Woman tired of her mail getting stolen used an Apple AirTag to catch the thieves | Hacker News Reader

Woman tired of her mail getting stolen used an Apple AirTag to catch the thieves

cnn.com

22 pointspeutetre11 comments

I think my only problem with this article is how seemingly easy it is for people to do this. I wish our cops could do proactive things like this on their own more often. This viewpoint brought to you by how many videos I've seen of anti phone scanners, Mark Rober anti package theft, etc. An airtag is $20. So with shipping it around call it $30 to do this "sting". Seems like a low bar.

> Deputies responded that morning to a report of a mail theft that had just happened

The fact that they showed up and followed through, is the most surprising part of the story. That why it made the CNN news probably; “Look, police did their job after someone did most of the work”.

Doesn’t iOS or android tell you when an AirTag is in the vicinity and following you?

I don't own an Airtag or iPhone for that matter. I wonder how is it supposed to not raise a false alarm if you are travelling with someone who has an Airtag - e.g. by car or by train. Now imagine changing trains at the same stop with someone who has an Airtag with them (this is s typical situation in commute with public transit).

So I figure it takes a longer time for the devices to be close to each other to raise an alarm.

Now back to the mail thief, I suppose an hour or two is enough to catch them.

My partner had a scare when she got a false alarm that an AirTag was on her after going out with friends. Turns out it was due to driving with a friend that had one.

If I recall on when this happens with my Wife’s or Daughter’s Air Tag, it only happens when the Air Tag is away from the “parent” Air Tag. Since theirs is not linked to mine, it won’t trigger when they are around.

No one noticed that their phones were reporting an unknown Air Tag nearby? I suppose they aren’t that prevalent for people to pick up on what’s going on

Seems to be happening more and more, here is a huge bust from may: https://www.tomshardware.com/phones/iphone/dollar5-million-w...

A better solution would be a secure mailbox for parcels.

dupe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41329713

The interesting thing is that the story seems to be saying that he theft victim called the police to the post office. That suggests that the thieves worked there?

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