AirTag leads to arrest of airline worker accused of stealing from luggage | Hacker News Reader

AirTag leads to arrest of airline worker accused of stealing from luggage

nbcnews.com

240 pointsmetadat244 comments

I left my AirPods in a Hertz rental car at the Atlanta airport. I registered them on the lost & found website and using the same tech as an AirTag, I watched them sit at the rental car terminal for weeks. Once (after*) the 30 day lost & found period expired, they went to one nearby house and then to a second nearby house. The second looked abandoned on Google street view. I had blocked them with Apple’s “Find My” app and reported them missing, so anyone trying to connect would see they were reported missing and also see my contact info. I even sent an email to a person at the first house, found with some Internet searching, and offered a reward. Over the weeks, the AirPods were being charged. Eventually they went off the “radar” and I had to replace them.

If anyone had cared, it’s possible those houses were full of other “lost” items from airport travelers.

I wish Apple could lock AirPods to your Apple ID, would instantly make them worthless for stealing. Same as they do for iPhones with activation lock. If you tried to pair them to another user's iPhone, it should immediately say the headphones are stolen and your location has been transmitted to the owner.

Maybe Apple can have the user's own iPhone call the police on him too so he can be arrested.

Can't wait for people pairing their ipods to a friend phone ...

If the police can't be bothered to track a device even when possible I doubt an automatic reporting would encourage them.

>Can't wait for people pairing their ipods to a friend phone ...

They already do it for Apple tv+ (like every other modern web based service). When you login on a new device, they send a code to your phone. Enter the code, click "remember device" if you own it or leave it if it's your friend's, done. Either way, you get an alert with the location of the login. No reason we can't have this for hardware.

I certainly do not lose my stuff enough to want an additionnal layer to control how I can use my devices ...

Which is why it should be opt-in.

I don’t lose things often, but want them to be 100% useless to anyone who has decided to steal them.

How does it control how you can use it? The account owner always retains full control. It's non owners who are being restricted.

In theory. In reality it is probably Apple who is in control and the account owner is asking Apple nicely to put their device onto that list when (and only when) they ask.

I'm sure you could do this with clever cryptography by uploading your public key to the device when you first set it up then signing an attestation of wanting to lock it but this is probably not how it works.

I could spend all day worrying about what in theory could happen. Or I could just trust that it works the way it always has and when Apple violates my trust, I’ll just never buy their products again. And I’m only out around $200 for a pair of AirPods.

> I watched them sit at the rental car terminal for weeks

Do you mean that the car rental office actually did find your AirPods and kept them in their office for 30 days? It sounds like that's what you mean since you say that the AirPods moved only after "the 30 day lost & found period expired".

So if that's the case, why wouldn't they mail them back to you? Did they deny having them? If they were intent of keeping them, why would they bother holding them at the car terminal for 30 days?

No idea. It’s just their location didn’t change until after the lost & found period had expired. Perhaps they sat in the car.

When I got the car, which is all self-service, there was a confusion with the registration and I had to bring it back and choose another. So it’s possible the first car couldn’t drive until they got the correct plates or whatever.

I recently received a phone call telling me they had found an iPad I lost several years ago in another country. The person who called found it in a lost and found plugged it in and saw my number.

Somehow the place where I left it couldn’t be bothered for all those years until this person came along.

Sometimes people are malicious, other times they’re just lazy.

Not lazy.. they simple don't give a damn.

The culture of "I could afford a hundred more!"

I’ve been that person who asks “How long has this been here? …So has anyone done anything about it?” and always the explanation was that everyone thought it was someone else’s job.

How was that place not somewhere you called looking for it?

I did call. Either it hadn’t been found yet or they never checked.

People respond on motivations, therefore reporting about someone else’s lost item without any reward for them is unlikely.

To be fair, when you lose something, you're not only at the mercy of the person who finds it (if they do), but you're also asking a complete stranger to do something for you.

If I have time I could drive across town to deliver something to you, if I don't I'll leave it there.

Outside of your job I would agree.

But if you find it during your hours then there is probably a procedure defined by your employer so it's not just up to you.

I think the problem is at different level: manufacturers do not actually care that items are retured because they profit from the replacement. This is much worse actually for well insured items like cars. Otherwise it would be easy to set up reward systems for returning lost items. If you like conspiracy theories: I would claim that airtags (e.g. installed on cars) have lead to more 'lost' value than recovered.

Not all tracking is bad, after all.

A while ago, my friend's bag got stolen at a coffee shop. The security camera showed an old woman who just picked up his bag and left. The shop owner and the police didn't cooperate. At this point you might be waiting for something about AirTags saving my friend's ass, but nope, he didn't have one in the bag and his stuff is forever gone.

Moral of the story: Beware of the seemingly harmless people in public.

A friend had his laptop and bag stolen from only a few feet behind him at a coffee shop. He had his back to the table he was using for only a minute or two as he placed an order from the counter. There were a few other people in the shop and no one remembers seeing anything.

> The shop owner and the police didn't cooperate.

It sounds like they did cooperate, given that you know what was on the security footage? What else could they have done?

Working with indifferent police is frustrating. If they really cared, they would interview other stores, pull footage, try to find her going to her car/home.

Sorry, to be clear, I meant the shop owner, not the police.

Do you honestly think police have the resources to track every stolen item like this?

Hence the utility of AirTags.

I would say it depends on the area. Small town? I'm sure they would if they're not lazy. Big city, yeah, they have better things to do.

I've been salty about police since my car was destroyed in a hit and run and I had to crawl out the window and wait for police to respond for an hour. They didn't even bother to talk to witnesses or attempt to find the guy. LAPD folks.

Why is a bug city any different than a small town? If there aren’t enough police then we should hire more. Let’s stop effectively legalizing entire classes of crime.

I'm in agreeance with you. Not sure how though. The LAPD spends billions of dollars and still can't have a presence like a small town.

I personally think a lot of these very democrat states have an issue with WAY over paying public employees. (Sorry, don’t have the time to get the data right now)

The average HNer in America probably makes $100K+ Or is bound for that. Yet your issue is with the pay of averagely paid people?

Yeah, I have an issue with state employees (bloated school administrations, police...) getting 300 to 600k in compensation. I bet most people in the US would also have an issue if the media gave fair coverage.

Yeah there are so many of those vs this being another moral panic about a small percentage of people. Meanwhile same right wing people upset at this let the wealthy off of everything. Much like the current corrupt powerful people who themselves had loans forgiven ripping student debt relief

There are two issues with this way of thinking.

First, if police don't try to track down all theft, then there is going to be favoritism. Hope you contributed to the ball!

Two, If there is no meaningful way to attain redress, you invite vigilantism.

Side note: My concern (that is hopefully untrue and insane) is that, with demonstrations of police impotence (ie: Uvalde) and politicians talking about the recent raid, there is going to be more people who will take the law into their own hands.

Regardless if it's the police brushing me off over a theft, or Uvalde... it all leads to one place: the public's eroding trust in the police.

They're really not there to protect and serve. That was a LAPD marketing motto that a ton of other police departments adopted over the years for optics. The police actually have no such legal duty, and this has been upheld in court multiple times.

I am 100% on your side, but in good faith we cannot expect the police to serve us. Your "first/two" analogy is moot I'm afraid.

I've pretty much never experienced police caring much about typical stolen items. The only thing that they tend to expend effort on is stolen cars IME (non-US experience, developed country). They might help with a stolen laptop if helping is utterly trivial for them.

Fwiw in Japan I lost my ID and reported it to the police, they found it within a day.

Ive seen them accompany people to retrieve stolen bicycles. In my experience, they're not interested in doing detective work to locate stolen items, but if you know where the stolen item is, they will accompany you to retrieve the item.

Ok, so what do you suggest the police do? There are literally only so many hours in a day and only so many police officers… if we appointed you police chief tomorrow, how are you going to solve this issue?

Triaging crime doesn’t necessarily mean favoritism. You can have set criteria you use to determine which crimes you investigate and how much time you spend on each.

That's definitely awful idea but... commercialize police services to some degree.

I.e. have "personal support" division where one can pay per hour to solve small (non violent) problems, such as small-items recovery, acts of vandalisms. Like private detective but with more rights and somewhat co-payed.

It probably wouldn't make any sense if the item in question would be of low value, but if payment for recovering airtagged belongings of 1000$ would be like 50$/h then probably it would be of value.

Yet, deep inside I feel it's a slippery scope into incorporating the police, and I'm not really fan of the idea.

Isn’t that just a private detective? That already exists

Private detective is not subsidized and also they limited with actions. Don't expect private detective to enter someone house to recover AirPods. If police declines further actions even if PI pinpoints their position you're still SOL.

Third, if police never bother with "trivial" thefts like bags, cellphones, laptops, and purses, it means that a single thief can steal hundreds of such items and never be caught. If the police make an occasional effort to solve trivial thefts they might prevent tens of thousands of dollars of recurring theft by the same person.

> If the police make an occasional effort to solve trivial thefts they might prevent tens of thousands of dollars of recurring theft by the same person.

Statistically speaking, would that make any difference though?

personally i think thats time better spent then a lot of what the police spend their time and effort on

Yes, he wouldn’t be touting about it and invite his friends to do the same. Or he’s get caught and all the friend would laugh at him and feel good about not stealing.

Sometimes pursuing crime does have an effect.

It could make a huge difference to the people who get their stuff back, and the ones who don't get it stolen because the thief was caught before they could target them.

I think we both agree on what ought to be; just now how it is.

Do the police honestly think I, as a taxpayer, have the resources to pay for ineffective police?

defund the police and let the market look after it

Sounds like a good way to have even more corrupt and worthless policing

> Sounds like a good way to have even more corrupt and worthless policing

leaving things to market means making "corruption" legal/explicit, pay for service (not judging it's bad or good, just saying). having more popularized, optional, "police to hire" may not be that bad idea after all. a bit like having public care system with optional private sector, or schooling.

We need "rent a batman to find your airtag" service startup.

What is the point of police if they're not gonna do anything when our rights are violated?

Wait, I thought police’s role was violating citizen’s rights to remind them of their position in society?

I mean, I'd still like for police to investigate/prevent violent crime even if they don't care about my laptop...

This is effectively legalizing theft.

They aren't indifferent - they are trying to service multiple calls per day so unless you have specific actionable intel on where the stolen item is, then it's a total waste of time for them to canvas the neighborhood looking for your sack.

While this anecdote portrays tracking in a positive light let’s not forget the abuses that can occur.

The real problem is that police have given up on fighting crime. The public outrage against the police hasn’t helped.

When it comes to collecting taxes, however, there seems to be no problem with enforcement.

What do you mean the outrage "hasn't helped"? The public outrage against the police is precisely because they've given up on fighting crime, especially crime in their own ranks. The answer isn't a simplistic "more police" or "less police", it's "better policing" where the police actually do the hard parts of their job instead of overzealously focusing on the easier bits.

No, the outrage was over a few events

> The real problem is that police have given up on fighting crime.

The real problem is that the police never were about fighting crime for the masses. The police were always about fighting crime for the rich.

This occasionally resulted in fighting crime for the masses but also occasionally resulted in oppressing the masses themselves.

> The police were always about fighting crime for the rich.

If you are inside a Starbucks, ordering latte’s and working on an expensive laptop, you are rich.

No you're not. A fairy high proportion of the poplulation can afford the small luxury of $10 to take a company laptop to a coffeeshop and buy an overpriced drink. When we're talking about who the police are fighting crime for, rich is the 1-2%.

The people the parent poster is talking about is more the "donates at least tens of thousands of dollars to local politicians' re-election funds every election" rich, not "can afford fancy coffee regularly" rich...

> The real problem is that the police never were about fighting crime for the masses. The police were always about fighting crime for the rich.

The police intervening in a domestic violence situation is not beneficial to the rich.

"This occasionally resulted in fighting crime for the masses"

Why does having an AirTag in the bag mean your friend gets his stuff back? This sounds incredibly optimistic.

They can track it to an address. Usually the police are "no help" because 6 seconds of 180p black and white security camera footage is very little to go on.

If you can tell them that your airtag is inside 45 Elm Rd., they can knock on the door.

Assuming the police are able/willing to follow this up what happens if there's no answer at 45 Elm Rd or they deny all knowledge?

There are some stories of this going wrong the other way. Police showing up and insisting that you stole a device because the not super accurate location was reported at their address.

We even had a similar incident reported today in our nextdoor neighborhood. Someone knocked on the door at 1 AM asking for airpods since they were showing up at that location. Wifi based locationing does not work well all the time.

However, airtags work better than that since if it is within a few feet, you can get a directional view on your phone and could easily confirm if they are nearby. Also they sound loud enough that if you can get close by (inside the house), you can not miss the sound.

Could they enter under some probable cause criteria given the location of the device is reasonably known to be inside the property?

Yes but they would need to have more than just the location of some air tags, which was the case in the linked article where they were already investigating another theft.

45 Elm road? Or, with thin walls, 46 Elm road? ...throw in multiple apartments....

> A while ago, my friend's bag got stolen at a coffee shop.

Traveller tip: loop the bag's shoulder strap around your leg when sitting down at a table in places like that. Extra credit: reinforce the strap with a steel cable so it's harder to cut. I do #1 but not #2. Definite benefit of #1 is that it's saved me from forgetting to take the bag with me.

Oh, and never ever do #2 if you're visiting a country where drive-by purse snatching is a thing.

When two dudes drive by you on a scooter and one grabs your purse, you kinda want the strap to snap or you'll have a bad time.

Replace the steel cable with one of those extendable pet leashes

I'd not recommend this in general, no matter where. A friend of mine got robbed in Zurich, Switzerland (with crime rate way below most US cities). Because she wore her bag diagonally across shoulder they beat her up till they could grab it and she ended up in the hospital :(.

Health > belongings, always.

Police in the UK recommend leaving your car keys somewhere obvious downstairs in your house for similar reasons.

I once met a fellow traveller with a huge scrape going down her shoulder and arm. What you describe had happened to her in Malaysia and she'd been dragged along the floor a way.

How strange that this comment is attracting downvotes.

Man so depressing wherever you are that you need to do this. Another reason why I love living in Japan; I just leave my laptop out unattended at cafes when I use the restroom and it’s never stolen. Just wish we weren’t so powerless to affect culture to change these things elsewhere.

I freaked out a bit the first time I went to a Starbucks in Tokyo. I was told by the staff to save a seat by leaving my bag where I wanted to sit and come back to order after, and much of seats were on another floor.

Pacsafe is a company who actually makes bags with the steel cables built in for this purpose

A friend of mine tagged the bag with an Airtag, knew where the bag was, and the Calgary police still didn't cooperate.

They didn't want to track down the bag and worse, told him they'd arrest him if he'd tried to steal / get the bag back.

Canadian police… Only there to arrest the productive citizens.

How does that not make the police actively complicit in the theft?

If private citizens can’t launch prosecutions it doesn’t matter what the law says.

I guarantee you though that if it was the cops property they would knock on someones door

Moral of the story: skip the police and do it yourself.

Make up some name. Call the police. Tell them someone stole your bag (give your self description), and that you are going to steal it back. When they ask who you are, use the made up name. When they ask where you are, give them the airtag location. Stand by and watch them get arrested.

The police are so incompetent it's not even funny. You can serve all the info they need on a silver platter and they won't move a muscle.

I once had a friend who was being harrassed (keyed car, 100's of calls and texts per day, guy would text info that could have only been known by stalking them) and the police refused to do anything at all. We knew who was behind it and the anonymous call/text apps the harasser was using had an abuse@servicename.com email for police to use. They flat out refused to do anything at all.

We were able to get my friend's number blacklisted from a number of these services on our own but the harasser would just find a new service and start over again.

In the end the harassment stopped only after another friend confronted the harasser, called the most recent number, had the guy's phone start ringing, and told them stop. First it was incredibly dangerous to confront someone like this and I guess we were lucky he backed off since even with that "proof" the cops wouldn't have raised a finger.

Do you think having an airtag would have convinced the police to cooperate? If not, what then?

-- Just wish apple would make an elongated airtag - I'd like to keep one in my wallet but it's bulgy - wonder if there is a reason it needs to be so thick or if they could spread the same components out across a wider surface instead --

Tile actually made a card sized one - about 3-4 cards thick. I hope apple does too!

-- was googling around - people apparently really like the Chipolo Card Spot - no precision finding because no U1 - but none of the 3rd party trackers support it anyways --

Tile has poor coverage.

I’ve got one of these [1] and it’s not bad. It doesn’t have the local find my functionality you get with AirPods and AirTags but works well with the rest of find my.

[1] https://chipolo.net/en/products/chipolo-card-spot

As someone who has been one bagging for four months now I can’t recommend having an air tag enough.

I have an air tag that stays locked in the same part of the bag that keeps my passport, alternative bank cards, laptop & kindle.

Definitely helps lower anxiety as I stay in hostels, hotels or travel in busses etc. Havent ever had to use it but have used it to see if the bag is still in the bus and moving with me or in the hostels locker while I’m having lunch.

I had a break in at my house a few months ago, and one of the items they took was my passport wallet with an airtag in it. So I could see where they were. However, the address located was a multi-unit building, and the find my device was unable to pinpoint it to a single unit, and police apparently aren't allowed to get a search warrant for multiple units (understandable), but I wasn't allowed to trigger the sound to narrow it down further...

The air tag moved one morning, and it was found thrown over the fence...

> I wasn't allowed to trigger the sound to narrow it down further

What does this mean? The police cannot force you to not trigger your own sound. They probably just didn't want to bother with the process you suggested of standing next to each door and listening. ...which means you should have just done it yourself before they arrived.

So the purported thief actually rummaged through the luggage and took the AirTag.

I assume he didn’t appreciate what the point of an AirTag is.

Quite a strange thought perhaps he was drawn to the Apple logo?

He confessed to stealing a $20 item, but not thousands in laptops and iPads. That’s his lawyer negotiating charges.

The article says he "removed" the AirTag from the luggage, i.e., that he knew what it was and hoped to prevent being tracked, but it was too late.

> If someone else’s AirTag finds its way into your stuff, your iPhone will notice it’s traveling with you and send you an alert.

So, if you want to avoid being tracked by a worldwide private corporate mesh network - you can just give $500+ to that corporation. Bonus points: you will become a part of said network!

Good job, Apple! Nicely planned and brilliantly executed.

There's AirGuard app on Android that will similarly check for AirTags.

Furthermore, there's also an app made by Apple (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac...)

Of course, Tracker Detect needs to be activated manually so you'll still be stalkable unless you constantly open the app.

After the UI update to AirGuard the app doesn't seem to detect any Apple devices anymore. Maybe nobody around me uses AirTags, but I'd still expect it to detect the occasional iPhone.

AirGuard is still detecting AirTags and iPhones for me, and it automatically scans in the background without needing manual activation.

A previous version of AirGuard had a bug that interfered with detection, but that issue was fixed in version 1.3.4 (released in May):

https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard/issues/63

Strange, the app is up to date. I've had more issues with MIUI because I disabled their shit customizations so I'm guessing this must be broken for me for a similar reason.

Did you implement all of these suggestions for Xiaomi devices? https://dontkillmyapp.com/xiaomi

I'm not using a stock OS, so keeping background processes active is not a problem on my device.

I don't think the Apple app is equivalent. It doesn't run in the background, you have to explicitly open it and initiate scans whenever you want to know if there's an air tag nearby

https://archive.ph/PkYaO

If I install something (tile?) on my android, will it help people find their airtags (and tiles)?

I'm happy to run it for fun but don't know what to run.

Tiles, yes. Airtags, no. Although Apple provides an Android app that will tell you if someone has placed an Airtag on you without your knowledge.

Do you have a link to that Android app? Can't find it and I suppose I ought to prevent the chance of my being tracked by someone for some reason.

That said, this abrogates most of the security functions of the tags, doesn't it?

"Tracker Detect": https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac...

As far as I can find, Track Detect still doesn't automatically scan in the background, though? You'll have to run the app every time you suspect you're being tracked (which would mean "any time you leave from or return to somewhere" without background scans).

Airguard is an open source app that can detect both Tiles and Airtags in the background: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.seemoo.at_t... Works quite well, has notified me of tags that are on a train with me quite a few times.

Tiles and now, AirTags are an exciting thing. They are tiny, light, cheap, and work almost all the time. The best part is that the battery footprint is small enough not to worry when dropping it anywhere. I had tiles before, but unfortunately, they do not work so well in India. AirTags works pretty well.

Like other comments, I bought a bunch when they were released and have them in all bags/suitcases, kids' school bags, and of course, keys. I've never lost a wallet or keys; heck, wake me up from a slumber, and I will tell you exactly where a particular key or an object in our home should be. But I love these things -- tiny trackers, phone calls on your Apple Watch -- growing up with Star Trek in the 80s/90s will do that.

Fun anecdote: right now, I have tagged my father-in-law with an AirTag while he is in town for his medical check-up. He is notorious for just taking off trying to find an audience to speak with, ever since the family barred him from accepting speaking invitations to conferences. Recently, we tracked him talking to a bunch of Bangladeshis at a hospital about why they should learn the basics of English.

I recently used one to figure out where a stray cat that was dumped in our neighborhood had kittens. She showed up on our porch multiples times per day to eat, and let us hold her - so I put a collar on her with an AirTag.

An hour later I walked around the neighborhood with my iPhone in my hand until her position updated. She was under a fallen pine tree and very well hidden.

So... does anyone want some kittens? :)

This is a pretty creative idea! My complex has had multiple small families of new kittens lately and I know at least one neighbor has had trouble finding the kittens since the other isn't always with them.

Regardless of the whether your father-in-law needs to be put on a leash as your family believes, this is unethical if not illegal (at least in liberal parts of the world).

Unless he is a danger to himself or others, as determined by an independent professional, what is your family's justification for unilaterally deciding he should be banned from talking to people?

Sorry guys for the lack of context. Doctor's advice to reduce excessive work, prepare for talks, and then fly around the country speaking at conferences.

> He is notorious for just taking off trying to find an audience to speak with, ever since the family barred him from accepting speaking invitations to conferences.

Why would you admit you did this on a public forum?

> Fun anecdote: right now, I have tagged my father-in-law with an AirTag while he is in town for his medical check-up. He is notorious for just taking off trying to find an audience to speak with, ever since the family barred him from accepting speaking invitations to conferences. Recently, we tracked him talking to a bunch of Bangladeshis at a hospital about why they should learn the basics of English.

That is a horrifying abuse of privacy and this technology.

It's entirely possible he knows he's being tracked and might be perfectly fine with it. I've heard of people using GPS tracking apps to track down grandparents with dementia or other health issues, as well as recovering addicts in case they don't come home when expected or answer the phone after some period and all of that was consentual because they agreed it would only be used in the case of an emergency. This might be something like that.

Yes I'm sure that all old-age people that can potentially become disoriented and can't find their way back home are worried about the privacy implications of that.

From context it sounds like his dad has dementia and that's just what you gotta do to keep them safe (invade their privacy).

>Fun anecdote: right now, I have tagged my father-in-law with an AirTag while he is in town for his medical check-up. He is notorious for just taking off trying to find an audience to speak with, ever since the family barred him from accepting speaking invitations to conferences. Recently, we tracked him talking to a bunch of Bangladeshis at a hospital about why they should learn the basics of English.

you say it's a fun anecdote, but it reads like horror.

First, I'm really sorry for the lack of the full context. Everyone worried about privacy and empathy for my father-in-laws; thanks a lot. He is 80+. Nonetheless, he insists we do some form of tracking (his phone or otherwise) so he does not get lost in a massively big community that we live in, in a big city (he comes from a tiny town). He himself makes sure that he carries the AirTag to make sure we can find him, just in case.

Thanks everyone for the concerns. I'm very aware of implications of privacy and what not. I usually try my best to go beyond my ways to make others happy, and be better.

For the anecdote part: he was at a hospital recently, and he ended up helping translate between the nurse and a few other patients. He then suggested them to learn some key English words that helps.

Having Find My enabled is halving my phones battery life.

Also despite having it disable, my phone keeps reminding that my AirPods max are travelling with me and someone may be using the to spy on me…?

I also stopped using my AirTag because of this. The battery drain is just to big. Even with the latest Firmware the problem is still there. The is a still ongoing discussion and no fix from Apple. Sadly the only real solution is disabling Bluetooth or removing the AirTag https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/unusual-find-my-backgro...

Would love to know more about your battery being halved with FindMy turned on. Have never experienced this nor has anyone I know with it turned on. Although to be fair I don't think I've ever disabled it, so hypothetically my normal battery could be half its potential if your claim is true.

I think it depends if you're in a big rich city with thousands of airtags within range all the time.

That drains the battery...

Hmm I'd imagine Sydney fits the bill for "big rich city"

The assumption from the forum discussions is that it has nothing to do with other AirTags as the battery goes back to normal when people remove their AirTag.

I had the tag on my bike which is the basement so 3 floors down. It just barely reached it from my bedroom, still very impressive. The assumption is that it has something to to with the tracking prevention where the iPhone is somehow telling the AirTag that it is still in the vicinity. If the AirTags is at the edge of the receiving/sending radius this might need a lot more power. Maybe due to retransmission, etc and therefor for causes my battery drain over night.

I urged my tech-unsavvy aunt to get AirTags for her suitcases because the lost/misplaced luggage situation at airports has gotten so dire due to the lack of qualified staff post-Covid. I never told her it could be used to find stolen bags because I assume the first thing thieves would do is search bags for AirTags or other trackers and ditch them.

Surprisingly thieves don't really care about trackers.

They'll get to sell the contents of the bag for cash whether or not there is a tracker in there, and they know the police will never come after them.

Apple's stance on air tags is ridiculous. For one thing, you will only know if someone is criminally tracking you if you are an apple user. Android users have no luck.

Secondly if this is true and you stole a bag, all you need to find the air tag would be to hold an iphone close to it for a few minutes. So what's the point of it then?

While it won't provide "at rest" detection, Apple has released an app for Android devices.

- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac...

Apple's Tracker Detect app for Android does not automatically scan for AirTags. Users must open the app and manually initiate each scan, then wait at least 10 minutes after detecting an AirTag before causing it to emit a noise.

A much better alternative is the free and open source AirGuard app developed by the Technical University of Darmstadt. It automatically scans for AirTags, Tiles, and other Bluetooth tracking devices in the background. When AirGuard detects an AirTag, the user can immediately force the AirTag to emit a sound without having to wait.

- AirGuard: https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard

> wait at least 10 minutes after detecting an AirTag before causing it to emit a noise

Wait, anyone in my building can make an AirTag go off? Can't wait to annoy a few people at 3am /s

Are you aware of any equivalent to AirGuard that can run on a linux host with a Bluetooth adapter rather than a phone?

The closest thing I can find is BlueHydra, which was last updated in August 2019:

- BlueHydra: https://github.com/pwnieexpress/blue_hydra

- Ars Technica article: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/hands...

But why do I have to install another application to defend myself against a foreign corporation's wrong doing?

Airtags should be illegal, at least in Europe.

Take a look at this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac...

Some comments suggest this application only works while it is open, and will not passively notify you of trackers in the background. I don't know if that's true, or if it's just due to some phone OS killing the background process to prop up battery metrics.

>to prop up battery metrics

The primary reason is to increase user privacy from apps constantly logging everything they see while in the background.

The airtag will start making noise if its away from its owner too long and moving around. When you find it you can bring it to a police station and they can use the serial number to get the owners details from Apple.

Sure its not bullet proof, but I really don't know they had any better options. Apple is currently by far the best at attempting to stop tracking of all the tracker tile products.

An end game solution would be all the OEMs working together one some anti tracking notification spec but that isn't easy to arrange.

> An end game solution would be all the OEMs working together one some anti tracking notification spec but that isn't easy to arrange

Apple could just publish their spec so that Android can also implement it.

they did - however, the only devices able to seamlessly detect airtags are ios devices.

What's unique about iOS device hardware that enables them to seamlessly detect AirTags? Pretty much all Android devices have Bluetooth.

There are android apps that can detect AirTags. It’s just iOS is the only OS that has this built in and enabled by default.

Android manufacturers (Google and Samsung mostly) don't want to support Apple gear by default.

There are no technical reasons why they couldn't add all their phones to the Find My network. Only political.

There are technical reasons... Uploading data to Find My requires a connection to apple.com which is authentic (ie. Uses crypto keys from the apple device, and apple won't give those keys to an android manufacturer).

You really think Apple would say "no" if Samsung or Google said they want to connect their devices to the Find My network? They'd give the keys in a heartbeat.

But neither G nor S is willing to provide extra coverage for Apple nor do they want their phones connecting to a system they can't datamine.

Apple would totally say no.

Currently it's a unique selling feature of the Apple ecosystem. If every phone could do it, then Apple would lose this benefit, and Apple would still be paying for all the servers.

I think the crux of the issue is that G & S won't work with A because A runs things like a dictatorship. Which is ironic considering how many international standards/specs A uses for their devices.

Pretty sure Apple would make a special "Apple-Fi" incompatible with standard Wifi if they could get away with it.

There are also third party AirTag compatible trackers like the Chipolo. They are just as expensive as the AirTag so I’ve never seen the point.

I've never used an airtag, but from what I've read, it is quite trivial to disable the speaker on a hardware level.

At this point people have worked out how to just reflash the firmware on the devices. It's just not really possible to make something impossible to abuse, its just up to the legal system now.

It's impossible to make a knife that isn't trivial to abuse but we accept that the utility makes it worth allowing them and use the legal system to go after the abusers.

The problem is that we probably do not agree on the usefulness of the device versus it's abuse potential.

It's not like someone gleefully commented that they are tracking their father with it without clarifiying if the father in question is aware ...

looks trivial on youtube, but has do be done very carefully, because you can easily damage it in the process

If your Android phone can read NFC tags, tapping the tag with your phone will tell you who owns it.

> Apple is currently by far the best at attempting to stop tracking of all the tracker tile products.

What about not designing or selling products that can be used to violate the privacy of others?

From my POV Apple has bent over backward to prevent the "stalker" use case, to such a degree that it degrades the "stolen item" use case.

I think while bad actors now have another thing for their mental checklist and could easily detect an airtag, there would still be a non-zero number of cases where the airtag helps.

For one, tracking devices aren’t new and none of the others alert you id they are following you.

I think there is a clear difference between traditional tracking devices and airtags, as the former has always been a lot more shady than the latter, which has more legitimate use-cases.

If I find an airtag among my things, I'm not going to believe there's a benign or legitimate use-case.

> So what's the point of it then?

I mostly use mine to find my keys or wallet, or be reassured that they're in my office and not lost when I've gone home without them.

Also: I put them all in my bag, also my kids when I travel… and on one occasion an elderly father in law.

Worked great.

> Secondly if this is true and you stole a bag, all you need to find the air tag would be to hold an iphone close to it for a few minutes.

It’s not that simple. I have some AirTags that I keep in my kids school backpacks and they don’t trigger other people’s phones at school.

Nobody at my office gets warned about mine…

I believe it takes much longer than a few minutes and other factors into consideration.

> Secondly if this is true and you stole a bag, all you need to find the air tag would be to hold an iphone close to it for a few minutes. So what's the point of it then?

The point appears to be that someone is going to trial for theft.

They should probably look at his Facebook Marketplace history, they might find the AirTag owner's stuff that way.

I doubt it. I've been trying to sell stuff on there for a while now... totally blows. Mostly spammers or people who don't show up.

Is this still available?

Only if the listing is still on there! =) I really do wonder how large of a problem it is that people leave listings up after selling something in order for them to default to needing that sort of a response.

Massive.

I was suggesting an activity subpoena from LE to Facebook.

In my city it’s very easy to sell stuff on marketplace

yea because minimum wage airline package handlers should take on an extra job on their own time 'giving a damn' about lost airpods.

Entitlement on this thread is off the charts. Its not some random person's fault that people are careless with their stuff.

Not sure at all what you are talking about, it certainly isn't the article where the airline package handler was stealing things from people's bags. This isn't a case of something lost, it's a case of something being stolen.

Is this a native Apple advertising?

It's crazy that a "privacy" company would make something like this... Apple is all speech... even Google didn't make something this evil.

Is anyone in the tech community still under the illusion that Apple is in any way a privacy company?

> in any way a privacy company

More than the alternatives.

Only Apple allows anyone to track anyone all over the world for $20.

Does the price matter?

Otherwise that’s not new / exclusive.

I should be able to track my things.

> I should be able to track my things.

not by using my device

You can opt out. You’re beclowining yourself ranting through this entire thread but not having researched any details

> xref - You can opt out.

track your ex girl friend easily... thanks apple ....

it should be opt-in at the very least

Not sure why HN is so anti-privacy lately

HN is a microcosm of the world. People support whatever is the norm, because they are social beings. Being privacy focused is "idealist" or "extremist" or "paranoid", and people don't want to be outcasts. And you are a conspiracy theorist for thinking that Apple and Google don't have your best interests at heart. And abuse of Hanlon's razor, etc, etc

Actually, it's more that many of us frequently risk the likely theft of our precious items, the permanent loss of which would be extremely damaging or upending. And the contrived examples of abuse cases are much less compelling, especially when the only alternative, cellular GPS trackers, are even more invasive. And I dare someone to formulate an ethically consistent argument for banning GPS tracking devices.

Reading the comments outside of the article I see no other example where it helped catch a thief but I find one case of possible abuse to track soomeone.

Annecdotic I know, but I guess some of us value the potential abuse of others higher than an hypothetic recovery in case of theft.

I’ll let you know the outcome when someone jacks my custom $7000 bike from its truck bed rack for the second time.

Did you forget about the article?

How about this story:

Apple initially launched AirTags with the “find your missing possessions” use case in mind, and didn’t fully anticipate the stalking use case.

When they realised there was a stalking problem, they put in some fairly robust defences against it (see https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/02/an-update-on-airtag-a...), robust enough that it makes the tags a lot less useful for tracking stolen items.

Do you agree that’s what happened? And if so, what parts of it make Apple anti-privacy? Should they have axed the entire product?

It's too naive to think that Apple, one of the biggest company, hadn't noticed that AirTag could be used for stalking. I suspect that they think it's still fine because competitors like Tile already exists

Maybe they even thought that it would be a good thing that people would stalk at first... then they could implement a semi-effective method to prevent it... and be looked at like heroes

I suggest Hanlon's Razor applies here: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

You can find a ton of tracking devices that work "all over the world", none of them tell the one being tracked that someone is tracking them.

usually you have to pay for a mobile internet connection and use GPS... not of them have access to all iphones

AirTags are literally the only Bluetooth tracker that have mitigations for this. iPhone users will be notified if someone else’s AirTag is following them, and so will android users if they download the Tracker Detect app.

No, not more than AOSP and self hosting. And the difference between Google and Apple is negligible compared to the difference between Apple and DIY.

Sucking slightly less data out of your customers doesn't make you a privacy company.

I feel like that not exactly the same as an alternative company.

Even if I ignore the company aspect the scale of heavy lifting there is pretty big.

I never said anything about alternative companies in my initial comment. I said Apple is not a privacy company, which is true.

What do you mean by "heavy lifting"?

I feel like I don’t understand what you mean by “a privacy company” now.

I’m guessing that is just some unreachable standard?

No, I mean a company that actually has privacy as a core goal, rather than bolted on as marketing term that doesn't actually match reality. Signal is a privacy company in my opinion. If Signal, a non-profit, can figure out how to utilize esoteric intel opcodes to avoid storing any personal information on their services, the multi-trillion dollar Apple, who designs their own CPUs no less, should be able to figure out how not to store identifying info on their servers.

If apple needs identifying info to make their services work, that's fine, but they don't have to falsely sell themselves as a privacy company.

It's not some unreachable standard. They haven't even taken basic steps, like offering crypto payments for certain services, or utilizing on-device storage and encrypted data in the cloud, or open sourcing components that transfer user info.

Source on the intel opcode thing?

https://medium.com/@maniacbolts/signal-increases-their-relia...

Signal is also a non-profit that requires you to give them your phone number.

They are a privacy focused company that made a small compromise for usability, rather than a giant company that collects massive amounts of data and pays lips service to privacy. Apple made 10 billion on ads in the last year, meaning that they have extensive chronological profiles on probably everyone. Are you really saying that the use of a phone number for verification is an equivalent privacy violation to building an ad network? Signal collects no identifiable data and associates nothing with your phone number, probable through cryptography using Intel SGX features. It's absurd to compare the two.

Why is everyone so interested in arbitrarily defending Apple here?

It's possible to serve ads without compromising privacy: https://searchads.apple.com/privacy/

Google is the one that has "extensive chronological profiles on probably everyone". Apple is the only major company that actively tries not to store anything about its customers. Even Apple Maps retrieves the route in multiple anonymised segments, so that Apple can't know where you went.

Google on the other hand will actively track where you are and ask you to review places you went to. And will "helpfully" send you an email of all the places you visited.

Ok, so how do you explain Apple's operation in China? If they cared about privacy they wouldn't offer their products in China due to the goverment's requirement that they have a spyware on every phone sold there. Even google refused to operate there under those conditions.

That's because Apple's concept of privacy is, unfortunately, just not letting third-parties touch your information.

They themselves are above all of this, and their users (for the most part) trust them with their info.

If Apple is not a privacy focused company for you, what is? Any examples?

Read the thread below, I gave an example and go into detail about Signal.

Apple is close to breaking $10B annual advertising revenue. No advertising company is privacy-friendly, period, they just hobble competitors’ tracking, not their own.

uh? Evil is the people stealing my stuff. Tracking it is good.

> acheron - Tracking it is good.

Yeah, just like the "PATRIOT" Act is good...

Tracking your personal belongings is fine.

I think that you don't understand what this allows you to do...

No, they just disagree that this makes the product evil. I think it makes the stalker evil.

I think that the stalker AND Apple is evil in this case because Apple is tracking ALL I-phones, so that you can find your keys...

Hammers allow me to hit people with a hammer. Computers/phones allow people to easily scam people outside of the reach of their legal system.

you can go on amazon and buy any one of a dozen trackers just like them. trackers that can't be detected like air-tags

I don't think that those have access to a large network of iphones...

No, they are cellular and work better and more reliably then AirTags..

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