Apple is convinced my dog is stalking me
engadget.com
engadget.com
Annoyingly, every AirTag needs to be linked to a single iPhone. Even when everyone belongs to the same Family. AirTags also make annoying sounds every time I grab my keys to go out.
They’re still the best UX on the market, but I wish Apple would improve the UX just a bit more. Maybe their policy folks are worried about news stories about people using AirTags to stalk, which is unfortunately a reasonable fear.
Like the original article I use one in my dog. I know it’s not the purported use, but it has and does work for us.
I tried this but it’s annoying to have to keep feeding it to the dog every other day. We eventually just attached it to her collar.
I think it’s funny how people gripe about AirTags and how they have stalking notifications. This was never an issue with Tile because you couldn’t stalk someone with it if you wanted to. It is only an “issue” with AirTags because they actually work.
Tile is close to useless for tracking lost items [1] except when it's in you own home. Also, I am very annoyed they try to get you into a subscription model for sending you replacement batteries, but also for app features that have no business being locked behind a subscription. Juicero, anyone?
Maybe because they are in predictable contact with me / predictable routes.
Also the device ID's are already shared internally in some fashion across an iCloud family, as my key tracker doesn't make my wife's phone detect an unknown tag and vice versa.
Ideally you should be able to share beyond the family, IE I let my parents borrow the car, I should be able to "loan" the tag to their account (And I guess choose whether I can see tracking or not.) But if we don't have family plans we obviously won't get to this point any time soon.
Here's what likely happened -- they built the entire system from the ground-up based on a single-user because integrating with iCloud family wasn't part of the MVP.
By the time someone got around to asking about it, they realized that their data model was so thoroughly fucked it would take several weeks of risky migrations in order to add multi-user support.
So stakeholders are punting on it left and right. The things are selling, so is multi-user support really that important? It's an "edge case".
I expect Apple will eventually add “This AirTag has been traveling with you for a while, are you okay with that?” random pop-up notifications, the same way that it randomly confirms “Always Allow” location access and “Time-sensitive” notifications access.
I explain the little chirping sound the one in my glovebox sometimes makes when I start my car to anyone riding with me who doesn’t recognize it, so that they understand what that sound is and to pay attention and be conscious of what it means whenever they hear it.
If occasional chirps are the price I have to pay to inhibit abuse by a global tracking network, then that’s a small annoyance paid for a great good for others.
That being said, if you aren't comfortable with family members knowing your location, then why would you want to share AirTags or an iCloud with them in the first place?
I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that it’s a difficult and tricky use case.
My wife and I have shared an icloud account since before family sharing was an option but i was way too cheap to by multiple copies of a weather app etc.
It works fine short of having to make some new tweaks each time i update/restore/add a device (mostly around setting options in iMessage and Facetime to uncheck my numbers on her device and vice versa on mine.).
I have been increasingly mulling over setting up family sharing. But I am also planning a longer trip to another country and bought some airtags for luggage etc, but also to use for our keys/wallet etc.
These comments have me saying sticking with the current setup would be preferred. Specifically for the airtags.
I don't really get why Apple doesn't have an option to do that already. It seems much better for shared objects and people like the Author and it doesn't seem like there are any technical hurdles to providing that.
I would gladly agree to a waver so that I stopped getting those stupid notifications. I have no stalking concerns for myself. I'm at home almost all day and that is a secret to no one.
These things are probably going in the trash soon.
Which seems weird because you'd think it would definitely trigger the stalker warning.
There's another anti-stalking feature that notifies other people if an airtag not paired with their phone is not with the phone it belongs to.
But I'm encountering a bug where I get notified all the time, not just when the paired phone is not present. I know it's a bug because it only happens with one airtag, not the other.
There’s tons of tracking devices on the market and Apple made choices to make the use of AirTags private and with a certain level of protection against stalker use. It’s known before you purchase them, if you don’t like it, don’t purchase them.
When I take a flight, I'll put my backpack with my M1 MBP into the overhead. Like clockwork, when I land, I get a notification that I left the laptop behind at the origin airport. This happens when I don't even touch the laptop inflight, so I could not have disabled BT or wifi. What metric is making Apple think the laptop was left behind?
Yet... the one time I actually forgot the case in my gym locker, and got to the car... nothing.
Happens sometimes when I leave the office too; half a mile from the office I get an alert that I've left my AirPods at the office even though - again - I'm wearing them, they're connected to the phone I'm holding which is also with me (and moving) and the case is with me too.
This will become a 'boy who cried wolf' situation soon, if it's not already there.
People like you make me nervous when I drive.
Does that make you feel safer?
Guess what? It also exhibits the exact same behavior even when I'm a passenger (not driving) in the exact same circumstances.
So they have a dog, they have an AirTag on the dog, they'd both like to know about the tag, but they can't connect the tag to both accounts without making the accounts too intertwined.
Like how I can't realistically share my Amazon Prime Video account with my wife because it is also my Amazon everything else account. Which is also an issue with Alexa/Echo.
Which is kind of weird. Because this seems like a fairly simple graph. Users and service accounts are nodes and the edges describe which users have access to which service accounts.
So Apple needs a user account for her, a user account for her husband, and then an AirTag service account they can both connect to. But instead, AirTags are a part of her husband's user account.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html%3FnodeI...
Aside from my partners' AirPods which are bugged up (unique to them specifically, not sure...) I've ignored alerts on all her other tags.
When you receive the tracking alert, tap it and you will have a few options. One of those options is to ignore alerts. When you tap it, it will ask you whether you want to Pause Tracking Alerts for the day or indefinitely. If you tap indefinitely, you'll stop getting alerts for that item.
You can see this referenced on Apple Support [1], but I've done this personally with success. The only devices it doesn't work on are AirPods but it works on my Chipolo wallet card and all my/their AirTags.
edit: apparently Apple just disables the airtag in these situations so even the owner can't find it
Maybe a longer dismissal though?
> The notification provides an option to disable the AirTag, which would be helpful to stop an unwanted third-party from knowing your location. That feature renders the AirTag useless, though, so it would no longer be able to track my dog if she did get out.
I'm confused. That doesn't make it useless? If you disable the notification on HIS phone, his partner would still get notifications on HER phone as it's link to her account? I'm confused what he means. And if it's not even linked to his account to begin with, how is he even able to track it besides the stalking notification? Something doesn't add up to me.
OHHHH okay, that makes more sense. That was the part of the puzzle that was confusing me. Thanks!
That's why the dog airtag in the article continues to go off, when they take the dog on a walk, it follows the same path, then ends up back at the shared house. Their case would be solved by using an iCloud family plan, but they don't want to.
What's the distance and time required to get a stalking notification? I presume close enough that it would be hard to do on the street, but potentially of use in a place like a cafe or an airport screening line?
If you've stolen the macbook, you can just... check the bag for airtags and throw them away?
I suppose disabling it first prevents them from potentially tracking the thief for those first 100m to the nearest trash box, but it also has a good chance to alert them.
The person is me. I wrote the script. I granted my own account access to my own account. The account owning the script, and the account it has access to, are one and the same Google account. Yet still, constant alerts.
Did you forgot how everyone claimed what everyone would stalk everyone and hence this shit should be banned? Did you forgot that there were (and probably still are) people who tried to use AirTags to stalk?
Now everyone loves AirTags and A. can add more functionality which were deemed too controversial to include at the start.
And this way they annoy a huge number of people.
It doesn't matter what to do this you need physical access to and the way to unlock the phone, it is still a valid way[0] and adding that at the start would clash with "you would know when [a predator's] an unknown AirTag would follow you".
[0] if you can't imagine this happening to you then it doesn't means it couldn't happen.
They probably did, but decided they don't want to be part of divorces :)
The last few months when I go out I get notifications that some airpods are following me. As if someone dropped one in my jacket pocket specifically to follow me around popular bars, as opposed to someone else just going to the same popular local bars.
The first time it was screenshot worthy at best. I'm not the demographic to have predatory tactics done towards me, the likelihood was too small.
The following times its just a nuisance, a conversation starter for a pickup improv skit.
I bought a bunch of these for aging parents. Set them up on their phones, not my own phone, and put them on everything for my folks.
Dad lent me a suitcase, with one of his air tags in the pocket, and a week in I still had not received any warnings.
I thought it was troubling, and I wanted to see how long it would take. So I left it in my back seat for two months… at some point I just forgot it was there.
It provided Dad with my car’s location until the battery died. At no point did I get any warning it was there. I don’t have any sort of joint account or family plan for iPhones.
This made me really nervous about how these worked. I don’t think they do enough to tell people when they are being stalked.
This all happened a year or two ago when the tags first came out. I got rid of all my AirTags after. I don’t think they respect privacy and that makes them unsafe. It makes me happy to hear people saying they got notifications. But I didn’t.
Oh one more thing… I thought I turned off location tracking on my phone and it still knew where the tags that connected to my phone were. Just shows you can’t really ever turn location tracking off.
It's not merging accounts as they seem to think it is. I don't gain access to my partners data just because we are on a family plan. Really the only "issue" we have is the credit card has to be the same but that's such a small issue to resolve since we have a shared credit card for shared expenses.
I don't really see the issue with going the route of just setting up a family link between your separate accounts if you have a dog together. Honestly that feels like more of a commitment...
Regardless of that for a moment. I think its better that the only way you can "share" a AirTag is through family. I can't really think of a reason that this would be an issue with friends that can't be easily solved by the 24 hour notice (or worst case needing to do that for a few days if you are doing a trip together or something).
Adding the ability to permanently do this otherwise I would worry could either be accidentally enabled or have a strong risk for abuse.
> We currently have separate accounts, though, and aren’t interested in fully merging our clouds.
It seems like they are making out a Family iCloud to be a much bigger thing than it actually is.
that is a valid use case that you would not setup a family account.
The inability to pair to a family plan (or even just multiple individual accounts) makes it useless for anything we share, like the aforementioned car. Ditto for our pets, which would be at least somewhat appealing if that weren’t an issue.
I’ve put them on the vehicles we don’t share, and have been mostly amused when I ride somewhere and walk away from the bike. I suppose it’s good I haven’t really tested it any more than that.
I’d order quite a few more if we could share them, but as it is I’ll even replace the ones we have in use if I happen across an alternative that fits the bill.
I also removed the speakers[0] to make them slightly harder to pinpoint in case of actual theft.
After the 2nd or 3rd time this happened to me, the notification had an option to turn on like a "okay location" or however they phrased it. This stops that from happening when you lave it at a known/home address. That worked for me. You may have missed it?
It looks like it should be a relatively simple software fix but somebody made a dumb call early on in design.
The underlying issue with airtags is supposed to be that people can use them to track other people. Well, rather than try to take a step back and understand what the problem is, Apple decided to just jump in and start figuring out some heuristics that will prevent most of the tracking by sacrificing the least usability.
The result is the product becomes unusable while tracking issue isn't solved either.
IMO tracking issue isn't really Apple's problem. A person that wants to track another person has a huge number of tools at their disposal. Go to any large online shopping platform like amazon or aliexpress and you can find hundreds if not thousands tracking tools. Some much better than airtags (cheaper and not retroactively traceable by Apple). Tracking should be solved legally and by educating people that tracking people without their permission is illegal and they potentially can face criminal charges, regardless of the method they use to track another person.
Imagine car makers reacted to first car accidents by putting pillows around the cars rather than figuring out we need legal moves (road rules, drivers licenses, car safety standards, infrastructure to separate flows of traffic, etc.)
There is a class of items that need to be restricted or nerfed because they are either inherently dangerous or they are of not much use except for committing crime or similar.
But there are also things that are very useful AND at the same time can be used to commit crimes.
I am not even talking about guns. Think kitchen knives. Knives are useful. Yes, we can live without them but having good sharp knives at home enhances our lives and makes it much easier to make good food.
Notice, knife makers do not make kitchen knives so that they are dull. They do not make them so short that you can't reach another persons heart. Instead, we know what the knives are for and we know that what you can't do is murder another person with it. Or murder them in any other way, regardless of the tool used.
I think this analogy may work but not in the way you are saying.
"Pillows" here would be seatbelts, and other actual car safety features. Those have been massively successful in reducing traffic deaths. As bad as it is today, take a look at what car crash fatalities were like in the 60s.
The car companies fought tooth and nail against safety features back in the day, and they didn't become ubiquitous until the government stepped in and required them. Which I'd image is exactly what Apple is trying to get ahead of here.
The beauty of AirTags is that it banks on the vast network of apple devices to localize and share the location. For 20$ one time payment to buy AirTag you have permanently free tracking capability and that is definitely Apples headache.
People tracking is a sensitive topic but it is also useful and legitimate in some cases.
My kids school backpacks all have tags in them because they lose them from time to time.
I don't have a comparison for you, sorry.
I'd frame it more like Apple doesn't support the idea of shared resources except in a family account setting. A good example could be roommates living in a house and sharing a dog. A family account makes no sense here and the systems in place don't support sharing an AirTag for them.
If I were building a system with such self-defeating requirements, I would take a step back and either roll it out very slowly, or conclude that this is a bad idea completely.