Comment by apples_oranges
1 day ago
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.
1 day ago
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.
I put one in my car when I shipped it across the country - it was great to be able to check where it was and know when it was getting close!
Sounds like one of those "what if..." things someone made up.
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.
And simultaneously gimped the theft-alert use case. I embedded one into my labelmaker, which is a notoriously high-theft item on jobsites. I can still track it in case I leave it behind, which is great.
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.
I've only been notified about a device traveling with me one time, and it was when a relative was riding home with me in my car. When we got home, I received a notification that there were AirPods Pro traveling with me.
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.)
To all available information, your home has nothing to do with the alert. The alert occurs if one of the trackable items (airtag, airpods, etc) is moving with you, but the registered owner is not within bluetooth connectivity of the device. I've had it happen with my son's airpods a number of times because he let his phone battery die, triggering the alert for any other iPhone nearby if moving simultaneously with this tracker.
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?
3 replies →
Well, to be historically accurate: Apple has pretty much been forced by the backlash to notify people that they're being tracked and even then it only worked if you had an iPhone.
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.
> the stalking aspect helped their sales significantly
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
Sure, that's accurate. I actually never said otherwise, nor did I saint Apple. They were basically forced to do it.
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.