I read they are popular with drug distributors. They ship their merch world wide using various hidden channels and couriers and this helps keep track of the merch.
AirTags are terrible for surreptitious tracking, alerting every iOS user nearby of a tracked product following them around.
I mean, years ago people, such as stalkers, would use it for this purpose, but Apple rightly gimped that. There are a lot of specialized, self-connected trackers that creeps and criminals use.
But if someone steals it, they get an alert that there's an airtag traveling with them, and they can go through their loot to figure out which item it is, and ditch it, or destroy it. In the first case I get my labelmaker back, but I never bust the thief.
This is consistent with my understanding that it only goes off if it travels with you for a very long time, or to your house. (Of course, at that point it's too late because they know where you live already.)
I'm not sure what I'm to make of your absence of your alerts. Perhaps that happens because you have no such trackers moving with you? Like, are you saying you do and there are false negatives?
They knew what they were doing and I'm sure the stalking aspect helped their sales significantly as it seems to be a very popular behaviour in the US.
while not denying people have done this, I do have problems thinking that it was a significant portion of the sales numbers. exaggerating problems is not necessary and actually reduces the credibility of the people doing the exaggerating
Virtually any tracking or surveillance has a knock-on effect that we often overlook in our enthusiasm, but Apple absolutely should have foreseen the abuse that would happen, and certainly profited off of it.