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Comment by hankman86 | Hacker News Reader

While it’s theoretically possible that this happened, I think this particular story was made up. For a number of reasons: 1) How did the stalker know that that’s her car? She said she was on a night out. Unless she went back to her car all the time, he must have seen her arrive in it. 2) Sticking an AirTag to the inside of the front wheel well isn’t easy. There is dirt and grime there and the surfaces aren’t flat. The stalker would have had to use a very strong adhesive to make the AirTag stick while the car was moving. 3) While it’d be a smart idea to not drive home while a foreign AirTag tracks you, who is alert enough after a night out AND happens to have friends in the vicinity that you can wake up at what must have been a very late hour? 4) Her friend who found and removed the AirTag took no photo. Really?

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While it is possible you could use an Apple AirTag in this way, there are a number of facts that don't add up in the story. Supposedly the AirTag in question was "thrown away" so there would be no hints as to how it was attached. Also, if you are being unknowingly tracked by another person's AirTag you can disable the tracking and notification if you are worried about it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212227 and additional steps at https://www.macworld.com/article/345863/how-to-find-block-di...

If you are worried enough to drive to someone else's home, why would you go to sleep with the tracker still on the car without disabling the tracker first?

No doubt that this sort of tracking is possible, but there's much here that needs some questions answered. If it was a ploy to get people to be aware of the possibilities of AirTag tracking, then I suppose that should be disclosed.

Read on the news that this kind of tracking with AirTags is used to steal cars. A car thief attaches it to the target vehicle, and then simply arrives to the place where it is parked overnight. The thief removes AirTag and then waits for an opportunity to steal the car.

How is that better that just stealing a car without the airtag?

It is not attached to average cars, they attach them to cars that are hot in the market

Lmao exactly. This argument seems absurd - just steal the car it’s not like she was driving a lambo

We don’t know if the tag was placed there for car theft reasons. The perpetrator could want to know where she lives for something even more nefarious.

You can steal the car in a quiet area at night when the odds of being caught are much lower. It allows the criminal to pick the time and place of the crime, rather than it being dictated by luck and coincidence.

Why not drive through a random suburb at night and randomly pick a car?

Because you’re not guaranteed to find one you’re looking for. If you do a little work up front you get much better odds.

I can think of other reasons:

You can target more vulnerable people (someone you know isn’t likely to come out and confront you).

And, you can observe the usage pattern of the car. For example: you might notice that the victim works nights on Fridays and leaves their car in a more vulnerable location than when at home.

I don’t think this is gone in 60 seconds, man. People aren’t out here trying to steal $1 mil collector cars on the regular.

They steal cheap ass Honda civics and what not because they’re easy to steal. Thieves steal easy to steal things. This is why the AirTag thing doesn’t make sense for tracking a car you’re planning to steal. They’d just steal it on first sight. Otherwise, they’re out like $25+ if that car drives hella far away. Not a wise investment.

I think a stolen car will fetch you a bit more then $25, something tells me that successfully stealing one car will pay for hundreds to thousands of AirTags. So they can afford to lose one or two.

> They steal cheap ass Honda civics and what not because the

Opportunistic thieves steal easy to steal things. Professional criminals steal high value assets and will have good contacts in organised crime to move those assets on, and usually move them over a border, very quickly. It’s these individuals who are using AirTags to steal cars.

Professionals are probably tracking half a dozen high value vehicles (Mercedes, Audi’s, Porsche’s etc), and will grab a number of them in a single night. Don’t assume these thieves are just junkies looking to pay for their next high. There are more cars in this world than just $1mil collectors cars and cheap civics, plenty of $70k-$150k cars worth putting some effort into.

>They steal cheap ass Honda civics and what not because they’re easy to steal. Thieves steal easy to steal things.

You're talking about joy riders. The rest of us are talking about more sophisticated operations. Besides, your logic doesn't follow: Because most thefts are of vehicle X, there are no thefts of vehicle Y?

The police didn't say it was the primary method of stealing cars, only that it was a new phenomenon they hadn't seen before.

Car theft rings focus on particular make, model, year.

I would also estimate that the nicer the car, the more likely it's inaccessible later in a home garage, limited access parking deck, etc.

Thought the same but didn't want to say so on Twitter.

The AirTag would have been linked to an Apple account.

Friend didn't take any photos, destroyed the only evidence. No police report. Seems legit.

Not to disagree with your overall point, but on #2 magnets work well for this and there are a lot of “hide-a-key” type things on the market that are often used in wheel wells by people who have a history of locking their keys in their car.

Good point, but may I add 5) AirTags are a very expensive way of stalking someone. Surely, there may be some creeps willing to put up this sort of money. But some random guy who sees her on a night out and who happens to have an AirTag with attached magnet with him? And if that was indeed the case, wouldn’t there be some pretext to this, like someone hitting on her that night and she turned him away? She doesn’t mention anything in this regard.

So no, this story doesn’t line up and looks more like cheap attention grabbing at the expensive of a real problem with Apple’s AirTags.

Back in my cab driving days I would occasionally pick up women from a shelter (for medical appointments and whatnot) and some of the stories they told me about their stalker exes make a $30 investment basically nothing.

The amount of effort they would put into stalking is mind blowing.

> AirTags are a very expensive way of stalking someone

I don't know your frame of reference in terms of what counts as expensive here, but an AirTag just $29 if bought individually or $25 if bought in a 4-pack. $25 would cover 2 drinks on a night out here (a major west coast US city) at best (and that's without accounting for tax+tip+etc.).

Plenty of stalkers out there are definitely willing to spend way more than just the cost of ~2 drinks, when it comes to stalking someone.

I agree overall that plenty of things in the story don't add up, but the AirTag cost imo isn't one of them.

Apple knows who owns any given tag, even if they don't know who located the tag, and an iPhone is required to set up the tag. If they hadn't thrown the tag away, looking up the associated ID would have been trivial. I'm not sure if Apple's system will let you pair a tag to a phone that isn't on a cellular network, but if not, that's yet another point of identity for a potential thief or stalker.

So the potential thief/stalker is using a cellular handset that can identify them on an account that can identify them to use a $25 tracker that can identify them. Or, they've stolen someone else's phone, assumed that person won't trigger the lost phone kill-switch in time for them to complete whatever task they've set out for themselves, paired a tag to the stolen phone (which I believe requires the account password and phone passcode to do, but it's been a while since I've done it), and then tracked the victim. It seems like a massive risk compared to buying a plain GPS tracker & pre-paid SIM, but then again, criminals don't tend to be the smartest.

I think the problem with saying something was made up is that it becomes blaming. I would hope people don't vote you down because I think that blame is justified, because I questioned how it was presented, on Twitter. I think if it was something related by a friend or close acquaintance to me, then I'd believe it. That it is being disseminated on Twitter in the way it was, I have a tendency to suspect there is more to the story, given I have no idea if I can trust the individual making the claim.

This seems pretty obvious that this will happen and not necessarily something that is surprising or adds to the story, other than them claiming it happened to them and horrible that is...and maybe an indication everyone should make a big deal out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

>I think the problem with saying something was made up is that it becomes blaming.

What's your point? Blame is not a thing to be avoided.

Saying that somebody made up a story is not blaming. That is an accusation of lying, which implies that wrongdoing didn't even occur.

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