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Comment by sleepybrett | Hacker News Reader

yeah, concerning the feature in the apple ecosystem to share your location with someone else is great, i just wish it had a feature that alerted the you whenever someone used it to locate one of your devices. That way if say i went to the big state fair with my friend and we shared our locations with each other in case we got separated but then forgot to shut it off. If a few days later i got notified that my friend had just located me i could shut it off and/or have a conversation with them about boundries.

The airtag/tile makes this much harder, perhaps the airtag should loudly beep or notify nearby devices whenever it's being actively located.

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> That way if say i went to the big state fair with my friend and we shared our locations with each other in case we got separated but then forgot to shut it off.

you can share location for 1 hour or until end of day rather than Indefinitely.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210514

Yeah, but what if I want indefinite sharing (like with my wife) but would also like to be notified when I’m being tracked? That should definitely be an option. It should really be the default…

Right now it’s way too damn easy to ask to borrow someone’s phone, then share their location with you indefinitely, and have that person not notice that you’re able to track them until the next time they use FindMy. There are probably a huge percentage of users that almost NEVER open the FindMy app. It’s a glaring security and safety omission from Apple.

> i just wish it had a feature that alerted the you whenever someone used it to locate one of your devices.

I’m shocked that the very security-minded Apple doesn’t do this. I shared my location indefinitely with my wife and was shocked that I didn’t get a notification when she was tracking me. How is this not an option for the indefinite location share?

> The airtag/tile makes this much harder, perhaps the airtag should loudly beep or notify nearby devices whenever it's being actively located.

AirTags do have a feature like this. If an AirTag is detected on your person, it will make an alarm sound. Basically they can’t be carried near a device that isn’t their owner’s device for long without sounding an alarm.

>The airtag/tile makes this much harder, perhaps the airtag should loudly beep or notify nearby devices whenever it's being actively located.

They absolutely should. It boggles my mind a bit that they don't do this. It would even help you find them. Is there any downside to making noise?

This is a great solution to this issue - two way transparency.

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