Comment by andyjohnson0
13 hours ago
> Apple’s Unwanted Tracking (UT) alerts show a notification when a suspicious device is detected moving with the user for at least 840 meters and 10 mins. [...] This suspicious lost device must be an AirTag or AirPod that is separated from its owner and broadcasting rolling public keys.
So if I turn my phone off and get onto a bus or train with a tracking tag, other passengers will get an alert?
Also, the wording indicates that the tag needs to be marked as lost. But could that be used as plausible deniability -- that someone had stolen it -- by a person engaged in illicit tracking?
It probably wouldn't trigger, because of the 2nd criteria:
> The alert is not triggered immediately: it takes 8 hours during the day, 30 mins at night, and ...
But the warning system is by no means perfect. My family is split 50-50 between iOS and Androd ecosystems, and that's already enough to throw things off and get false positives semi-regularly.
Also, don't even ask the curriers how many alerts they get. Including airtags in valuable shipments is the de-facto standard nowdays.
If you get on the bus with it, wouldn’t it not count as “separated from its owner”? Your phone, after all, sends out these pings as well even when off. So, the tag may know it’s with the phone even then. Also I don’t think it has to be “marked as” lost. This stuff doesn’t depend on anything that the owner of the tag gets to configure, since the point is to make it harder to abuse this way. I do think it’s dumb though. A real GPS tracker is not expensive - this stuff is only deterring the least-dedicated stalkers.
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