Hacker News Reader

Comment by ameminator | Hacker News Reader

Look, I usually try to be charitable. However, this article offered no new insight on Apple Airtags. If you don't want to waste your time, allow me to summarize:

Woman puts Airtags in a car. Her husband isn't able to find them, even using Apple's "anti-stalk" features. Ergo, Apple needs to do more.

I ask - what new insight did this article offer on Airtags? I don't think anyone can conclude either way on the effectiveness of Apple's "safety measures" when it comes to Airtags, from this small anecdote.

In my mind, the article buries the Lede on the real discussion - should Apple be doing these measures at all? I find that issue far from settled when this article takes it for granted that not only should Apple take these safety measures, they should do more!

The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive - "I sound like a terrible wife, but it's for journalism!" No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

Anyways, I do think there is interesting discussion to be had about Airtags and if/what Apple should be doing to prevent unwanted tracking. However, this article didn't have that discussion or contribute to it in a meaningful way.

View on HN

I found the key quote to be

"My husband, of course, had agreed to this in principle, but didn’t realize just how many devices I had planted on him. Of the seven trackers, he found only two: a Tile he felt in the breast pocket of his coat and an AirTag in his backpack when he was looking for something else. “It is impossible to find a device that makes no noise and gives no warning,” he said, when I showed him the ones he missed."

which I read as "Apple needs to improve, but still drastically better than everything else out there"

I am not in the market for AirTags, but if you are completely scatterbrained and this provides you a helpful way to manage your stuff, AirTags seem to be least bad way of doing this.

I actually tend to agree somewhat with your arguments. However, from the article, I don't think you can reach those conclusions like:

"Apple needs to improve, but still drastically better than everything else out there"

Where does the article talk about this class of device? Nowhere is a competing product mentioned or compared against. Even a Bluetooth keyfob, used to track keys by emitting a sound (and widely available) could have been used there.

I like and agree with what you said, I just don't think the article makes those points, to its detriment.

Yeah Tile even has the same network tracking effects that extend widely beyond bluetooth range. They've done this for a decade at this point, IIRC.

Too bad Tile's network tracking is useless in most areas since an app install is required to be part of the network.

If you live in a moderately sized city it's good enough to track someone to their house. I did it with a backpack thief 5 years ago.

I mean for personal use, airtags seem all right. But it's the ones that don't come with a warning that they're around that worry me.

I mean if you're paranoid, I'm sure there's detectors that can find bluetooth signals and whichever other technologies they use (I'm fairly sure GPS is passive, that is, they only need to receive satellite signals, not send anything).

Download the nRFConnect app and you'll probably be amazed at the number of BLE devices that are around you all the time.

Anecdote: I used to work for a company that did a lot of wireless wearable stuff and early on in COVID lockdown I had a Linux tool: bluetoothctl, running while I was testing some code down in the basement of my house. The first indication I had that my wife was home was the appearance of a Fitbit device in the scan, followed by a couple of unknown phones as she and a friend walked up to the house.

Not unexpected, but it was that sudden appearance of devices (I live far outside the city) that really drove home how much data we're throwing off all the time without thinking about it.

Wow, I was indeed amazed. I live in an apartment building, and I could immediately see more than a hundred devices! The list has everything: from headphones and smart watches to light bulbs and TVs.

Now don't be tempted to send random data to those light bulbs :-)

> I ask - what new insight did this article offer on Airtags? I don't think anyone can conclude either way on the effectiveness of Apple's "safety measures" when it comes to Airtags, from this small anecdote.

While I understand where you're coming from, I think there's value in adding to the chorus when it comes to putting pressure on a company to rethink a strategy.

Certainly, while articles such as this may not be news to you or I, they are likely to be news to a number of people on HN, their friends & family, etc.

> The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive - "I sound like a terrible wife, but it's for journalism!" No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

This point misses the mark IMO. The issue with AirTags at their core is that they permit people who are deceptive and shady to do bad things much easier than they could before.

I think the cat's out of the bag now on this type of tech though. Tile's been around for a while, AirTags are now everywhere, the goal now should be developing detection systems (which shouldn't be too hard).

>The issue with AirTags at their core is that they permit people who are deceptive and shady to do bad things much easier than they could before.

But that's just not true. Seriously, right now, go to Amazon and type in "GPS Tracker" and look at the results:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=gps+tracker

Literally $30 gets you a 1oz cellular magnetized tracker you put a SIM into for real time tracking anywhere with cell coverage with voice monitoring included! Literally for tracking and they proudly advertise it. No warnings or nags about "a device is following you", no noises. Comes with Prime shipping, get it as soon as Sunday February 13!

Apple being Apple may well have brought more publicity to the issue but no, AirTags do not do what you say they do. If anything there are reasonable arguments that Apple has been too careful to the extent of making them pretty irritating in family/friends usage where everyone gets nagged for normal shared item activity and cannot use them in a shared way (despite being able to do so for devices!).

I am with you on this, there were and are a lot of tracking alternatives. The issue is more that now, since Apple released AirTags, everyone just got aware of it. While previously one had to search for a solution how to track someone, now we have streamlined mainstream product with great usability for the purpose. Which is still a net negative for a society, and it's Apple's fault for popularizing such behaviour.

I actually agree with you, but Tile is a better example, I think.

Because needing to also get a working SIM card is a pretty substantial “oh, you’ll also need…”

Is it hard to buy a SIM card in much of the world? I can walk into one or about ten shops within 5km of here and buy one instantly. I think the price is ‘free’ but you pay something like EUR 10 to have credit on it. If you want to be anonymous, you can wear a hood and a mask and pay with cash.

In the US, it's very unusual to buy a SIM card outside of purchasing a phone and phone plan. And while we do have prepaid options, they're much less commonly used than in other countries.

At a quick glance, the cheapest T-Mobile plan is $60/mo, or $45/mo if you're adding a second line to an existing plan.

You can also get a SIM card intended for IoT usage, but this is probably not something your average non-technical person would know how to do. I also expect that most Americans are unfamiliar with buying a SIM card in a way that is not direct from a mobile carrier.

T-Mobile will give you unlimited talk and text + 2.5GB of data for $15/mo.

https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/plan-detail/t-mobile-connect

> In the US, it's very unusual to buy a SIM card outside of

In your circles.

There are entire industries which rely on 'burners', wisely or not, for various logistics tasks involved in deriving tax free income from controlled substances.

Buying a SIM card with cash is as easy as wanting to and doing some searching, or just driving around and looking for dollar stores: the phone provider you want is in the same parking lot.

I could drive to walmart (most large stores, really) and buy 20 sims from various prepaid providers. Most people may not do this, but it is certainly a viable option for such a device.

prior to international roaming bundles becoming reasonable my first task when arriving in the US was always to buy a SIM card. Unlike almost anywhere else the US (well SFO at least) did not have the usual line of SIM sellers at the exit from immigration

> get a working SIM card is a pretty substantial

  Best Seller in Cell Phone SIM Cards
  SpeedTalk Mobile $5 Prepaid GSM Sim Card for GPS Tracking Pet Senior Kid Child Car Smart Watch Devices Locators 30-Day Wireless Service
  3 4 out of 5 stars 8,954
  $5.00 
  Today 2 PM - 6 PM

I would have thought I had to go to a phone store. Thx. Interesting.

A totally anonymous phone card would be a bit tougher. My guess is that the proliferation of iot devices like CPAPs using mobile data plan means that one could be stolen or dumpster-found without someone knowing the chip needs to be deactivated.

> A totally anonymous phone card would be a bit tougher Depends on where you buy them. The internet is big and you can have stuff delivered anywhere, including somewhere that doesn't have your name or address.

But hard to pay without your name, right?

I think a common form of theft is for someone to be defrauded by an order sent to a third party, as if it were a gift and for the package to be picked up from the third party similar to porch pirate activities. I saw a short documentary about this performed at an semi-industrial scale where the pickup was done by a car service person as a side-gig.

How is that hard? Cash exists, pre-paid debit and credit cards exist (which you then buy with cash). Gift cards exist.

The US seems ok but your mileage may vary by domicile:

As of early 2021, 157 governments required some form of proof of identity before a person could purchase a SIM card, but what form of ID and what other information may be required varies.

https://www.privacyinternational.org/long-read/3018/timeline...

> Apple being Apple may well have brought more publicity to the issue but no, AirTags do not do what you say they do. If anything there are reasonable arguments that Apple has been too careful to the extent of making them pretty irritating in family/friends usage where everyone gets nagged for normal shared item activity and cannot use them in a shared way (despite being able to do so for devices!).

Bringing more attention and publicity to it, and claiming to have actually solved the privacy problems when in fact they haven't has actually made it easier for stalkers. The proof is in the pudding: Similarly google search guides on disabling the speaker on AirTags, you'll find hundreds just for the one product. Likewise, compare sales of AirTags to the GPS Trackers on Amazon.

Whenever a big trusted company makes a product more accessible to the average person, they're making it easier as a whole.

Even in a strict technical sense, having it visible in the Find My App that people already are familiar with and use to locate their airpods, apple watches, etc., that alone gives the infrastructure benefit to make it simpler.

> Likewise, compare sales of AirTags to the GPS Trackers on Amazon.

You know one has a convenience factor to it, right? And it’s a known brand and has an ecosystem built up around it… These misc trackers on Amazon don’t have that… why would you ever consider comparing the sales as an argument?

This is exactly the point I am making -- Apple has made it EASIER -- which xoa was arguing against.

It always was this easy. Apple has't made it easier because it has built-in anti-stalking which you cannot disable. You can tamper with the speaker, but not with the BTLE or UWB radios (well, you technically can but at that point you can't use them to track anything either).

The only thing you could theoretically attribute to Apple is that it is now much more known that this can happen. That is both good (you can now look for it) and bad (dumb people will try to use this to stalk/steal, not realising that they are tied to their AppleID, and thus to their SIM, IMEI, MAC, and device serial number and thus to them).

>> The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive - "I sound like a terrible wife, but it's for journalism!" No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

You need to read more of the article.

> Some states, including New York, where we live, have laws criminalizing this sort of thing. Not wanting to break the law, or my husband’s trust, I had asked him for permission.

It may be fluff, but it wasn't deceptive.

I think you replied a level too low.

Whoops. So it goes.

If I had a pessimistic-comedic attitude towards titles of articles, it would read like this: "So you like putting a leash on your husband? Kinky."

Apple is literally the best vendor in the field in terms of providing privacy controls for their tracking products.

Great if criticizing them sets a baseline for all other vendors, but given how the US government decided Apple was price-fixing ebooks while ignoring Amazon's monopsony (2012), I'm not really confident that they'll do something that isn't essentially a bill-of-retainer to limit Apple while not solving the tracker privacy problem at all.

Not everything has to offer new info. Sometimes things bear repeating, it's how we add emphasis and continue the conversation.

Coming out with "Apple is doing a poor job" just once isn't going to move the needle. People have to hear it over and over in a relatable way.

Fair point - but in that case, I found the author's account unrelatable, so much as to approach uncredible.

Maybe it hits different for other people, but I don't appreciate being given a conclusion without any good discussion

Your critique is bit shallow. That the article does not present any new information to any one reader (you) specifically, or that any one reader (you) cannot relate personally is to be expected and not remarkable given the size of this publication’s audience and the novelty of the phenomenon the article discusses.

I imagine, however, that there are readers for whom this information is novel, and for whom the first-person journalistic style is insightful. In this case, the value here is obvious.

Yes, I will present my viewpoint. I didn't find this article relatable. I didn't find new information from this article. I think this article objectively is hard to relate to and has little new information.I will share my viewpoint in a comments section - feel free to disagree. If you think it's shallow, it's probably because the original piece didn't have much meat to begin with.

>Yes, I will present my viewpoint

You can, or, alternatively, you can simply acknowledge you’re not the intended audience for the article, and that you may have over-stepped rhetorically in declaring a complete absence of value with respect to insight or novelty in the article; which is there, and obviously so.

I didn't find any value, and I look forward to someone presenting some value other than "I don't like your critique".

For example, I found this comment section much more enlightening than the article, because commenters here made better discussion than I found in the article.

> I didn't find any value

Not to be crude, but that seems like a personal deficiency, not a demerit of the article. The "commenters here" who "made better discussion than I found in the article," are discussing the implications of the article's information and presenting interesting perspectives. If you didn't find anything of value, perhaps you could try thinking a bit harder or for a bit longer. Others have done so successfully.

This comment section would not exist without the article.

It's resembling an attack of the author, instead of the authors ideas, aka a form of ad hominem. So it's kinda ironic to say the author adds nothing while simultaneously adding nothing with a non sequitur.

I know nothing about the author outside of this article and I can't remember ever reading anything else she wrote. The author may be a perfectly virtuous person - but knowing that may actually bias my review/critique.

For example, this is actually a story about a mother worried about her child. I really appreciate that! What I don't appreciate is someone using that to present unsupported positions.

I am attacking the piece that she wrote and it's because I don't think it was a good piece.

> No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

She planted the tracking devices on him with his permission, after discussing with him that she wanted to write a piece on the experience. This information is right in the article.

I found these three portions intersting:

>[LandAirSea] which sells about 15,000 devices per month... tells these callers they should go to the police, because they will need a subpoena to determine who owns the device they discovered.

>My husband, of course, had agreed to this in principle, but didn’t realize just how many devices I had planted on him. Of the seven trackers, he found only two..It is impossible to find a device that makes no noise and gives no warning

>For all the bad press the AirTags have gotten...at least I was consistently getting notifications they were following me...The privacy dangers of the other trackers were way worse

The fact that she was to tired to take a baby to the hospital, but not to follow husband every step is what concerns me.

I do try to be charitable, but it almost seemed like a sick game to me.

"Here, let me convince my husband that he needs to go take the baby to the hospital. Now, let's stalk him to see if he actually did it!"

Anyways, this turned me off. It could have been "forgiven" (if this word even applies) had it contributed something meaningful. Sadly, it didn't, so it just comes off as neurotic stalking.

I don't have that take at all. The husband knew he was being tracked, she got permission from him prior to putting any tracking devices on him.

> It could have been "forgiven" (if this word even applies) had it contributed something meaningful

Just because you are aware of the dangers of tracking and how these devices work it doesn't mean others are equally aware.

This is actually one of the side issues I had with the piece. The way it's written, you would think that she asked explicit permission to track him to the hospital.

However, what seems to have happened in reality, is that they had previously played a harmless game of "find the Airtags". Then, some time later, possibly a large period, she uses those Airtags to track the husband. It's hard to say in either direction if the husband knew and expected to be tracked to the hospital. I think that was a deliberate choice - but it still comes off deceptive, if this is just happenstance.

If any of this had contributed meaningfully to the main points, I would tolerate it a lot more - that's my biggest contention. The fact that the author isnt a perfect person is just a side gripe that I have with plenty other articles.

I doubt very much that a journalist would publish something about stalking their also works in journalism spouse without everyone involved being on board with what went on. I think it's written to highlight how creepy it is, with the occasional “I got my spouse's consent for all this” interludes to make a point that it's often used for non-consensual spying.

Articles don't normally highlight the virtues of the journalist where that's not relevant to the subject of the article.

The way I understood that was - she was going to write a piece about this subject. Asked for permission. What's implicit is that this experiment would have to last until she was done writing the piece.

Not just "let's find airtags today" and then "boohoo I've been tracking you without permission". Wouldn't make sense. He was not surprised when his phone notified him that a tag was tracking him after a day in Manhattan.

I'm sorry, but what? The ostensible benefits of AirTags is that they're extremely easy to use and track with an iPhone. Why is it concerning that the author feels too tired to go to the hospital (during covid-heightened restrictions), but not too tired to use her iphone? Is going to the hospital for pediatric care generally easy? Is actively calling her husband easier than passive notification via the Find My app?

> “I’m worried,” I told my husband. “I want you to take her to the hospital.”

> “Doctors always tell us to take the baby to the E.R. whenever we call about anything,” he replied, exasperated. (This was true.) “She is fine. She is eating and playing and happy. This is not an emergency.”

> He eventually caved and set out for the hospital a half-hour away. Knowing he was already annoyed by me, I did not want to pepper him with questions about how it was going.

> Instead, I turned to the location-monitoring devices that I had secretly stashed in our car a week earlier.

> “I’m worried,” I told my husband. “I want you to take her to the hospital.”

> He eventually caved and set out for the hospital a half-hour away.

The next article writes itself doesn't it?

In 2018, the United States spent about $3.6 trillion on healthcare, which averages to about $11,000 per person. Relative to the size of the economy, healthcare costs have increased over the past few decades, from 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1960 to 18 percent in 2018. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) project that by 2028, such costs will climb to $6.2 trillion, or about $18,000 per person, and will represent about 20 percent of GDP.

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2020/04/why-are-americans-paying-m...

My impression was that she was both a) already up with the baby all night, and b) was too tired to drive 30 minutes to the nearest hospital with their baby. The article didn't say if the husband was also up with the baby all night. While tired I'd be wary of drifting off while driving with my newborn in the car.

baby-hospital visits are brutal. It's about 8 hours of waiting (usually in the middle of the night) with a screaming child while staff ignores you and then finally says there isn't a problem.

Recently during a bout of covid my son's tongue was blue and he couldn't figure out what was up. My wife wanted to the go to ER, the doctor said to go to the ER. I said, "no, there's another explanation for this and nobody is losing a night of sleep over this". The next day we noticed the blue tongue happened after taking some blue-colored vitamin gummies.

> baby-hospital visits are brutal. It's about 8 hours of waiting (usually in the middle of the night) with a screaming child while staff ignores you and then finally says there isn't a problem.

Add to that that depending on your health-care plan, it could cost you thousands of dollars!

Personally, I could care less about the cost (but it does bother me). IO should have mentioned above that in nearly all cases, urgent care is more appropriate (my provider has one open during daytime hours).

Also depends on your insurance provider (at least in the US). Previous insurance I had wouldn't cover urgent care clinics, but would cover ERs. Stupid beyond belief, but it was a small company so I guess there were compromises on the plan. Luckily I no longer have that plan and have a much more sensible and comprehensive plan.

Taking a child to the hospital, in particular a toddler/infant, is extremely stressful. If one is already tired from caring for that child all night, I'd completely understand asking the other parent to take the child. In fact, I have done so personally, though having two children meant it also made more sense for one of us to stay home with the other child instead of towing a second (healthy) child through the hospital as well.

Also, this is an opinion/editorial piece, so whether the author watched their spouse the entire time or if the author pieced the evening together after the fact while writing this article is up for speculation.

I ask - what new insight did this article offer on Airtags?

Ask the author: https://mobile.twitter.com/kashhill

Let us know what she says.

The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive

Let us know what she has to say about that, too.

I don't have twitter and I don't think twitter is a good platform for discussion.

No problem! There's a link on her NY Times biography page so you can e-mail her: https://www.nytimes.com/by/kashmir-hill

Or are you going to make up another excuse to hide behind the anonymity of HN so you can throw around a bunch of insulting questions in public without bothering to speak directly to the person you're criticizing?

>what new insight did this article

author found a trending topic, and is making the mostest

Yes, this isn’t good journalism.

“I drove over my husband with an F150 for journalism. Ford clearly needs to do more.”

The average NYT Reader knows what an F150 would do if driven over a husband. Presumably, the average NYT Reader does not know about the capabilities of tracking devices or the ramifications of stashing them on a husband's person. I personally kind of knew about Airtags and knew nothing about Tiles until a fairly recent Hacker News post, and it was news to me how Airtags used surrounding devices for locational info.

Furthermore, there's a place for journalism that grounds a hypothetical experience in descriptive prose / photography in order to transform abstract facts to something closer to lived experience. In that aforementioned HN post I learned about using those devices for stalking as a hypothetical, but this article's actual photographs did make me uncomfortable and drove home the ramifications.

> should Apple be doing these measures at all?

Apple no, but law makers should require a licence to use those. This is not a tech that anybody should be able to use on a whim. Too much potential for abuses.

Not to mention the more there are, the bigger the cake for a nation that want to get control of the biggest offline spying network of all time. Somebody is going to crack that thing sooner or later. There will be an NSO for airtags.

What until you hear about the tracking device that everyone has in their pockets, used by cellular companies, ad companies, and the government!

Yes, they are a problem too.

But, you know they are here.

They can be turned off.

They require an internet connection.

They are not meant for tracking, and intent is important.

They provide other features than tracking.

They are expensive, and battery don't last. People won't use them to track their ex wife for months.

It's like comparing a gun and a knife. Sure, you can kill with a knife, but it's harder, and initially the knife is made for cutting carrots.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com