog?

I do not believe that.

Well no, that's the advantage of my own device controlling when my location is shared -- I'd turn off the FindMyFriends tracking except for when I want to be tracked (like if I'm going out to meet friends and want them to be able to find me)

Google maps has a similar feature. It's similar to snapchat's map feature so many younger people don't think it's too too odd, except this updates in the background instead of whenever you open Snapchat. I just decide to share with close friends, they get a notification about it, and if they feel like it they can press a button to share back. I'm not worried that these close friends will utilize this information to rob me when I'm at work or to kidnap me but it's certainly an unnecessary vulnerability.

> but it's certainly an unnecessary vulnerability.

Why do it then? In another comment I shared that even people you consider best friends for years could betray your trust and even if we take that possibility away there is still the question of how secure that data is in their hands.

Are they going to leak it inadvertently? Can someone else gain access to their systems and spy on you through them?

> many younger people don't think it's too too odd

Don't you think that is bad? People are just getting used to loosing their rights for minor "convenience". Not to mention that getting used to constant surveillance isn't great either.

This would be weird with casual friends but families have their own norms.

You give pervasive tracking an inch, it takes a mile. The overton window on privacy has shifted. It's not showing signs of stopping, either.

I can't edit my comment, but 2005 would be totally shocked that the future has such wonton disregard for privacy.

presumably it's also visible on the collar, at least if the subject of the tracking knows what they're looking for.

That’s what I’m using mine for. The keychain holder blends in with his other tags and.. why not? I sincerely doubt I’ll ever need to use it, but it’s cost effective insurance.

I have bought 2 for our outside cats. I call them in every night around Midnight so they aren't out all night, and I want to use the tags to know if they are nearby. The challenge has been coming up with a good collar attachment that isn't too bulky. You can get away with a bit bulkier on a dog, but not on a cat.

This is where I'm wondering if 3rd party MFI accessories could come into play. I'd love to see a smaller version for cases like this (maybe without the U1, with a smaller battery) that still work on the Find My network.

Yes, I was using a bluetooth based tracker I found on Amazon, but the slightly clunky medallion ended up leading to issues with her being able to clean her own chest, and she got tangles under it. It can be a real issue.

So I've also been looking for a way to use an airtag unobtrusively. My cat isn't outdoors, but I have a big house and she's very old and likes to hide. I'm afraid someday she'll be sick or worse and I won't be able to find her, so something like this would make me feel a lot better.

I just used some tape and wrapped it around the collar and the airtag.

Simple solution!

It's one I'm happy with, though it's not all that elegant. Just spent $50 on a collar with a space for an airtag because I'm a single man with too much disposable income :|

Heavy duty gorilla tape. It's lightweight and even waterproof.

I have a bunch of leather for various projects, and am thinking of just sewing up a tiny pouch that can tie the tag "flush" on the collar. Tried a few 3D printed case ideas, but they just add more bulk.

Worst case if it falls off the caller is you just go find it (and come up with a better system).

I suppose the answer is "Apple minimalism" but I wondered a bit why the tags don't have a tab with a small hole sticking out. It seems it would be easier (and cheaper) to come up with ways to attach to things. (Though I suppose it would also be more fragile than what they did for attaching to keychains.

I think you’re on the right track about it being more fragile with a hole. Probably with wear and tear over time it might break apart. Much easier for Apple to “outsource” responsibility of attaching it to things and dealing with durability concerns.

A few days ago on HN there was a video of someone drilling a hole in an airtag at precisely the right location.

Interesting! TBF, attaching to a keyring is the only obvious use case where I'd really need something like that and I've already ordered one of the (cheap) attach to keychain accessories. But love how people figure out this sort of thing.

I believe the Chipolo edition has a hole. Anyone know performance differences between Find My Chipolo versus AirTag?

The belkin holders are the smallest I’ve seen, but I don’t believe they’re in stock anywhere :\

The tagvault seems fairly light and it protects the airtag more, which is important for outdoor animals:

https://www.elevationlab.com/products/tagvault

This looks like an ideal use-case for a 3D printer

Heck, I'd love a less bulky AirTag attachment for humans as well. My AirTag key ring is by far the biggest thing on my keychain (even bigger than my car keys), and it's so stiff that it often gets caught on other things on my pocket when I'm pulling my keys out. That never used to happen before.

This is probably the one aspect where Tile has been superior (for my use case). I never noticed the bulk of the Tile tracker on my keyring.

I'm keeping an eye out for less bulky attachments online. Everything I've seen so far emulates Apple's bulky keyring design.

I had the same problem, changing the 'keyring' bit to a smaller one I had laying around helped a lot but it is still bulky.

Looks like Airtag [1] is 31.9⌀x8 (6,393.8 mm3). the Tile Mate with removable battery is 35x35x6.2 (7,595 mm3) and Tile Sticker is 27⌀x7.3 (4,179.6 mm3). do you stick it to your keyring or use the larger Mate with hole on the keyring?

[1] https://support.apple.com/kb/SP840?viewlocale=en_US&locale=e...

[2] https://www.thetileapp.com/en-us/store/tiles/mate

Does it help you track how many birds and small wildlife your cats kill each day?

Is contributing to overfishing and factory farming to make kibble that much better for wildlife?

I heard MKBHD said it only alert you alert you went home or workplace. Otherwise, it will keep alerting everyone on public transport.

On public transport, wouldn’t the alert not show up anyway because the AirTag’s linked iPhone is nearby as well?

It won't alert if the tag is moving with it's owner.

But if you forget your bag on the train, it would start alerting people on the train after a while.

I love that the alert says "If this AirTag is not familiar to you, Continue". I'm guessing that's supposed to be a scrollable region? Brings me back to the days when we had scroll bars.

What now, are you criticizing the Oh So Intuitive Apple UI?!? Anathema, stone him, he said Jehovah!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com