It's interesting to see that Google takes this so seriously they're backporting it to Android 6. I guess they probably have metrics on what Android versions are still in active use, but I'm a little surprised that Android 6.0 would still be used heavily enough to warrant the backport. Regardless, it's good to see this sort of industry cooperation from companies who would normally be at each other's throats.
> It’s possible the tracker is attached to an item the user is borrowing, but if not, iPhone can view the tracker’s identifier, have the tracker play a sound to help locate it, and access instructions to disable it.<p>That means someone can steal your stuff, and then disable the tracker so you can't find it. Most people and myself included were sticking these cheap tags on everything we own, and it was genuinely useful during travel or in scenarios where theft was a consideration.
Annoyingly, though, you can't get a device that is trackable on both iPhone and Android networks.<p>Which is annoying, because I have an Android and my wife has an iPhone, and it would be nice to be able to both track the same objects.
This is great and it came up at dinner last night which is kind of weird.<p>Had the odd experience of going to a retreat where everyone sat listening to speakers, and then all went to lunch, and then back to the speakers, then all to dinner, then back to the speakers. And my iPhone popped up an alert that there was an airtag following me. (It wasn't of course it was an airtag in another attendee's bag to track their bag which they had with them, near me kind of randomly, but being driven by the same forces of movement :-)).
You know what would be even better? That they agree on a common standard for interoperability between both systems. They both work in the similar way and do the same thing, this would be great to have a standard.
This is such a charade. Making "invisible" airtags is trivial [1], and I wouldn't be surprised if such airtags are being manufactured en-masse.<p>We allowed the creation of a global tracking network under the false pretense of privacy. The entire Find My security model falls apart when considering "malicious" tags, and Apple knew about this from the start.<p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/Guinn-Partners/esp32-airtag">https://github.com/Guinn-Partners/esp32-airtag</a>
Will this work with malicious tags as well? I.e. tags that are designed to not communicate with a given phone but with other devices nearby? Can that be detected? My understanding is that regular tags will communicate with all phones, but maybe there’s a way to differentiate who to respond to or change identity for every ping? Not familiar with the exact protocol but basically many different tags near a phone wouldn’t trigger the warning, so if a tag can produce multiple identifiers that the adversary controls it could still evade detection?
So if people are sticking these on valuable items, is the use case now for thieves to break into a house, wander around and be alerted when said valuable items (which are hidden or otherwise not obviously evident) are close by?
As someone that duct-tapes hidden AirTags in my luggage (replacing former use of Tile, but AirTags have a bigger network and I use an iPhone) this is not good news for me. I have close to a 0% concern about stalkers, and I have a significant concern about thievery while traveling. I have an AirTag in my luggage, on my keychain, in my wallet, and in various other places /specifically/ to ensure that while traveling I can recover my belongings and deter thievery. This just ruined all of that.
I'm pretty sure my neighbors are getting tracking alerts for my airtag in my house. The speaker keeps going off.<p>They're 70 years old. I'm sure seeing "AirTag found moving with you" is confusing them and possibly freaking them out.<p>I bought the airtag for my dog, but now am having second thoughts, I'm just imagining all the freakouts I'll cause when walking on trails.
I have two airtags on me at all time. So my wife can find my wallet or my keys. I have an android. The iPhone network is larger so Apple seems more useful. And I can do nothing about these alerts.
I'd like to repost this as a top-level comment because a lot of people are complaining about the same thing:<p>It's a common misconception that Airtags and similar products are designed to help you locate stolen items.<p>They not. "Tracker on stolen device" and "Tracker planted for the purposes of stalking" are indistinguishable situations.<p>They're to help you find things that you lost. They're amazing for that. They're <i>sometimes</i> helpful for finding stolen things too, but that is a side-effect.
I first read this as unwanted alert tracking. Like, I’d love to have my phone intelligently track and block unwanted alerts, from the apps and OS makers that spam me.
Apple/Google will alert a computer if a potential Apple/Google competitor is tracking them. Makes one wonder who this is meant to benefit. The computer user or the company.<p>Hence the term "unwanted" location tracking.<p>The assumption made by Apple is that the computer user _wants_ Apple to track their locaton; the assumption by Google is that the computer user _wants_ Google to track their location.<p>There will be no alert that Apple or Google are receiving location data. Why alert the computer user about something that they "want".<p>It's the same ruse with Google or Apple providing ad blocking. The ad blocking feature will only interfere with ads that are not serviced through Apple or Google. Ads provided by Apple or Google shall remain unaffected.<p>These companies are engaged in online ad services. Why would they protect the computer user from online ads and data collection that makes online ads more targeted. There will be tracking and there will be ads, along with an ongoing assumption that the computer _wants_ tracking and ads but only if provided by Apple or Google.
Based on the forums comments there is so much stalking, that everyone is stalking someone. Or, is this just a Cali thing?<p>At least it explains why the roads are so busy. Though, I thought everyone was working from home... which would make stalking yourself much easier.
This is only possible because the unique identifier that an AirTag transmits only rolls over once per day.<p>This means with a network of trackers, it is possible to track the location of a single airtag over the course of a 24 hour period even if you aren’t the owner.
"Specification-compatible" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting here. Sure, there are plenty of well-behaved companies making standards-compliant beacons, but there's nothing preventing proprietary approaches. Even with RPA it should be possible to implement "unwanted tracking" alerts for BT devices showing any given profile in their advertising data.
What truly bothers me as a user of both an iPhone, an airtag, and a Samsung, is the seemingly nonexistent option to "ignore this AirTag forever". I usually leave my iPhone at home, carrying my AirTag in my wallet. Yet, every day, I receive a notification about an AirTag tracking me. I wish there was a way to permanently disable this alert.
Will this affect battery life? I can see how Apple's proprietary AirTags don't affect battery (of smartphones around them) much, but if they're trying to detect other companies' trackers it seems less likely that the battery impact is quite so minimal.
A German Uni's (Darmstadt) IT mob developed an app called AirGuard that has been doing tracking device monitoring for some years now. I have it running right now.<p>Why on earth re-invent the wheel? A bunch of clever folk have been doing this for years.
Wait... are they alerting you about tracking that you don't want? Or are they tracking you even though you don't want it?<p>And to nitpick, what kind of tracking do you actually want?
Going to be pretty funny when pranksters start putting airtags into places where they can't be found just to annoy people with unknown tracker alerts.
I want a feature to save a tracker as unharmful. Friends of mine carry AirTags on their keys, and if I go for a walk with them, I get the tracker alert every time.
Two points here:
AirGuard provides tracker alerts without opting into any of the tracking networks.<p>With Find My disabled, these Tracking alerts do not work.
> AirTag, Find My accessory, or other industry specification-compatible Bluetooth tracker<p>What is this other industry spec?<p>> Chipolo, eufy, Jio, Motorola, and Pebblebee<p>What about Tile?
I wish I could figure out how to configure my own trackers to stop beeping at me. I previously had an iPhone, but switched to an Android, and now my Airtags all think they're someone else's – even though they come home to the same place as my iPad and Mac every night. I can't figure out how to tell Apple they're actually mine, so they just keep randomly chiming in my backpack every few days... and my Android phone keeps warning me :(
So, why even bother with an Airtag then? I mean, they're useful in luggage and things that are easily stolen, so this just destroys any usefulness in that capacity. I bet you see a huge drop in Airtags being purchased.
CEO of Tile / Life360 here.<p>We decided to opt out of the Google and Apple finding networks and the new proposed standards because it completely ruins the ability to use Bluetooth devices to deter theft. If you put an AirTag on say your bike, and thief steals it, they will get a notification and immediately just find and disable it.<p>We actually built a (controversial) feature that lets you opt out of anti-stalking features if you scan a government ID. As of today, we have zero known instances of abuse—the friction of scanning an ID is enough to make a bad guy think twice, and a committed stalker can just go get an LTE-enabled stealth GPS device on Amazon. It is crazy that the press and regulators focus on Bluetooth devices when actual stalking devices are readily available.<p>Some people are commenting on how small our network is. People don't realize that Life360 is on 1 in 8 phones in the US. We are huge outside of tech bubbles. If you are at an airport, mall, or anywhere with any meaningful density of people, our network is on par with the big guys. There is a J curve to the benefits of increasing density, and outside of rural areas we essentially have complete coverage.<p>Beyond this, we just announced a new satellite-to-Bluetooth network this morning, and we plan to open it up to developers in 2025. It won't matter where you lose your stuff, we will be able to find it. And thieves won't.<p><a href="https://www.life360.com/find/" rel="nofollow">https://www.life360.com/find/</a>
What about the unwanted tracking at browsers, within apps, across websites, device fingerprinting, and GPS triangulation?<p>Oh wait, these companies need this to squeeze more ~~money~~ value out of paying customers.
So if someone steals my luggage they can drive around with it until it alerts them and they turn my luggage tracker off?<p>I am not complaining.<p>What it amounts to, is that the digital world enables so much information gathering and using flexibility, we need fine grain permissions and controls for our devices and services, so they "do the right thing" for all kinds of corner cases.<p>But we don't have an information infrastructure for that, so the best we can do is balance concerns.
Sigh. I get it there's been a few abuses of the technology... but it was literally already ripe for abuse anyway.<p>Whether Apple intended this or not: The real world primary use case for AirTags is still tracking stolen crap. I would to _not_ want to alert thieves to the presence of an attached tracker in that case. I guess tracking your lost luggage is likely a #2, but if you were to survey what people were actually using them for, I'm betting it'd be #1 above.<p>The only way I can think of solving this is allowing a silent mode on the tracker that requires both a private key from the user (to avoid getting NSL'd) and a private key from law enforcement (Apple / Google already have law enforcement portals) and finally one-way hashing the keys and publishing the results to a public irrevocable block ledger. One could see if your key was on the list to see if you Airtag was silenced, but you couldn't pick out specific tags that were silenced. The law enforcement agency's keys would also be hashed and published, allowing us some transparency on who is requesting the most tag silences, so we could monitor the monitors. If this were bundled up in a blockchain, and the tags were programmed only to act on a blockchain, we could avoid abuse and gain a useful feature.