I have a friend who’s ex a couple of years ago was teasing/harassing her with obvious knowledge of where she had been. The friend had a mechanic check every inch of the car for a gps tracking device. The mechanic didn’t find anything, but she eventually discovered that her car’s app had a “where did you park” function that the ex still had access to on her cell phone. My friend deleted the account and that ended that.
This sort of activity has been happening for longer than AirTag and Tile has been around, and at least with AirTag there is a way to find out that a foreign one is following you around. My friend ultimately wasn’t being tracked by a gps tracker, but if she had been, there would have been nothing to warn her that such a device was following her around.
I put Tile devices on my luggage during a long trip, which included overseas travel. (This was in the Before Time.) I ended up concluding that they were a waste of money as they were rarely able to be located, and when they were found, the information was sometimes days behind reality. AirTags have a great advantage in this regard, in that they actually work, but they’re not exactly real-time either. (That’s why Apple doesn’t recommend them for putting on your pet’s collar.)
Seems not very useful. The transmission range isn’t very high and it re-generates its encrypted network broadcast ID on a regular basis—several times a day if not more often.
You can just remove the battery on any unknown AirTag you find. It’s really easy to twist the back off and drop it out.
The privacy issues are real, and Apple obviously thought of them and has made good efforts to mitigate them. It does, of course, make it less useful than it could be as a theft-tracking device that could lead you (or law enforcement) to the thief’s location.
I had a problem trying to re-pair a Siri Remote 2 from an TV HD to a 4K. Only when I put the HD, and Siri Remote 1 inside a metal tin (it came filled with lebkuchen) was I successful. This with the HD & Siri 1 at the other end of the house from where the 4K & Siri 2 are located. When I go to set up the HD in the bedroom, I’m going to put the 4K & Siri 2 in the tin box first!
For some reason this security issue confuses me … somethings are more intuitive, to me, than others: Does this imply a bad-actor activated their Apple tag to your phone? (and can reverse “Find” your phone?)
I am basing my question on my recollection of how I set up my air tags, and my understanding on how the interface works: that an air tag is paired to a specific phone. The original post suggests, I think, that any phone will read any air tag in the vicinity
Still not sure what you’re referring to—the first comment in this thread?
AirTags are paired with a single iPhone or iPad. That also engages Pairing Lock, which has to be disabled from the paired device. Without disabling Pairing Lock directly from the paired device, an AirTag cannot be used again, even when it’s physically reset. (Activation Lock can be disabled remotely for an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Watch, making it substantially different.)
The Android app Apple has released can reveal if an AirTag or other Find My item is in the vicinity—that is, within Bluetooth range. As of iOS 15.2/iPadOS 15.2, Find My will only show the whereabouts of Find My items paired with your device, and those aren’t shared with other people in a Family Sharing group.
Apple previewed a Find My featured in the 15.2 beta that didn’t ship that would let you scan for nearby AirTags just like the Android app. I assume that is coming, but it’s not in the iOS 15.3 beta, so perhaps later.
With the Android tracking app or a future iOS/iPadOS Find My feature, you’d be able to determine if an AirTag or other Find My item is nearby and then use whatever method is available with a found item to get its serial number, contact information, or other data. However, you can’t trigger a sound on it, as you can if an AirTag or other item is determined to be moving with you.
sorry, 2nd post in this thread indicated
“getting the warnings that an AirTag that doesn’t belong to me is moving with me”
So to clarify my question:
How does, an unfamiliar Air Tag i.e. an unpaired device appear in a users phone … unless, of course, it was surreptitiously paired to the phone.
Like I said, a little non-intuitive to me, sort of like 8-Track recording hardware, but I digress
The tag is paired to your phone in the sense that only your phone can request information about its location.
Any Apple device within range may pick up its signal and relay that signal to an Apple server, but that data will remain on the Apple server until its paired phone requests that data.
If someone else plants an AirTag on your person, it does not appear in your phone. You can’t track it, because it is already paired with someone else’s phone.
But your phone will be periodically reporting its location to Apple. The Apple server will figure out that that tag’s location is moving in sync with your phone and will send you an alert. But (as far as I know), you can’t tell your phone to show you its location. You will need to be alert to listen for its periodic audio alerts (which is generates at random times after it has been separated from its owner for more than 8 hours) in order to find it.
Needless to say, this is far from a perfect solution.
Exactly. Just has to be around you. The iOS/iPadOS system software recognizes that it has been relaying the same Bluetooth ID as you have moved from place to place. Apple particularly notes that you have to arrive at certain location you commonly go to, like your home or work, for the alert to appear on your device.
Because AirTag and all Find My items and Apple devices that use the Find My network change their Bluetooth identifier at intervals, this only works over relatively short periods of time where the same ID is recognized.
So it combines:
Proximity: within Bluetooth range
Persistence: traveling with you over time
Important location: not just traveling on a bus or train or among classes at a school, but at your home (as set in your contacts) or other significant location. You can see which locations your iPhone or iPad thinks are significant at Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations. It also gets triggered at the end of the day.
David, that’s correct in part: a Find My network device separated from its owner from between 8 and 24 hours (a randomly period, not just 8 or more hours) will make a sound.
However, if you get a “traveling with you” notice on an iPhone or iPad, you can trigger a sound on the Find My device by tapping a button on your iPhone or iPad. This is sent via Bluetooth. This allows you to pinpoint it aurally. (Though doesn’t help people who have hearing impairment.)
As noted in the article:
People with an Android phone can track Find My items near them.
People with an iPhone or iPad will receive a notification for items traveling with them (based on the above location or end of day) and can play a sound (or tap to ignore).
People without any device can hear a separated Find My item go off between 8 and 24 hours after it is separated from its paired device.
Not all products are for all people. :-) Personally, I’m not the sort of person who loses things. I have an AirTag that I got for testing, but it just sits on my desk, since I can’t think of anything that I want to track with it at the moment. If I was going to track meets and races, I’d put one in my duffle bag since it’s commonplace to leave bags around where anyone could steal them. It basically never happens, but it would be annoying if it did.
But my grandmother, if something like the AirTag had been available when she was alive and driving, would have adored it. She was constantly forgetting or losing her keys, her pocketbook, and more. I remember having to walk home with her from shopping trips because she’d lost her keys in a store and we had to go get the backup set.
I have to admit, like @mHm, I too got the impression that now that Apple has a tracker out, and years after there have been similar solutions from smaller companies, all of a sudden everybody seems to urgently need to track all kinds of super valuable stuff, all their movable belongings, their dog, and perhaps even their kid. It all seemed a bit ridiculous to me. I rarely lose stuff. Stuff that’s important to me I guard closely. Stuff I’d lose is obviously not really that important. So in short, I was quite skeptical.
But since I’m also curious I decided to get one and play around with it a bit. Turns out it was actually good at doing two things where I had little faith in the “conventional method”: shipping and traveling.
Because I have family on three continents and because I also collaborate quite closely with several colleagues abroad, I often find myself shipping something internationally. Now in general tracking these days is not bad. Often reasonably up to date, rarely flat out wrong. But still, every once in a while I’d find myself wondering if my parcel was really stuck in Paris Orly for five days or if perhaps it had just been shipped off with another carrier that doesn’t tie in to the USPS tracking system. So these days I sometimes just drop an AirTrag in with my package. It’s surprising how well it works even where there is no conventional tracking available or when it lags or fails to update. Next time my folks send something back, they’ll send me back my AirTag or I just pick it up when I next meet them.
The other thing is travel. Now in Asia and Europe I rarely lose my bags, but in the US I’d say on average every third flight one of my checked bags won’t end up on my flight. Part of it is much more frequent and shorter layovers, the other is the silly system we still employ where inbound travelers have to pick up their bags, drag them through customs, and then recheck them. Usually in some dingy corner of a run down airport with a bunch of seriously under-motivated (and probably even worse compensated) employees standing around making you wonder already then and there if your bag will be sent off three days late and to Honolulu instead of DFW. So I’ve now started dropping an AirTag into my checked luggage. Just the other week I was seriously impressed with how I could follow it around the tarmac while waiting at the carousel in Miami. Obviously there are just that many people with iDevices working at airports. It updated frequently and the accuracy was surprisingly good. And for anybody who’s ever dealt with the lost luggage people, you’ll recognize this situation where they don’t know where your stuff is, when it might be found, when it might even find its way back to the hemisphere you’re currently on, etc. Well, when United managed to ship one of my bags from EWR to Denver instead of Zurich, my AirTag let me know that my bag was departing Denver towards the East Coast before the UA rep at Zurich was even able to locate the bag.
Long story short, for me nothing super urgent or important. But considering the low cost, it’s a fun and at times indeed reassuring little tool. So I’d say I’m perhaps still a bit skeptical as to all the hoopla over it, but I’m no longer a skeptic.
Remembering where things is something that only some people do. My wife is an ADHD coach and, as a result, I’ve been immersed in ADHD stuff she’s swimming in. A lot of people who have ADHD don’t remember where things are.
There’s also a neurological division between low registration and high registration: folks with low registration have low spatial awareness, often bumping into things and not remembering where things are and where they put them. This is an inherent thing, not something you can just decide not to do. (I am very high registration, which makes it nearly impossible for me to discard information, and I can remember, say, the layout and objects in a room I was in once 20 years ago.)
Related, some people live in areas with enough crime to worry about theft. And, contrariwise, cars are stolen all the time in my low-crime part of Seattle (which is generally low on violent crime, high on property theft).
I have seven AirTags and Chipolo ONE tags…sitting in a drawer. Because right now, I barely leave the house with any stuff! Only with myself for walks or shopping. I have only be out of Seattle with my family and then twice (by car) in the last two years. Bad time for tracker sales!
Meanwhile, my 14 y.o. has some very nice noise-cancelling headphones they use to offset noise sensitivity. We agreed when they returned to school last fall that they needed to track them. So using some very nice acrylic adhesive, I attached a Chipolo to one side of the headphones! Matte black, the Chipolo was nearly invisible.
