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Comment by andrepew | Hacker News Reader

Not hard for a non-technical person to remove the speaker. Housing pops right open with a small flathead screwdriver. Then you just remove the speaker's magnet, no desoldering or anything like that required. Took 5 minutes.

I did it to one of mine to use it to track my bicycle if it ever gets stolen.

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If the thief has an iPhone, they'll still be alerted that the tracker is following them. If they move their phone around on your bike, they'll be able to find it, within several inches, with the NFC identification feature that gives the last four digits of the owners phone number.

Maybe Apple's campaign is working: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/26/apple-doe...

Yeah but at least when I loan my bicycle to my friend it won’t beep constantly.

Absolutely. With all the air tags in my family, I think I'm completely desensitized to the beeping and notifications. I really doubt I would notice if I was being stalked.

I'm banking on a bike theft being a crime of opportunity and not necessarily being done by someone who has thought things through completely.

But against a professional thief an AirTag probably won't do much.

I don't even have that expensive of a bike, but I have two on mine

There's a 3D-printed housing for one that sits between the frame and the water bottle holder. If someone does ever steal my bike, and checks for AirTags, I expect them to find this one

I have a second wedged inside the seat cavity. You have to take the seat off the seatpost rails to remove it

It's pretty common for thieves to have a lot of stolen stuff together, so if there is a second stalker notification I'm hoping they assume it's from another stolen item in their possession (having already removed the water bottle AirTag)

I was going to say, there are valid security use-cases for doing this.

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