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>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.