LoJack used to be the go-to company for this. No more.
Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for those IDs, and if its own ID comes up, it turns on. It starts loudly transmitting to units in police cars, giving approximate direction and range. If you see a police car with four short whip antennas on the roof in a square pattern, that's a Lojack-equipped vehicle. It's uses radio direction finding. The vehicle box has no idea where it is.
It's a totally independent system - no cellular, no GPS.
So this only tracks vehicles which have flagged as stolen. It's not constantly phoning home.
Classic Lojack is a one-time charge, with no annual fees.
The current product, LoJack AnalProbe™, which they call "Connected Car", constantly phones home, reporting your location, battery level, etc. to the mothership. There's an app to review where you've been. And, inevitably, the EULA says that Lojack may "share information with LoJack’s affiliated companies, Service Providers and/or third parties in conjunction with the Software and Services and for the purpose of providing You with any promotional offers and marketing materials as may be permitted by applicable law."
Today you see four antennas on police cars for digital diversity reception, originally desirable for minimizing multipath issues but today just about required for P25 "phase II" operation of multiple repeaters on the same channel. These are usually 900MHz radios, one of the factors in the decline of traditional Lojack was many police departments shifting to 900MHz for P25 and no longer equipping all vehicles with VHF radios. Depending on the department, vehicles may not have any radio capable of receiving Lojack transponders. Whether or not they're programmed for it is also a question.
When direction finding was used Doppler DF based on multiple antennas was rare due to the high cost of the electronics package, which also consumed a lot of trunk space. Most police departments did it the old fashioned way with a handheld log periodic they waved around. Another part of the decline of the original Lojack system was the high price of providing good DF receivers to police departments, so not many had them. LoJack never got big into having their own DF "hunters" on staff like other companies using transponders did.
The issue with the old lowjack is that whilst it was better for privacy it was far worse for actual recovery.
Cars that were outfitted with low jack would have the devices removed or disabled before the tracking could be enabled and as they didn’t report their position the police would have nothing to go by.
Whilst I agree that the information sharing is pretty despicable since you are already paying for that service the new model is more useful at least in a situation where the police actually has resources for recovery instead of doing the bare minimum because most vehicles are insured.
There probably is a market for a solution that would be more reliable than an airtag but one that you can control.
One can probably build one fairly easily with a low power SBC with cellular capability and one of those IOT global sim plans.
I don't know anything about the trade of stolen vehicles and the people who do it, but i imagine advertising that will let smart thieves and chop shop types know what to look for and quickly remove.
From that perspective it's probably better for people to not know you have lojack, conceal it, and make them work harder to check for it.
Then get a second hand Shit-Box 2000 like I do. Nobody will ever steal it, as no self respecting thief will want to be seen driving that, and it costs me less to buy and own.
Win-win I'd say.
I'm struggling to understand why people who aren't Bezos wealthy buy expensive cars. The depreciation is insane and you're always anxious someone will steal it or ding it in a parking lot. But then if people weren't frivolous with their money, half of us wouldn't have jobs ;)
Used cars are actually much more likely to be stolen, especially if lack modern features like chip keys, immobilizers, and GPS tracking services. In US cities, the most stolen cars are all 15-20+ year old models. If you buy a new Toyota for instance, you don’t need an AirTag because it comes with location tracking services built in.
Just because most stolen cars are used, that does not necessarily mean that a used car is more likely to be stolen than a new car. You've got to consider the base rate, otherwise, you're committing the base rate fallacy. Since most cars are used, of course it's not surprising or meaningful that most stolen cars are used.
It doesn't take comprehensive statistical analysis to conclude that a brand new car that comes with an electronic immobilizer, alarm system, and remote GPS-based location monitoring is less likely to be stolen than your 1999 Honda Accord, 2001 Subaru Forester, or 2020 Kia Soul that comes with none of those features. The advice to buy a used car to avoid theft is demonstrably stupid.
It ain't about $$$ value. Your shitbox could* be stolen if at any point that platform or it's parts become desirable for any context whatsoever.
for example, the fabled acura integra. While not cheap, it's certainly not going to make a thief rich. At the end of the day it's a vtec honda civic with 2 doors and standard transmission.(I'd argue that a 97 Acura Integra IS your definition of a shitbox.)
Because of that desirable engine, they are still the most GTA vehicle in US.
I suspect people at multiple points on the 'car cost ladder' look at everyone who has perched higher up on it with that same level of bafflement.
I have purchased a couple new cars in my life, but in the sub-$35k range. While, looking at the amount a payment would be on an $80,000 car, I'm aware I could definitely afford it -- especially at that 6-7 year term that is so popular now -- it is wild to me that anyone would derive enough marginal utility to justify the cost. I'll take my car plus a briefcase full of money over a Mercedes, thanks.
It's possible though that the person with that $80k car also thinks they're quite rational and only the person with the $150,000 car is a lunatic.
The whole thing about the mayor and NYPD telling everyone who watches or listens to the news to buy a 30 dollar gps patch that someone can put under some car carpeting anywhere in said car should be enough to discourage most car thieves with 2 or more active brain cells, but hey, I'm an idealist.
Only if the police were actually interested in seeing the location of your stolen property & going there to look for it, which is not a typical experience when reporting a theft to an urban police department.
For what it's worth my car was stolen last year and the Orlando police response was swift, professional, and effective.
I called in with my report, dispatch quickly verified that the car had not been towed then asked me some preemptive questions to make sure it really was stolen (no one else had keys to it, etc).
My car a tracker that the thieves disabled but I sent the dispatcher the last known flair location before the tracker shut off.
The police sent one officer to get my statement while three other cars of officers canvassed the area around the the flair location building by building until they found the car inside of a gated community.
Then they took me to it to confirm it was mine, dusted everything for fingerprints, and gave me a business card with the officer's name, department, etc. and a case number I could use to for reference with insurance or to follow up and see if they managed to catch the people who stole it.
The entire process only took about an hour and the police went above and beyond. I'll forever be grateful for their efforts.
I've been using atuvos tags, which work on the find my network (no third-party app required) and appear to work exactly the same as airtags with the exception of the LF radio for precise location finding - you just don't get the radar mode in the find my app.
I'm not sure what you're seeing but you're definitely not seeing genuine AirTags 5 for $13. More likely you're seeing the AirTag holders for that price.
> you're definitely not seeing genuine AirTags 5 for $13
I didn't see anything in the comment which suggested they were. It is specifically points out there are devices not produced by Apple. Third parties can create compatible devices:
How? Airtags only work because Apple uses any iPhone with BLE support as a detector, whether or not an app is installed. An off-brand BLE beacon would require an app to work at all, and I highly doubt Apple would make it easy for a third party app to run all the time in the background.
According to https://developer.apple.com/find-my/ manufacturers of third party hardware CAN leverage the iPhone BLE network to connect to the FindMy network.
The advantage of AirTags is the large phone tracking network: every recent iPhone defaults to tracking them. That's hundreds of millions of devices globally, with probably even more density in the US. The main competitors (Tile and Samsung) have much smaller networks. I'm not sure what network you'd get with generic "Bluetooth Tracker" tags: technically it could be Apple but I can't find any evidence for such products online.
> That person specifically noted and gave you a reference to how those 3rd party tags use Apple's own network.
What is the clear reference? One person said they searched GPS tracker tags on Amazon and the other gave a link to Apple’s licensing program which in turn links to NDAs and contractual agreements as well a multi-step design and approval process. There seem to be some knock-offs claiming they work with Find My, but there’s all sorts of weird counterfeit crap on Amazon. Do you have links to a product that’s actually licensed/supported by Apple (ie works and will keep working), because that’s what surprised me.
I own one, and it works just like an airtag and appears in the find my app. It doesn't have precision feature but everything else works(like using the apple/iphone network to find it)
The first one is... incredibly convoluted. Like reaching your right arm over your head to touch your left esr (try it!). The second one sounds like it sucks.
With the pay-once AirTags you can just find the car thief yourself and shoot them.
That's probably the only solution because from the stories I've seen, when someone has something stolen that's airtagged and they tell police, the police basically just tell them to fuck off
Police will take more notice if they get to charge someone with Grand Theft. Tracking down a thief for a low-mid dollar item is seen as a waste of time because they'll be back out on the street in no time.
"In March 2016, the company was acquired for $134 million by CalAmp, an Irvine, California-based provider of Internet of things (IoT) software applications, cloud services, data intelligence and telematics products and services.[4]
In March 2021, the vehicle intelligence company Spireon announced it had acquired the LoJack U.S. Stolen Vehicle Recovery business from CalAmp, joining LoJack users with "nearly 4 million active subscribers from over 20,000 current Spireon customers".[5]
Under Spireon, LoJack technology moved from RF-based location to GPS and cellular-based technology, growing availability of the solution throughout the U.S. and Hawaii and expanding the solution from only stolen vehicle recovery into connected car technology for both dealers and consumers."
> If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack.
By which time it is already chopped up for parts or, in the case of places like Phoenix, is already in Mexico.
I used to have a roommate who grew up in NYC, had a somewhat dubious past and was talking about LoJack one day. He claimed it doesn’t work well enough in dense urban areas to get a precise location fix to actually impede theft. IIRC they would have enough time to disable it as long as they stayed around tall buildings. Something like they would park the car in an alley between buildings and find the LoJack before doing whatever with the car.
I’ve known a few youthful car thieves over the years with some interesting stories.
I really just remember the part about LoJack not working in urban areas so I probably just interpreted that part. Or it could have been all made up, who knows?
Like this whole Kia Challenge thing, I’m sure a bunch of them are going to grow up and say they were crack auto thieves because they got six months community service for jacking their neighbor’s car with a usb cable.
Just a thought here... Why not just write a simple script that collects GPS location, host it on a private server, point an old Android phone at that page, and wire the phone under the dashboard?
That could work fine, but dedicated GPS tracker hardware isn't that expensive and will be more robust and reliable than an old phone (simpler software, heat and vibration tolerant) - plus there's usually IOT-NB/LTE Cat-1 support so you can use less expensive cellular providers and most trackers have at least one dry contact output for remote immobilization. The main downside to hardware GPS trackers is that they're mostly sold "to the trade," so you get a reference manual for their often AT-based communications protocol and you're left to your own devices. There are open-source backend servers around but I feel they're often too genericized to work well with the features of any one tracker, so big incentive to write your own software.
My boy had this in his integra ,it got broken into the other day, he has a kill switch on the ignition though, so the thief kinda just sat there in the car.
It could be far simpler than that, effectively a stripped basic currently available phone wired into operating power that could be called to send GPS payload via SMS. It would simply power up on start and only ever send the coordinates based on an authenticated call or sms itself.
my first 'nice' car had lojack installed in it. i remember it was about $200, and that's all, but this was 10+ years ago. i wonder if it's still out there...
Can you even get a car in the US these days that doesn't have a GPS and cellular connection? My 8-year-old BMW has both even though they're not exposed as features in the head unit. (I know because the thing malfunctioned last year, called the cops, and gave them my GPS coordinates.)
What a silly comment. Those are assets purchased by the cops to enable them to provide the services they do to the public.
On the other hand, we have a private for-profit company that is piggybacking off the cops vehicles in order to make profit for it's shareholders. That would never be allowed in any democratic country, but then neither would bribery/lobbying so [insert shrug emoji]
This seems more like a company was providing a service to the cops. I assume the police departments had to buy the lojack receivers, but after that it probably doesn't cost them anything. No different than the cops buying any product or service that helps them do their job.
This article throws up many flags for me, not necessarily red, but of a worrying color.
It first celebrates surveillance devices as a net positive and hand-waves away its problems.
But most importantly, it is awfully shortsighted to allow a single company to entrench itself further into societal transactions. However, hearing it is inconvenient, so I am often dismissed for saying so.
> They're made by Apple, which means they're very platform-agnostic.
You mean platform-specific.
> "Why would anyone have one [an Android phone]?" Mayor Adams responded.
Again... this level of ignorance and short-sightedness is surprising coming from someone in such a position of authority, and seems to ignore the realities of the world. Perhaps Mayor Adams spends too much time on HN?
All that stupidity aside, how are AirTags actually supposed to help, even if we all had an iPhone and were happy to live under apple's benevolent rule? Most cars have a gps tracker now anyway. Mine was stolen last year, during the night. I was told it would have been put into a shipping container within an hour, where it wouldn't be accessible to radio waves anyway.
Maybe they work for casual joyriding. At least where I am, most car theft is organized crime shipping them overseas. Gimmicks like airtags will do nothing.
AirTags will report their last known location. This is very likely to be the point it was driven into a container. If the container wasn't moved or loaded onto a ship yet it could be found. Additionally, while containers do a really good job and of blocking RF, they aren't perfect and they only need to get a little Bluetooth to a phone nearby. So even an iPhone on a crane operator could expose the stolen car's location. It may not be perfect but it could help. I use them on a classic car and on hidden on two trailers I own.
> At least where I am, most car theft is organized crime shipping them overseas. Gimmicks like airtags will do nothing.
I remember hearing stories as a kid in Slovenia that if your is stolen, you'll never get it back because it gets chopped into pieces within hours – before you even realize it's gone – and the parts make it to Bosnia/Albania/Serbia by next day.
In the early 00's there was even a show on Discovery Channel about chop shops in UK – indie garages that make new cars out of parts. How the parts are sourced was not discussed, they "just show up".
"Chop Shop" was a follow up to the series "Bangla Bangers" [1]. It was more like a variant of Scrapheap Challenge and nothing to do with organized crime around stolen cars in the UK.
As I kid in the UK I heard the same stories, is this still a thing? For the last few years I've been living in Lithuania which has a very big used car parts market, but I've never heard of cars being stolen and chopped up.
Usually parts are sourced from crashed cars, which are bought by breakers who often specialise in a specific model, and resold on online marketplaces. They don't present any form of 'verification' so I don't see why it couldn't be used for stolen parts, but it seems that it isn't.
I have heard about people breaking into BMWs and stealing the media console, but as I understand thefts of the whole car or even easily accessible body parts like wheels are very rare.
I don't feel that it is that security has changed much - if it is organized crime then it's no issue to get a car carrier with a crane and lift the car away. Maybe people have just gotten better morals since the 90s?
> All that stupidity aside, how are AirTags actually supposed to help, even if we all had an iPhone and were happy to live under apple's benevolent rule? Most cars have a gps tracker now anyway.
Yeah, I figured the main problem was police not wanting to do anything about theft even when you had a GPS location and videos of the people stealing your stuff. I've seen lots of stories about people who knew exactly where their lost phone/laptop/car/whatever is but police were totally uninterested in recovering the items.
> Again... this level of ignorance and short-sightedness is surprising coming from someone in such a position of authority
He was making a joke, playing into the Android vs iPhone eternal war.
But as someone who spent years on iPhone, then switched fully to Android for 5 devices across 4 years, and now back to iPhone..... I actually think the ignorance is the other way (Android users who have never tried iPhone as their full time phone).
> But as someone who spent years on iPhone, then switched fully to Android for 5 devices across 4 years
Perhaps you don't know how to pick phones? My last Android device lasted 4 years (in fact it is still going strong after I installed DivestOS, became my backup phone), and my new device will probably last a long time too.
Each for a fraction of the price charged by Apple.
> Perhaps you don't know how to pick phones? My last Android device lasted 4 years (in fact it is still going strong after I installed DivestOS, became my backup phone), and my new device will probably last a long time too.
They might just replace their phone a lot. Some people do that.
Actually, despite the common wisdom that Apple users are always getting the latest thing and just can't wait to give Apple more money at every opportunity, every person I've known who replaced their phone about annually to chase whatever the just-released flagship phone was so they can always have the shiniest thing, has been an Android user. Though, to be fair, I've also known plenty of Android users who don't do that. I've just not yet seen an Apple user behave that way (but I'm sure some do). I think this has something to do with Android fans having more overlap with computer hardware enthusiasts in general, than Apple fans do.
I've also known a few Android users who get a new phone every year because they think the next $200 phone won't suck just as much as the last one did. And that, sure, is kinda their own fault.
> They might just replace their phone a lot. Some people do that.
I actually don't like to replace my phone a lot. The issue was, with each Android phone, despite great recommendations from others and lots of research I was left wanting. And after being disappointed by each Android phone, another Android expert would tell me that some other newly released hardware would blow me away. I was tricked by this again and again and again. Until eventually releasing I would just be so much happier on iPhone. I was.
Heh—as an ex-Android user who owned a couple of the "good" ones, I definitely get where you're coming from. I'd take a $400 iPhone over any Android phone, no matter how nice, no hesitation, even disregarding existing purchases and such (I don't have a ton of those, anyway)
I know a lot of people that get the latest iphone every year but I think the difference is they don’t advertise it or mention it the way a lot of the android folks do. Perhaps due to the hardware enthusiast overlap you mentioned.
Might be luck of the draw, but my experience with Android has been similar to OP. Each of my (at the time top of the line) Samsung phones stopped working due to various reasons after a time period ranging from just under an year, to a couple of years.
In comparison, my secondhand iPhone 3G worked for several years—until I left it in a plane by mistake. My iPhone 7plus I used for ~7 years; in fact I still use it, along with my new iPhone 13.
My his and hers pair of S5s lasted 6 years despite a fun competitive game we would play where we would try to smack the phone out of others hand which often sent it flying comedically through the air. (good training for phone theives we both have iron grips of our phones now)
I think it's pretty hard to argue that the undefeatable dedicated Bixby button was a good idea, or that Galaxy Folds are awesome. They release basically the same thing constantly to give people FOMO on upgrades because the new Galaxy+ S MegaUltraGigaSuper GigaProPixel 97 with 18 cameras is out. They fake detail on the moon to impress the non-tech-savvy who don't understand how it's just a trick. They're also run by a family that is above the law in Korea and has a large influence on the government because they're such a large part of the economy. Their appliances are also trash quality and not made to be repaired, there have been class action lawsuits about this.
OnePlus. My 6T still works perfectly. No issues after 4 years of use, even the battery still lasts a good time. Sometime after they dropped support (since it's an old model), I installed DivestOS and it still works great, updates and all. Became my backup phone. I got myself a Nord2T now, and I like it a lot, I have the impression it will last forever too.
I had a Samsung in the past, but I had some issues with it.
All phones are trash except my unbranded Huawei clone running a custom version of Android I built myself. It's been totally problem-free since I got it 8 days ago (the one before it was also trash).
I had a good several year run with the LG G6. Google Maps navigation got too bogged down to be usable, though. That's more Google's fault than LG. Now I'm on a Pixel 6 and it's mostly non-offensive. The fingerprint reader is a bit unreliable, and the lack of a headphone jack is annoying. Other than that, it is responsive and the UI stays out of my way.
I think the ignorance point was more about ignoring the entire Android userbase who wouldn't benefit from these donated AirTags, which is a valid point for a government program.
(I also currently own an iPhone mini 12 but my Galaxy S23 Ultra is my daily driver, no accounting for taste and such).
This; I used to build my own custom ROMs for my Android devices to get a close-to-AOSP experience + Google services + rooted app store, but it was a lot of overhead and maintenance, plus still slow and unstable compared to iOS. Now that iPhones have had great battery life + excellent performance for a while, combined with great cameras and apps that are iOS-specific, it'd be very painful to go back to Android.
Serious question: when some app sends you somewhere after a click/tap on iOS, but doesn't leave you the breadcrumb back link in the upper left corner, how do you go back? Is there no shortcut or gesture? Drives me crazy I can't figure it out every time I grab my son's or my parents' phone to help them with something.
To bring up App Switcher, swipe up from the bottom of the screen, then pause in the center of the screen. Then, to browse the open apps, swipe right, then tap the app you want to use.
You can also quickly switch between open apps on an iPhone with Face ID by swiping right or left along the bottom edge of the screen. But try App Switcher first, it'll provide clearer orientation.
Just a note that apps are not responsible for that breadcrumb and have no control over it (if you are meaning the little one that lives in the status bar?). The OS adds that in cases where apps link out to other apps
To go back in all cases you can swipe the home indicator to the right to go back to the previous app you were in. Or you can fling it up to about half way to see all previous apps
I assume it was mostly humor, albeit poorly timed humor.
The lack of elaboration to the question shows that there wasn't much thought put into this idea IMO. While a majority of Americans use iPhones, there is still a significant portion of Android users. It's unfortunate that an interoperable solution was not promoted, but I assume this suggestion attempts catering to the majority and puts little thought into what we are all concerned with -- interoperability and being able to target everybody, not just ~60% of the U.S. population (if you want to believe statcounter's numbers).
Why would I choose an Android phone? Apple does not spy on me, and does not sell my information to advertisers. An iPhone SE is $429, or can be financed at the same price, with zero interest, at $17.87 for 24 months.
Why would I want to join Google’s advertiser-driven ecosystem, and voluntarily make myself into Google’s product?
If that's your main concern you'd be better off with a "degoogled" OS on an Android phone with an unlocked bootloader. iOS is locked down and you can't really see or control what information is being sent.
Here are some other reasons why you or other people might choose Android phones:
- Generally cheaper/better value, especially on the low end
- Less locked down (e.g. you can actually choose what browser engine you want to use, or sideload apps relatively easily)
- More options to choose from
- The core OS is FOSS
If you like iPhones that's fine but it's not true that there's literally no reason for anyone to get an Android phone
Last time I tried that, it was very limited. No paying by phone, no banking apps (and most banks require app as second factor), no proper maps with navigation and routing, no streaming music, no "work" apps like Teams or Slack, no utility apps like taxis or public transport. Even messaging apps wouldn't work well due to lack of push notifications.
Degoogled Android was basically touch display dumbphone. Which is perfect for some people who want it that way, but I like the ability to use public transport, get a cab or message people by something else than a text.
edit: I think there might be a difference between degoogled as in not registered to play store but still having play services install, and degoogled as using shim play services? I honestly don't remember.
microG works well as a substitute for the Google Play Services client. I generally don't have issues with banking apps on microG, though people using apps for banks based in other regions might have different experiences. Navigation, music streaming, Microsoft Teams, Slack, rideshare, and public transit apps work flawlessly. Push messaging is fully functional. As a bonus, microG does not implement any of the advertising features in Google Play Services.
There is no alternative to AirTags which doesn't take up additional space or come with major downsides. The way AirTags work is by using low power ultra wideband communications to respond to what are effectively ping packets which get sent out by apple devices in the area. The devices get the AirTag's ID and the distance and submit it to Apple for processing. Apple uses the distance information to trilaterate the AirTags and sends this information to the owner of the tag.
As such, AirTags only work because of Apple's market position and extremely wide reach. Put simply, Apple is abusing their control over their devices and the trust their users have placed in them to perform a form of mass surveillance.
AirTags encrypt the location data end-to-end between the finding device and the Find My app on the owner’s devices. There’s no mass surveillance, unless you count masses of individual users surveilling their own AirTags.
Tile works the same way but just with bluetooth. Any phone with a tile app on it is snitching on every tag it sees. Apple of course wins here because it's just every damn iphone, not just the ones that have an app installed.
As someone who has used both the airtag is just plain better when it comes to locating it, the uwb stuff is awesome. But the tile tags have some upsides as well. I love the button on the tile that you can use to ring your phone, helps solve ye olde.. i have my keys, where's my phone problem.
I fail to see any abuse or mass surveillance. “Find my” is end-to-end encrypted, and Apple does not have access to the device location or anyone’s identity:
There's something ironic to find this comment on a video of a former cop surrounded by other cops touting the surveillance features Apple's product offers exclusively.
As far as I am aware, they do not sell information to advertisers. Doing so would be a bad business move for them, anyway (ditching long term brand trust for short term profit?)
On AirTag location privacy, from Apple's site [1]:
> Only you can see where your AirTag is. Your location data and history are never stored on the AirTag itself. Devices that relay the location of your AirTag also stay anonymous, and that location data is encrypted every step of the way. So not even Apple knows the location of your AirTag or the identity of the device that helps find it.
Edit: I’m debating deleting this post. It doesn’t have any references to back it up, and I just realized that if the tracking network encrypts the location with the public key such that the private key is required to decrypt the location, it is indeed possible for Apple to not know where devices are because the decryption of the location might be done on your device rather than on Apple’s servers, if they wanted to.
Original post follows: I haven’t read any white papers on how this works, but I’m going to call “slight BS” anyway. Technically, Apple knows the location of the AirTag, that’s how their network works. The payload of airtag data might be encrypted, but Apple also keeps the keys for your AirTags so that you don’t have to associate new AirTags with each Apple device you want to use Find My on. While I don’t doubt that Apple strictly reduces what information they log or identify about AirTags to literally the bare minimum that keeps the service running, it’s a bit ingenuous to suggest Apple doesn’t know. What I mean by this is Apple isn’t lying when they say they don’t know the location of your AirTag (until you use their app to look for it) but it is true they know the location of all AirTags synced to their network, they just don’t know which one is yours until you go looking for it. Encryption probably plays a role in that asymmetric encryption would allow Apple to not know any AirTag details until your devices provide the decryption key. A handshake could be involved too so that your device can’t decrypt the location of the tag without proving they own the associated encryption key. But presumably Apple has a way of issuing or remotely authorizing against such keys. It is likely the case that your password for your phone protects Apple from gaining access to the keys thus justifying the position that Apple doesn’t have access because they don’t have your keys. Apple would have to act maliciously with their software into order to break this system, and it’s not worth it for them to do so. I’m not saying they’re lying but they are simplifying things a bit.
They do have their own advertising business unit which posted a $4b profit recently. They spy on you in their own ways. Whether or not you find that acceptable is subject to your own conditioning and boundaries.
That said the spying aspect makes little sense to discuss in the context of a literal portable surveillance device leveraging their network, which they keep hand waving away in explanations.
At least for me a lot of automation and workflow stuff I have just doesn't exist on iPhones. I make heavy use of buzzkill, taskr and iftt, and the first two have no equivalent on iOS and probably never will. Pretty sure home screen widgets are next to non-existent as well on iOS.
So I’m sure you came to that conclusion after using Workflow on iOS (built into the system) and using a modern version of iOS that does have Home Screen widgets?
There's janky series of actions I have set up where my phone detects when I get to my office building and sends a text triggers turning my computer on for me, signs in, and then runs a start up script(which starts all my programs and launches an RDP session as well, which has its own start up script as well that gets run) and then locks the screen again, so it's all ready when I sit down. Back when I played WoW I'd also use a similar system to launch the game and wait in the login queue on raid nights for me while I was driving home.
My spouse sometimes will text me from upstairs when she needs something, but I work from the office 2 days a week but she never remembers(she has some memory issues...) so I have it set to send her a reminder that I'm not home the first time she texts me for the day, but doesnt mark the messages as read or dismiss the notification so I can still see what she sent and reply if I need to. Also have it set to replay the notification sounds/buzz for messages from her outside of work hours because I am bad at checking my phone and sometimes forget to text her back. It also stickies the notifications from her in the slide-down menu so I can't accidentally dismiss them without replying.
Our oncall system at work has us dial into a phone tree and punch in some numbers to set it to yourself, I have my phone do it automatically for me.
I have a specific camera shortcut that will automatically text my spouse any pictures taken for that specific session until the app is closed/exited, usually its pictures of our cats but also useful when she's taking pictures with my phone for whatever reason or if we're having someone take a photo of the two of us, saves the trouble of having to send it manually each time.
Whenever the WiFI goes down at the house I have it set to turn my phone hotspot on, then send a text that triggers my computer to connect to the hotspot network, sign into the spectrum website and check for outages so I know what is broken.
Thanks for the informative answer. Frankly, it’s a shame that most consumers have to choose between either spyware-computer or privacy-preserving-consumption-console.
That said, I simply can’t blame someone for considering an iPhone to be the default choice for the majority of consumers.
> Apple does not spy on me, and does not sell my information to advertisers.
You have misunderstood privacy. It's not limited to selling of information. It's whether you control your own data. With Apple you certainly don't. You are a product either way.
It’s dishonest to equate lawful warrants with Google’s targeted advertising and exploitation of our information.
Furthermore, Apple is clear about what information they have access to, and what information they don’t, and have consistently, year-over-year, reduced the information they actually have access to.
> Apple is an advertiser.
This is another disingenuous false equivalency. Apple does not gather personal information from our devices for advertising, and always requires explicit opt-in before making use of any data provided to them through the use of their services.
> It’s dishonest to equate lawful warrants with Google’s targeted advertising and exploitation of our information.
Is it?
Google has not suffocated the AOSP. If you don't want their advertising or services, you can remove it. No such option exists on iOS, so you're effectively locked into an inherently insecure product. You can claim that you trust the parties with the backdoor key, but that doesn't change the fact that the key exists.
In mainland China, that puts Apple in the awkward situation of complying with lawful warrants that are complicit in human rights violations. Trusting wholesome, benevolent government collaboration is not enough. Apple has to design a transparent and accountable security system if they want their privacy stance to look like something other than a theater scripted on whitepapers.
> This is another disingenuous false equivalency.
Apple is an advertiser, though. You cannot pretend like they don't also have a conflict of interest here. Not to mention, they're equally capricious on the service upsell - the in-OS advertising was one of the reasons I left their ecosystem in the first place.
In the case of AirTags, Apple simply does not have that information to give:
> Devices that relay the location of your AirTag also stay anonymous, and that location data is encrypted every step of the way. So not even Apple knows the location of your AirTag or the identity of the device that helps find it.
They can be compelled to spy on you. They have also clearly put systems in place that make it very hard or impossible for them to do so without re-architecting their entire ecosystem of devices
They can also use commercially-available hardware like the Greykey to bruteforce iPhone and Android logins without Apple or Google's permission whatsoever.
Apple is very clear about what they have access to, and what they do not. They cannot share what they do not have, or do not have the encryption keys to.
"Ignorance", "short-sightedess", and "ignores the realities of the world" (and another commenter's "let them eat cake") seems like a stratospherically dramatic reaction to the common "why would anyone use THAT platform" joke.
Have they always been this way or have they all become wildly out of touch more recently? To an outsider, American political discourse looks like it is completely divorced from reality.
Making a joke about how iPhones are better is basically the opposite of out of touch. Most new yorkers agree, and 90% of the others are used to the joke.
I forget which late night show this was, but the guy said he wouldn't switch from his iPhone even if it punched him in the face every morning. That's not offensive humor anywhere except here and maybe within Google.
I'm not a fan of Mayor Adams since he's received a lot of "caviar treatment" from leaders of countries like Azerbaijan. The little joke about Android (people laughed) isn't a big deal.
I'm the CEO of Life360, Tile's parent company. I chimed in on another comment but adding to the conversation directly here. I'm biased, but I am surprised how little pushback this is getting as AirTags explicitly are NOT meant to deter theft - to combat stalking (which is exceedingly rare) Apple notifies you if a tag you do not own is near you. That goes for thieves - they will be told an AirTag is nearby.
At Tile we just launched an Anti-Theft feature where you can turn off stalking notifications if you share your government issued ID and agree to extremely stringent penalties for misuse, including a large fine.
All Life360 users are now scanning for Tile devices, and that equates to over 10% of all phones in the country, so our network in any moderately dense area is almost as good as Apple's. And, we are cross-platform.
I bought a bunch of Tiles, and after a year the non-replaceable batteries failed and I got an offer to replace them at 15% off. Talk about garbage. Your product isn't good for anything if it just stops working after a year and needs a full replacement.
We have updated all models to have either replaceable batteries or a 3-year life. Given how beaten up devices on things like keys get we are getting very good feedback on the 3 year models.
We are also giving away free tiles to paid Life360 members, which is probably not as relevant to the hacker news crowd but we do have over 20% of US families using our service. We think tiles should be free with membership, including getting new devices.
he, and his company, are blatantly lying. they are simple scammers - much like the emails you get about penis pills.
20% of US families haven't even heard of his service. heck, not even 2%, not even 2% of the families who work in tech. US-wide, Maybe 20% know what an airtag is.
go to walmart, ask anyone there if they've heard of.. well, I forgot what his service is called already. best leave it at that. something about a new cryptocoin I think it was.
I'm editing this comment to be more of a question.
I'd like the understand the reflex to immediately assume this is a lie. The information is readily verifiable as we are a public company and 3rd party sites like data.ai will verify this.
What is your impetus to make such strong accusations from what in my view can only be your intuition? I don't think you have taken the time to try to diligence your claims.
Not only is the information not available, it's not obtainable. They sell a little gadget. They do not know if the people buying them are a family, fratboys in a household, 3 people dating a triangle, or just randos on the street.
The reason for my "impetus" is when a claim is this riduculous, I don't need your information that's as easily verifiable as "horse dewormer cures covid."
the reflex to bs is to gag. your reflex is to blindly accept jesus into your life because he walked on water.
Life360 is very common in the area that I’m in to track/keep tabs on children. Go to Walmart, they might not know. Go to a highschool and I’ll bet every single one of them knows what it is. Crypto has nothing to do with this.
cool. so take the 2000 kids in that school, they probably belong to 700 families. life360 knows what kids belong to what families I'm guessing?
what about families without children? what about a couple of old people?
for your little area where everyone knows what it is, there are 330million more people, half of whom empty their webmail folder when windows gives them an out of space message. you really think 1 in 5 families nationwide know of this niche thing? that literally makes zero sense.
what makes even less sense, the claim from this company is not only do 1 in 5 families know about it - they own one.
here's my theory: the scammers defined family as "family tree" - and if your married second cousin you've met once has this airtag clone, they count it. but if your married but don't have kids, you're not counted at all.
fake numbers from a scammer, for a product that's not unique or first, or anything more functional than a simple app on a phone.
That was a vestige of the business well before I was involved. I don't think there was anything nefarious. These are devices that get beaten up quite a bit and the idea was they were cheap enough that it made sense to replace annually.
We have now moved to either 3 year disposable units or replaceable batteries. 3 years feels like a reasonable lifespan. And, our plan is to give them away for free to Life360 members (which is probably a small portion of HN readers but a high percentage of traditional families)
> the idea was they were cheap enough that it made sense to replace annually.
I can assure you the original packaging didn't make this explicit.
It was absolutely nefarious. The only reason the device stopped working was because the $2 coin cell battery died, and it was explicitly designed NOT to be replaceable. It's beyond wasteful and I would guess I'm not the only former customer left with a bad taste in their mouth.
aside from the batteries, my Tile devices just straight up do not activate most of the time when I actually need them. I'll be a few feet away and they won't make any sound // won't connect when I try to ping them. AirTags have been FAR more reliable, and the direction finding is next-level.
I'm a tile user, and indeed they seem a bit unreliable. I got one for my wife to keep in a known location because she misplaces her phone, and it works to signal the phone maybe 4 out of 5 times.
I have one on my dog's collar, in a 3D printed enclosure. He got out a few weekends ago and ran all around town, and there weren't any breadcrumbs on the app. It's one of the mid-range models rather than the high-end ones, though.
I have the high-end ones in our cars, and there's plenty of activity in the app.
While I pay for the premium service, it's too much hassle to deal with the "free" battery replacements. I just buy bulk packs of coin cells on Amazon for $0.10 each.
> I'm a tile user, and indeed they seem a bit unreliable. I got one for my wife to keep in a known location because she misplaces her phone, and it works to signal the phone maybe 4 out of 5 times.
Mobile is hard.
Google's Find My Phone fails to wake up my pixel 7 about half the time I used it, even if I am staring at the phone. Sometimes the alert goes off half an hour later.
My fitbit's "find your phone" feature also works less than half the time.
I am genuinely surprised that my wife's apple watch can locate her phone every time she asks it to.
Find My Phone has always worked reliably for me, at least. I suspect the Tile's reliability issues come down to inconsistencies across all Android versions, and perhaps a relative level of cheesiness within the Tile app compared to Apple's stack.
What platform are you on and what models? We in general have stats that show we are the most reliable product from a connectivity standpoint but I know there are still issues. Apologies you are in that bucket.
We use a tracker to track our cat who we allow outdoors every day until an hour before sunset.
We initially used a Tile and then decided to switch to an AirTag since it had a larger network.
After 4 months of the air tag we're looking to switch back. Most of what the tags do is allow us to know when we're within X number of feet of our cat. The Tile had a better range and was lighter. But most importantly, we could have multiple accounts track the same Tile. Somehow Apple's airtags are missing this really critical feature that has come up again and again for us. If one of us is not home we need to be able to have another one of us be able to track her down but we simply cannot
To be honest, the biggest reservation for me personally has been the company itself. It seems like an obvious industry where a very in-your-face-look-how-trustworthy-we-are approach to marketing like Mullvad the VPN service does is the right move. Mullvad's "only one price no matter how many years you buy it for" and "we never have a sale" on top of their just straight up "our quality speaks for itself" product seems like the perfect approach for a company where trust is so critical. In contrast, our Tile tried to force us into buying a brand new Tile when the battery died instead of just... letting us get a new battery. We had to cut it open and then buy special glue to glue it back together. I understand not all the models do this but... really? This doesn't seem like the market where you should be trading customer trust for a quick buck.
Another thing I've yet to see from Tile/Chipolo/AirTag marketing is specific mention for our use-cases of ~~tracking~~(making easy to find) our outdoor cat. The network effect in this market is killer but this seems like an obvious audience that I'm shocked no one is targetting. People walk their dogs and people who let their cats out often have to check NextDoor or FB when something comes up. The point is that they talk. And the thing about the network effect with bluetooth trackers is that the network effect is localized. Meaning Apple can dominate NYC and Chipolo can dominate SF but if everyone in my suburb of Chicago for whatever reason happens to be using BlahBlah, I'm obviously gonna go with BlahBlah. I want my cat to be findable and the most important thing is what my neighbors are doing. A targeted approach seems obvious yet it's rare to see a product specifically marketed for that
> But most importantly, we could have multiple accounts track the same Tile. Somehow Apple's airtags are missing this really critical feature that has come up again and again for us. If one of us is not home we need to be able to have another one of us be able to track her down but we simply cannot
I really hate Apple's insistence on using 1 account for everything (I mean EVERYTHING). I think it was what finally made me put my foot down on using iCloud and not wanting an apple card savings account. Plus their account management system sucks. It's the only system I've used that randomly forgets I'm logged in and demands me to log in again on my computers, phones, etc.
At Tile we just launched an Anti-Theft feature where you can turn off stalking notifications if you share your government issued ID and agree to extremely stringent penalties for misuse, including a large fine.
Does that mean Tile will be the preferred choice for wealthy stalkers?
It’s a terms of service you opt in to. Unclear how well it holds up in court but I dare anyone to try! We will go all out making an example out of people who abuse the system. So far we have not had a single report of misuse of the anti-theft feature.
I am not a stalker, but that agreement is almost certainly unenforceable in civil court. It violates the basic principles of consideration and equity. There is extensive case law on those areas, which you might want to look into before wasting people's time making empty threats and bullshiting about subjects you clearly don't understand.
In so far as I would hope most people would avoid doing business with companies that mention $1 million dollar civil lawsuits in their terms of service.
I don't believe you. I think you're either lying, or misunderstood what your external counsel told you. If you want us to take your claim seriously then post copies of their opinion letters.
Real stalkers aren't going to care about a ToS -- they are already intent on violating criminal law. This will likely just push people to use fake/stolen ID and payment information, making it even harder to track and unravel. Your exposure to various fraud comorbidity as a result of this policy is ever likely.
Additionally, most stalkers know their victims, so you are entering into a vast grey area that civil courts do not have prior established case law (vis-a-vis a third party as you are) to adjudicate and for which the burden of proof is on your lawyers who won't have the same powers to subpoena information as is available in criminal matters. It's also unlikely stalkers would have significant assets, making civil enforcement of this policy potentially very costly and time consuming for your company. Making a mistake with an enforcement action or loosing a case would be incredibly poor optics for your company.
Sending a letter to your legal staff for a cursory review and getting their rubber stamp won't change the potential legal outcome for your company or shield you from liability, when (not if) the time comes, and likely opens you to substantial liability should the product be used in the service of a crime.
That said, if I really want to stalk someone your app already provides everything that is needed, and in fact it is currently being used by sex traffickers and domestic violence abusers to track, stalk and exploit their victims en mass [1].
question: have you put any thought into the fact that you cannot fine Anyone, since you're not the government, and have zero authority to do so? "fine" lol. all you can do, is ban people from using your service and attempt to bully them by blatantly lying.
There are third party apps that will see right through your "secret stalking mode".
Basically, since apple doesn't give a damn about android users, they just unleashed airtags on the world with no way to be alerted you are being stalked if you only have android. Months later apple did release some half assed android app that doesn't do automatic scanning.
So android users need to use something like airguard and that just so happens to also snitch on tiles.
Actually re non-iPhone detection: I’ve been annoyed by air tags beeping and it’s definitely the case that the new anti-stalking features on AirTags make them rather noisy and easy to find as a result. You have to get very creative with the hiding spot so that thieves know it exists (they can hear it) but they can’t find it, remove it or take out the battery to disable it. I’ve heard stories about people planting more than one AirTag on their bike, such as dropping one in the frame in a hard to reach area, and having opportunists decide to drop the bike off at a used store than deal with the AirTag they can’t find that keeps making noise.
I'm curious how those third party apps work. Are they tailored to specific vendors' beacons, or do they operate generically on all BLE announcements? I'm curious because I have a medical implant that broadcasts a burst of announcement frames once every minute.
It is all about deterrence levels. Thieves aren't completely dumb but they also take the path of least resistance. We are going to do things like rotating MACs that will make it harder for generic apps to be useful and further make thieves have to be more intentional.
We need that for background scanning; Apple just cheats and does the same without really asking. We have never sold Tile user data. We did have a data platform for Life360, which we believe did no harm, but we exited the business as it seemed to cause confusion and was a very small part of our revenue
> "We did have a data platform for Life360, which we believe did no harm"
I'm confused. Life360 was found selling precise user location data to third party data brokers[0]. It doesn't take a creative mind to see the harm (or even potential harm) caused here. I could never trust you or your company.
> A former X-Mode engineer said the raw location data the company received from Life360 was among X-Mode’s most valuable offerings due to the sheer volume and precision of the data. A former Cuebiq employee joked that the company wouldn’t be able to run its marketing campaigns without Life360’s constant flow of location data.
...
> Two former Life360 employees also told The Markup that the company, while it states it anonymizes the data it sells, fails to take necessary precautions to ensure that location histories cannot be traced back to individuals. They said that while the company removed the most obvious identifying user information, it did not make efforts to “fuzz,” “hash,” aggregate, or reduce the precision of the location data to preserve privacy.
> The former X-Mode engineer said that the company also received raw data from Life360. The company relies on its customers to obfuscate that data based on their specific applications, Hulls added.
The entire premise of "found" is a bit nuts as we are a public company and disclosed this regularly and consistently, including how we used the data. The coverage we got in the MarkUp was the most unethical I have seen in my life with reporters literally cutting/pasting parts of quotes to make a point.
We had a data platform for targeted ads. I realize that isn't popular, but we were always transparent. We exited the business because it wasn't worth the controversy.
Please go look at our public filings before you trust this article. We were so transparent about everything we did both to our users and the public.
I do think our record of zero instances of harm show we had good safeguards in place.
Once you have been covered in the press you start to realize how blatantly they lie. I'm not sure if it has always been this way but I encourage everyone to have an extremely skeptical eye to any news org that has advocacy as their mission
Thank you for your response. Please just let me say no once and for all. An occasional app banner is fine, but the system notifications is a step too far. That pushiness is what gave me the impression the location permission is more valuable to Tile than it is to me.
I use trackers for my keys and wallet, which wouldn't work very well if I only granted the location permission when in use. Granting background location permission means that I can get the last seen location of my items when I'm already out of range, and I can help others find their lost items, too, just like they can help me, as part of the network.
The notification doesn't fire until you've been moving along with the tag for a while, so the vehicle has already been stolen by the time the thieves are aware there's an AirTag present. I guess it might encourage them to dump the vehicle somewhere and abandon it, and you can then go pick it up using the AirTag's last known location. Doesn't really prevent the initial theft, but improves your chances for recovering the vehicle.
Seems like you would want to install it somewhere that is difficult to reach. Behind the dashboard for example, something that requires some work to access. Maybe wrapped in a bit of sound deadening material to make it harder to locate.
They’d get one if they do it regularly. We catch the stupid ones but not all of them are stupid. I imagine most are aware of AirTags and could get the cheapest iPhone to detect them.
Globally, sure. In the US, it looks like iOS is about 57% market share. I suspect it's even higher in New York City.
It's pure speculation, but I wonder if the average car thief is more likely to own an iPhone as a form of status symbol? Or, is the average car thief more likely to be using burner phones from Walmart?
Doesn't that seem like an unrealistic solution? If you actually start suing customers over terms of service, you're going to rapidly alienate your customer base.
As a generally reasonable person, I have no interest in submitting anything more official than a valid credit card number to any company for lack of any legal need.
It seems like it would be wise to avoid any pretense if you want to start selling covert tracking as a premium feature. Either do it or don't, but don't try to offload the moral implications onto your customers by "policing" them.
One day some bored and rich person might call you on it. You’d have to sue and win otherwise it will make it harder for others to take the claim seriously.
Mayor Adams was asked during the press conference if AirTags work with Android (they don't).
"Why would anyone have one [an Android phone]?" Mayor Adams responded.
Oh and given that this in New York we're talking about here, the vigilante mob are gonna go wild for this, especially after Citizen worked out so well ....
But by last month, Frame was enthusiastically backing the idea of manhunts, according to screenshots of internal company communications seen by NBC News and first reported by Motherboard [1]
> Why would anyone have one [an Android phone]?" Mayor Adams responded
This is a New Yorker’s response to a stupid question.
AirTags have a recognised brand. Messaging “buy AirTags” comes through cleanly in a way an inclusive statement would not. Given nobody is burning city funds for this, it’s literally a PSA, a reporter asking the mayor technical questions the answer to which they know is fine to be answered dismissively.
>The Association for a Better New York (ABNY), a nonprofit founded by New York real estate developer Lewis Rudin in the 1970s and responsible for the "I <3 NY campaign," paid for the 500 AirTags.
On apple's website, that's about $25 per an airtag and unless they got a deal, this is $12,500 in funds or free assets from Apple to do promotion. Skating close to corruption.
The cost to the city & its residents of dealing with a single car theft can easily be four-to-five figures.
You call it corruption. Is it, or is it just a good ROI?
I think it'll depend on whether this does anything, or whether NYPD will tell you to go pound sand when you report your car's location to them with an AirTag.
> it'll depend on whether this does anything, or whether NYPD will tell you to go pound sand when you report your car's location to them with an AirTag
Which is affected by the mayor, a former cop, name dropping AirTags in relation to car thefts in the press.
> The cost to the city & its residents of dealing with a single car theft can easily be four-to-five figures.
That's ridiculous. At that rate it would be better to just buy the owner a new car.
But seriously, there should be mechanisms to report your license plate or VIN as stolen and have traffic cameras automatically deploy spike strips when that license plate is detected. It would be far cheaper and not that different from reporting your credit card as stolen.
The unfortunate thing about property crime is that frequently, $50 worth of gain often results in $500-$5,000 worth of damages and costs. Just ask anyone who's had a catalytic converter stolen, or their copper ripped out.
>
But seriously, there should be mechanisms to report your license plate as stolen and have traffic cameras automatically deploy spike strips when that license plate is detected.... It would be far cheaper...
Designing and deploying an automatic system for 'Automatically deploying spike strips', (besides being a bad idea) in a city like NYC will be an eight-figure sort of project. That will assure that in the best-case scenario, a car theft will run four-figures worth of damages. In the worst case, it will do nothing, because the car's been abandoned, or is being taken apart in a Jersey chop-shop by the time you report it stolen.
> Just ask anyone who's had a catalytic converter stolen
The difference is when someone's catalytic converter is stolen, we don't spend $5000 of taxpayer money on it. More often than not, we spend $0 of taxpayer money, and the angry owner spends $5000.
I read the parent comment as meaning we're spending 4-5 figures of taxpayer money every time a car is stolen, in which case I'd rather we just buy 2-3 more cars with that money and distribute them for free to people who had stolen cars.
If the police spends any time documenting it, looking for it, or catching and prosecuting the guy who did it, it can run up to that. Even if they do the bare minimum, it'll definitely run a lot more than $50...
> I read the parent comment as meaning we're spending 4-5 figures of taxpayer money every time a car is stolen, in which case I'd rather we just buy 2-3 more cars with that money and distribute them for free to people who had stolen cars.
Do you want to pay hundreds of dollars in personal loss, or tens of dollars in taxes that fund measures and mechanisms to prevent or mitigate that loss? It all comes out of your pocket at the end of the day. Whether it comes out of your taxes, or your insurance premiums, or from your pocketbook, you'll still be paying.
I know that all costs being equal, I'd rather live in a world with fewer car, or cat, or copper thefts, or any other negative-sum activity than one with more of them. There's no magic bullet for this, though, which is why each mitigation should be considered on its own costs and merits.
> Do you want to pay hundreds of dollars in personal loss, or tens of dollars in taxes that fund measures and mechanisms to prevent or mitigate that loss? It all comes out of your pocket at the end of the day.
I disagree. It doesn't take 5 figures to mitigate that loss in a society that has technology. If it does it's a misuse of funds and I'd rather move to another city, state, country than pay 5 figures to mitigate that loss. If they can mitigate the loss in 3 figures, than absolutely yes that's better than paying 4 figures for a new car, and I'd stay and happy contribute toward the 3 figures.
> Even if they do the bare minimum, it'll definitely run a lot more than $50...
The bare minimum is taking a report and checking a file, and that'll take about five minutes. How are you calculating "a lot more than $50"?
And why did you pick $50 anyway? Is that a comparison to how much the criminal makes? If the profit is a small fraction of the damage they do, it makes lots of sense for the police to spend more than the profit.
>More often than not, we spend $0 of taxpayer money, and the angry owner spends $5000.
No, the angry owner makes an insurance claim, and then car insurance rates go up for everyone who lives a mile away from the angry owner(s) who got their catalytic converter(s) stolen
For the cost of the city, if they stopped going after car theft it would simply become more prevalent. We don't need to decriminalize and make safe cities for car thieves.
Regarding your second point, many modern cars have kill switches the police can access. This might be a better solution if these can't easily bypass them. That said, I don't personally want a car with a kill switch.
I don't advocate for decriminalizing it at all. But it shouldn't take 5 figures to catch a car thief with some minimal technology.
It the very least it should be a fundamental axiom of a society that {catching a thief of an item, fixing an item} should cost less than or equal to replacing the item, and I believe that to be largely true if technology is maximally utilized.
I don't think that's a reasonable Axiom because thieves rarely steal a single item over a lifetime. There's also the deterrent effect which is very important. If you didn't catch at least some car thieves, you couldn't have a society with cars.
It's a legitimate question. Why is the mayor of NYC shilling a product? NYC is one of the worlds largest city governments so It's not out of the realm of possibility that this is a native ad for I-Phones.
This is a terrible suggestion because Apple has effectively removed the anti-theft features of Airtags in favor of protection against stalking.
The thief will be notified of the tag in less than an hour usually. I see the alert anytime I mind my friends dog. Typically within 45-60 minutes of my friend leaving, I get an alert which includes a map of where I was tracked and my friends email address.
The original Airtag use case included theft but you'll notice any mention of that has now been removed from the marketing material. It's really just for people who lose things.
> The thief will be notified of the tag in less than an hour usually. I see the alert anytime I mind my friends dog. Typically within 45-60 minutes of my friend leaving, I get an alert which includes a map of where I was tracked and my friends email address.
In the article, they recommended that you "hide the airtag well", so it's most likely that the thief will receive the notification after a while, and decide to just dump the car.
I'm not sure how the notification stops the thief. If you're half decent at hiding things they won't be able to find it in less than half an hour, so they either stop and look during which time you can catch them or they abandon the car and you get it back since it's still being tracked.
I don’t recommend going and confronting a car thief.
And I doubt the police will be there in half an hour. You’ll be lucky to convince them you have the location sometime the next day, when it’s far too late.
Eric adams does recommend confronting a car thief I guess. Really it just depends on the situation, plenty of New Yorkers would be game. Might even prefer it to hoping the cops deal with it. Personally if my only choice was ask cops for help I'd consider the car gone. I can round up a few of the boys and confront the thief given an hour or two, and at least I'd get my car back. No idea if NYPD is as worthless as my pd though.
> Supreme Court says guns aren’t only for the rich in nyc anymore.
That law evens the playing field for law abiding citizens. But hey man, you wanna cosplay Dirty Harry or Paul Kersey then by all means. Just hope the NYPD and DA are cool with your vigilantism.
If everyone chooses not to confront car thieves, then car thieves have successful careers stealing everyone's cars. If everyone chooses to confront car thieves (preferably with friends, preferably armed), then car thieves quickly choose another career.
Getting the police to do their job would be ideal, but that won't happen so we only have these two options.
> The thief will be notified of the tag in less than an hour usually. I see the alert anytime I mind my friends dog. Typically within 45-60 minutes of my friend leaving, I get an alert which includes a map of where I was tracked and my friends email address.
To be fair, 45-60 minutes to track a stolen car is still a lot better than nothing.
I wanted to try to understand more context behind the "'Why would anyone have one [an Android phone]?' Mayor Adams responded." quote. Here is the relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vuw72THyXsQ&t=949s
So, I get that he's making a joke, but given that everyone just laughs and there is no follow up, it's clear to me it's one of those "The reason this joke is funny is because I actually think it's true" jokes.
I've been an Android user for about a decade now, but I think I'm finally going to have to throw in the towel. Between iMessage (especially iMessage) and things like this, in the US having an Android essentially marks you as a second class citizen. And to be clear, I'm not saying this from an "Androids are uncool" or some silly "green bubbles" perspective, I'm saying from the perspective that owning an Android actually makes it more difficult to interact with friends and, in this case, with government services.
No, I'm not happy about it, and I f'ing hate how Apple has used these walled garden techniques to force people onto their platform. But from a simple utilitarian perspective, owning an Android puts you at a distinct disadvantage in the US.
Your attitude exactly highlights why I'm considering switching. I'm pissed at Apple, but it's not like I have any particularly affinity to Google. In the end, life is short. So I can stomp my feet and say "this sucks" and live alone in my basement (yes, I'm exaggerating), or, if I go on vacation with a group of friends and I want to share in their experiences, photos, etc., then I can get an iPhone.
I guess I'm misunderstanding how Apple prevents you from sharing in their experiences. Did Apple create a walled garden around experiences, which I wouldn't put past them? This is an honest question. I heard something in a stand-up bit, from which I gathered sms from non-Apple users are flagged a certain way in Apple users' conversations. Is there something else?
In the US, the vast, vast majority of iPhone users use iMessage for chatting. When you are in a group chat on iMessage, and you are the only Android user:
1. Video sharing is essentially unusable. Forget "potato quality", basically the videos are essentially unviewable. And this goes not just to videos that are sent to you, it's also videos you send to the group. Sharing videos in a group chat is not an uncommon activity when you're on vacation, for example.
2. In iMessage, using emoji responses is a big part of the social interaction in group chats, e.g. someone posts a photo and other people post responses. You basically can't post emoji reactions in iMessage group chats if you're on Android.
3. Messages you send randomly get dropped. "Hey, hn_throwaway_99, can you send us that group picture you took?". Me: "Sure thing". An hour later: "Why didn't you send the photo like we asked?". Me: "I did, but apparently half the group never got it."
Then, basically, everyone gets annoyed if you're the "Android man out", because everything works perfectly if everyone is on an iPhone. And, in the US, if you belong to certain social groups in particular socioeconomic classes, you will be the odd one out if you don't have an iPhone.
I think the lack of success of iMessage in the rest of the world is the only reason Apple has been able to maintain iMessage as a closed one platform chat protocol.
Nobody uses iMessage or SMS in the EU these days, but if usage was like in the US then I suspect that Apple would have already been forced long ago to open up or release clients for other platforms. The US is very unlikely to make demands, but the EU doesn't mess around with this kind of thing.
Of course, knowing Apple, they might also respond to such a scenario by removing iMessage on EU phones and keeping it the same in the US.
It sucks, but I understand why someone might be forced to swap to a specific product or device for social reasons. Shame though.
As a US Android user, I don't feel very disadvantaged. I have an iPad, an M1 Mac, and a couple Airtags. If I lose something I probably won't be able to locate it until I get back home. I haven't had much trouble with getting group messages on android but maybe my use-case isn't representative.
I think the Android perks still outweigh the cost. Not that any of this isn't possible on iPhone but it's a smoother Android experience: Google Fi for phone plans when traveling internationally, some open-source apps aren't available in Apple's app store, and some apps in both stores are more expensive for iPhone (e.g. Anki). I feel like iCloud has some bad incentives as well. I think that's why live photos is a pain to turn off (I also like Google Photos).
By far the biggest barrier is group chats with others who are on iphone. Not only is the experience pretty broken for you, it essentially ends up breaking the experience for everyone else. This AirTags example just highlights that to a large portion of the US populace, Android is essentially a joke.
The worst is that group chats aren’t reliable in that some messages won’t go to all participants.
But if everyone is iMessage everything goes through. I’m sure it’s an iPhone bug, but it means that mentally I can count on iMessage chats to go through and mixed chats I’m frequently wondering and having to check with each member, “did you get that.” So it means that mixed chats are extra chatty with people confirming with “oks.”
It’s just a crappier experience with green chats and everything goes smoothly so try blue chats.
I wouldn’t cut out friends because of it, but I have a small iota of sadness when I start a chat and it turns green because of someone.
For kids it’s kind of brutal with friends literally not talking to people because they aren’t using emojis.
It’s not android’s fault, but it’s an easy pain to spare my child by buying an iPhone. Not to mention my iPhones last years longer than my android phones and one kid is even using an ancient iPhone 6 to chat with friends.
I'm not going to make apologies for SMS and MMS group chats, but in my close and extended circles (US, SF bay area) every single person has either Signal or WhatsApp. These aren't all tech people either, just people who are conscientious about privacy.
Because that's what they're used to and that what works with all of their friends.
To be clear, I completely agree, and I wish they did use a cross-platform messenger. But the reality is that, in the US, the vast majority of iPhone users use iMessage primarily.
Half of the engineers I (want to) talk to refuse to switch from IRC, and the other half refuse to use it. In the end, I use both, and so do lots of other people.
Should we expect ordinary, non-technical users to behave substantially different? It's not clear to me that we should; most people find the status quo "good enough," and the activation energy for switching is higher than the minor inconvenience of some of your social circle having a slightly worse user experience.
How is the experience broken for anybody? I've been on group chats with my wife and parents (all iPhoners) for years and it's totally fine. I recently got a Pixel and now even the stupid emotes display properly (though it was easy to know what they meant before). I had an iphone forever ago (when my parents were paying for it), and I don't recall the experience of group chats being notably better or worse.
It's more annoying that I have three apps (signal, groupme, and discord) which each have a single friend or friend group that use them but that isn't an android/iphone problem.
In mixed group chats with iPhone and Android, it is not that rare of an occurrence to have issues with texts not going through / being delayed. I also can't emote without a wall of text showing up, or edit messages after sending.
I've genuinely never gotten any flack about the whole imessage vs sms thing, but I've also thrown in the towel for one particular reason: OS updates. Most Android manufacturers only give you 2 major versions, maybe 3 in the best case. With Samsung being the only one I know of giving you 4. iPhone supports major OS version updates for a lot longer than most any android phone.
I use an iPhone and have never felt like using Android would exclude me from anything socially. Nothing from the govt requires an iPhone, and plenty of my friends use Android. The NYC mayor was just doing a PSA.
What would exclude me is refusing to go on FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, etc. And it'd seem inconsistent to use those while rejecting the iPhone on principle.
What do you want him to tell you? AirTags do not work with Android. Is that much better than cracking a joke? He is giving some general advice that is useful to most people. Should he refrain from giving some helpful advice unless it works universally for everyone?
I have zero issues with running an Android, and I honestly see iPhones as being disadvantaged, personally. There's not a single thing I can't do on an Android that I could on an iPhone.
Why is it socially acceptable for those with cheap phones to be laughed at but not for those with cheap cars (the easily stolen Hyundais and Kias) to be laughed at?
who here can already see clearly the NYPD officer's completely blank stare when you show them exactly where the car thief took your car. "did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem"
> did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem
If we're trading anecdotes, I had two laptops lifted from my apartment. The NYPD's detectives followed up with the building for footage, identified a suspect, followed up with the resident they were seen with, got the suspect's Instagram and got an arrest warrant. That resulted in them nabbing the guy when he was ticketed for jumping a subway turnstile.
I actually know multiple people who were robbed and NYPD caught them when they used the victims metro card. Wild that thieves haven't realized that the cards can be tracked and the stations are under surveillance, but maybe that's why they turned to crime.
if your building had "footage"...and the NYPD actually cared about a non-violent theft, with "detectives" no less....wow....well we would assume you were living in a pretty "uptown" neighborhood.
where we lived, there were of course lots of "detectives", but they had a single purpose which was to arrest black people for drug possession. Other than murders, that was pretty much it.
> well we would assume you were living in a pretty "uptown" neighborhood
No. And off plumb. Adjust your priors. (Obviously no doormen.)
> where we lived
Where?
We have so many generic hypotheticals with loose calls for policy. Let the folks who feel the brawn and brunt of crime and law enforcement speak solutions. This topic has lost relevance because it was diluted.
"good cops" look the other way regarding all the "bad cops" around them so to the degree they are "good" while protecting corruption is not very compelling. The "good cops" that actually have a problem with things tend to not stay cops for long.
> who here can already see clearly the NYPD officer's completely blank stare when you show them exactly where the car thief took your car. "did you see them do it? otherwise it's not our problem"
With NYPD, it's even worse: "if we didn't see it, we can't do anything about it". This is, of course, entirely false, but good luck trying to argue with a cop and getting them to do their job.
Heck, NYPD refuses to even take police reports on stolen property (which is a huge hassle because insurance usually requires a police report as a prerequisite to filing claims). You literally have to argue with them just to get them to file the report - not even do anything about the issue, mind you, just to get them to fill out the form.
The NYPD can bend crime stats by controlling the number of reports that get made. Want to make it seem like crime is going down in a neighborhood (so they can take credit for it)? Stop filling out so many reports. Want to convince people that there is a crime wave before an election to stymie any "defund" efforts? Fill out more reports. Neither requires doing any actual investigations.
It’s really rather ironic that those types of cops are usually also located among the very same kind of people who demand that we only rely in the police for all things like some kind of parent as if they could be a good parent at that.
It’s always struck me as a kind of underdevelopment, a continuation of the infantilism that so many never get over as the move from being taken care of their parents to Taken care of by school and then Taken care of by universities and then taken care of by Acme corporation that claims to really care about them. Of course that works love being taken care of by big government and its plantation formen called police.
I had someone steal my keys with an airtag on them in Seattle. Cops said they were going to send someone after making me file a police report, screenshots of Find My, etc. Call them an hour later, "oh yeah, no officers responded, we are too busy, good luck!" and this was on a slow-ass sunday around Greenlake. Recovered the keys myself. Good thing they have a 355M budget.
SPD does much the same for me. I had my laptop tracked using Prey software (prior to Airtags) and they refused to send cops to a location I personally scouted out, took pictures of, and identified my equipment.
When I told them I might confront the thief on my own, they strongly cautioned against it.
Basically they aren't interested in doing their job, or anyone taking action themselves.
This is the best argument for defunding the police - their budgets have largely stayed flat or even gone up, and they aren't doing their jobs. Why are we paying for it?
Portland Police Bureau are in good company, it seems.
The only reason to file a police report for a stolen vehicle these days (in Portland) is documentation for insurance. I very rarely hear about people getting their cars back via PPB without it being months later (and in pieces with mysterious stains everywhere) due to being incidentally swept up in a rare chop shop bust.
And yes, this is a policing problem. It’s also a city council problem. And a DA problem. And a homeless/drug problem (both direct results of voter referendums).
But we have a two party system so urbanite Oregonians will never vote these idiots out.
Portland city political positions are nonpartisan. Portland "democrats" can range from center right (rene gonzalez) to progressive left (no one). I'm hopeful RCV will help.
Eric Adams may have a D next to his name but he's a traditional Republican according to his policies (cutting libraries/schools, more funding for cops).
I know it's a nearby city but when I used Orbicule Undercover to find my laptop's thieves the Newark fuzz had it back to me very fast. They of course did not chase down anything else that was stolen and fenced elsewhere because the crime was solved with my thing. Crazy.
> spokesperson with the Orange County Sheriff's Department reminded victims of crime to let local law enforcement take over the recovery of stolen items
I gave up on Airtags. Under the guise of "protecting against stalking" Apple has removed all of its useful functionality.
For starters, any family that shares keys can forget about using airtags. You'll get spammed with alerts about an airtag following you and even if you mute them (for 1 day max) you can't use the airtag to find the keys. This also happens if the person next to you has an airtag and is riding in the car with you.
If a thief steals your car they'll be alerted about the airtag too.
One of the big practical problems in automotive tracking for anti-theft reasons is concealment. Some thieves know to check for common, especially factory-fit trackers, and so will take precautionary actions like storing vehicles under metal cover until they can disable the tracker. How effective this is depends on the tracker and the thief's knowledge level, but there is a cat-and-mouse game here where you want to prevent the thief knowing a tracker is fitted.
With AirTags this is rather difficult because of the anti-stalking feature, but on the upside they are easy to conceal places so you will get a time window of good functionality. With more conventional GPS trackers a good way to install them is often under the dashboard plastics below the windshield, which offers a clear sky view and is a fair amount of work to get to in a lot of vehicles. Of course the labor on that installation method drives up price so it's not unusual for them to be somewhere far less discrete like in the engine compartment with an external antenna or glued to the bottom of the rear deck in sedans.
i am unsure how AirTags can be recommended by anyone in any situation to prevent theft.
their "anti-tracking" features make them completely useless in any situation where theft is involved (or theft happens after loosing the item). the thief is alerted to their presence automatically and can disable them quickly. perfect for thieves!
AirTags can only be used for misplaced items, any utility for situations involving theft is completely negated by their "anti tracking" features.
another case where giving a 0.01% case too much attention makes the normal 99.99% use case completely impossible..
I have a 'family' setup in our iphones for my wife and kids. My wife bought some airtags and put them in the cases for our kids expensive musical instruments, her keys, etc.
We are configured as a family to share apps, set screen times, etc, but I can't see where those tags are, only my wife can on her phone. Worse, I get warnings every time I use her car for the day, that it found an uknown airtag riding with me. Or when she rides with me in the passenger seat of my vehicle, and has her purse with her.
They are essentially less than worthless, and cause a ton of false alerts, so 3/4ths of our family have them blocked and ignore any airtag alert, because we assume its one of hers.
And if your kids are young enough not to have their own phone, when they go to school with an AirTag it'll start beeping a while later just to make sure nobody is stalking them.
It was a nice idea until all the people worried about stalking got involved. Never mind that a skilled stalker won't waste time or take the risk with an AirTag.
I'm glad someone brought this up. I'm the CEO of Tile and we launched an anti-theft feature for this reason. We allow you to turn off anti-stalking features if you agree to strict penalties for misuse and verify yourself with a real ID.
How do you verify the government ID used belongs to the person disabling the anti-stalker feature? There's a huge market for fake state IDs and stolen/leaked photos of various gov't IDs
Checking an ID in person is a bit different than uploading a picture of it. US IDs are designed for in person verification with security features like holograms, laser perforations and microprinting. Also don't think it's a high bar if they're allowed to use one ID to unlock multiple tiles
Thank you for this. We switched back to Tile specifically because Apple's anti-stalking features make it impossible to eg; share keys. For any household with several cars this is an obvious must-have.
Not to mention most people want to, you know, be able to track something that got stolen.
Apple in most cases already has our real ID.
And stalkers are already determined to commit crimes. Agreeing to civil penalties isn’t going to deter someone who already doesn’t fear criminal imprisonment.
How much customer data are you giving to your corporate owners? How much are you selling to third parties? How much are your owners selling to third parties?
Yeah after buying a few AirTags early on, I've largely given up on them. Too much of a hassle as it tries not to be usable to stalk, so I can't use it for the other handy use cases.
Best use-case by far. I was traveling internationally, and the airline left my luggage back in Europe. The airline had no idea where my bags were but, I was able to tell them exactly which terminal my bags got loaded onto. (where they lost signal) They looked up which flight departed that terminal at that time and were then able to route my bags to my final location and I had them within 24 hours.
We use an airtag to track our cat who we allow outdoors every day until an hour before sunset.
We initially used a Tile which I hated and would constantly try to get us to buy more tiles in their crappy app.
After 4 months of the air tag we're looking to switch back. The larger network is barely noticeable. Most of what the tags do is allow us to know when we're within X number of feet of our cat. The Tile had a better range and was lighter. But most importantly, we could have multiple accounts track the same Tile. Somehow Apple's airtags are missing this really critical feature that has come up again and again for us. If one of us is not home we need to be able to have another one of us be able to track her down but we simply cannot
I'm not a big fan of Tile as a company, but I'm sad to see AirTag's inevitable dominance rise. I would love to see an open-source solution to this problem. Especially if it can somehow hack into the Apple, Tile, etc networks. From what I've read the Apple AirTag network is actually quite insecure and can even be used to send arbitrary HTTP packets. Apple has a huge built-in advantage but also a ceiling that competitors don't have since Android phones can't tap into the network. A community-driven solution could be really effective, especially if it focused on a particular subcommunity like dogwalkers and outdoor cats
> From what I've read the Apple AirTag network is actually quite insecure and can even be used to send arbitrary HTTP packets.
Mind sharing a link on this? It doesn’t match the technical descriptions Apple has published about how the AirTag network operates. On the other hand I can see it being true about Tile…
Iirc someone worked out how to emulate an airtag and use the tiny amount of data they transmit to relay some data back to the owners apple account. It's not really insecure because it doesn't affect anyone but the owner of the device but you are relaying that data over other peoples phones, which is encrypted with your keys.
So sick of Adams. There have been some legendary lightweight NYC Mayors (and some heavyweights as well of course) but in modern times Adams takes the cake.
I've been doing this for a while with my car. Removed the speakers. Hid them in an inconvenient location that requires some minor disassembly of the car.
I use it all the time to figure out where my car is since my wife and I share and have street parking and live in a busy area.
I also slip airtags into my somewhat expensive jackets when going to events with coat check.
Many do... Although mine doesn't function anymore, since it is a 3G cell modem and well after 4G/LTE had become normalized (car companies and dated tech, who would figure). I never used it, so didn't bother to update last year when they finally offered an upgrade option.
My SO's new car definitely has it (OnStar) although the Android Auto UX is better IMO.
Tracker Detect only scans for AirTags when the user manually requests a scan. Car thieves and other users who do not want to be tracked by AirTags would be better off using the AirGuard app on Android, which scans for AirTags and other Bluetooth tracking devices in the background automatically:
I find it a bit sad that most comments here focus on the Apple/Android war rather than the boring dystopia fact that the police department of the most populous city in the US idea to fight increase in crime is to encourage people to use surveillance devices.
Must be the same people that say "just don't go out at night" when you point out the streets full of drug addicts and petty crime, as if it was a normal thing to say in a developed country.
Then it doesn't matter if someone gains entry to your car and is doing some of the more recent tricks involving the CAN or USB to disable built in immobilizers or convince the car a key is present, the ability to drive the car away is removed without a heavy and loud power tool in a very confined space.
An airtag may help with deterrence if the presence of it is advertised, and may help with recovery if the police are actively doing recovery. But the car is still going to get stolen, it's still going to be inconvenient and involve dealing with the insurers (who do want to avoid paying out).
A steering wheel lock is a far more effective deterrent and preventative.
Here's a pro tip. Get the chipolo version of the airtag, it doesn't have the ultrawide band part so you can't easily locate it on whatever you're trying to track. Remove the speaker as well, guides on youtube. The thief will still get alerted due to anti stalking crap, but they can't easily find the airtag and remove it.
I use Airtags for this purpose with my car and my bicycle, but they're not designed for this purpose. You can pull the speaker coil out of them fairly easily, but they will still notify the thief that they're being tracked if they have an iPhone on them. Not ideal, but it beats having a huge epidemic of stalking.
I always found it a bit rediculous that Apple seemingly admits stalking is a problem they have to solve it, and they solve it by requiring you to buy an iPhone. To solve a problem they created, you have to give them money.
It's worse in my opinion than just going with 'we're not responsible for how our product is used' defense.
I don't want to carry any phone, among other reasons because I do not want to be tracked 24/7.
Now Apple has made it trivial for anyone to buy persistent, highly accurate dystopian stalker gear that could easily be surreptitiously placed on my person or vehicle. Having no phone, I would have no idea. The AirTag tracking system escalates the technological arms race and dramatically expands my threat model.
All I want is the right to be a human with my human dignity respected, without requiring "techno upgrades" to enforce my rights, and the best response I've seen from the pro-surveillance crowd boils down to, "well you've gotta carry a tracking device if you don't want to get tracked".
First, you can totally carry a phone in airplane mode or a tablet without cellular capabilities. Or you can scan with a tablet from a known location (e.g. the office) and regularly do so.
Second, the threat model isn't new. Tiles have had the same capability for a long time. GPS trackers that use cellular to report your location are about as big as an AirTag (although more expensive).
But finally, this is something a lot of people want to have. We need laws to punish their misuse, but ultimately banning them would impact other people's rights.
So we're back to, "carry a tracking device if you don't want to get tracked."
Even if I had a phone, or could afford one, then I will still be carrying a tracking device. Do you really think airplane mode will prevent tracking? Apple's AirTag fuckery works even when devices present as in the "off" state! And of course there's no longer any easy way to remove phone batteries now.
I don't want to be tracked by the AirTag snitch network, I don't want to be tracked by a phone carried to prevent AirTag tracking, and finally I don't want to and should not have to carry any tech in order to ensure my safety and rights.
> Second, the threat model isn't new. Tiles have had the same capability for a long time. GPS trackers that use cellular to report your location are about as big as an AirTag (although more expensive).
It is new. Those devices are bigger and use way more power. AirTags turn everyone's iPhone into an automated snitch reporting the precise location of these ultra-low-power beacons. It's an escalation of the technological arms race. But you're right, these tracking devices should all be prohibited items for commercial sale.
> But finally, this is something a lot of people want to have. We need laws to punish their misuse, but ultimately banning them would impact other people's rights.
Laws like those can't prevent misuse, they can only punish, maybe, after misuse. Of course, the violation must be detected first ("buy our tracking products if you don't want to get tracked"). And at which point it's potentially too late for the victim, anyway.
Banning easily-concealable low-power global mesh network snitch devices would not impact other people's rights except to protect them. Where do you get the idea that you have some right to these devices that balances with my right to safety, human dignity, and privacy?
Regulation of commercial products is absolutely par for the course, especially when those products can have such severe negative externalities for people who aren't the users of the products.
A lot of people want cheap, easy access to machine guns. At least in the US, unlike easily-concealable tracking devices we actually do have a right to bear arms--and yet machine guns are not so trivial to obtain. Why is that?
I respect your desire not to be tracked. But you are just wrong about a lot of the technology you are talking about.
AirTags can be read using Apple software for either Apple or Google hardware, you don't have to opt into Apple's ecosystem at all. Airplane mode prevents tracking by carriers the most passive method and what most people object to when they call phones tracking devices. It of course also prevents any other methods (e.g. GPS) from calling home. Apple AirTag-like tracking of iDevices (while off) only works on newer iDevices that have a special BLE chip that runs in the "off" state and that behavior is easily disabled from the settings menu, so it can be disabled when your device is off or always. Between those two settings, you can set any Apple device into something that does not transmit anything about you.
This 100% answers your "I don't want to be tracked by a phone carried to prevent AirTag tracking"
As for " I don't want to and should not have to carry any tech", you may not want to have any kind of technology, and that's your right, but it does seem like a trivial burden. The number of things like parking that seems to require a phone is growing. While I dislike that as a societal arc, this is within that arc.
You don't seem to know what a Tile is. It's the same thing as an AirTag released for a similar price point years ago that is similar in size. The difference is, only phones that opted into downloading the Tile software scanned for and reported them to home base. But it was a fairly complete network with all the same tracking concerns.
Meanwhile, GPS receivers with 4G transmitters are under $30 on Amazon with the same physical footprint as an AirTag. Those devices are no longer bigger or significantly more power hungry than AirTags. But of course, they also make ones designed to be wired into a vehicle for power, which would last longer than the 10 month (nominal) battery life I found. And GPS avoids the "scanning with a phone" detection.
Meanwhile, you seem to ignore the use cases that many people have for finding keys or their own property. Yes, you don't want to be tracked. But I own things and I want to track them. So do companies. Outlawing trackers imposes a very large cost on them. Meanwhile, detecting malicious trackers is easy enough that it doesn't seem to impose a cost on everyone else.
And, of course, people would be far less concerned about anyone owning a machine-gun if there was an app you could run on your phone that would prevent the bullets from hurting you.
If you trust Apple's software, and the firmware of every discrete SoC/IP core to be truthful and bug-free. And obviously this does not require cellular tracking, which is frankly unlikely to be prevented in airplane mode. Once again, regardless of your justifications: I refuse to carry a tracking device, so stop arguing that I should because "It'll totally be fine, trust me bro."
> Tile and GPS receivers with 4G transmitters
I'm aware of Tile and the physical and power footprint of other trackers. The AirTag is a substantial leap in capability. If you disagree: Why do so many people prefer AirTag over Tile or these other devices? But again: All these surreptitious trackers should be banned from commercial sale. The risks far outweigh the benefits, and the risks are entirely externalized to the rest of society.
> The number of things like parking that seems to require a phone is growing. While I dislike that as a societal arc, this is within that arc.
So, just straight up, "Fuck your human dignity. Carry a tracking device or GTFO and forget your right to a normal life in society." Human rights are apparently not important to you; I should just bend over and accept my lot, because that's the "societal arc".
Once again: Unacceptable. And moreover: A miserable and weaselly dismissal not only of my human dignity but also of your own.
> Yes, you don't want to be tracked. But I own things and I want to track them. So do companies. Outlawing trackers imposes a very large cost on them.
I disagree with that frankly ridiculous characterization. Legal surreptitious trackers impose a very large cost to other members of society.
But this entire issue would go away overnight if Apple designed their system only to detect and find lost items instead of as a generalized surreptitious global tracking system.
Simply only report beacons back to the mothership if the user of the tracking device (the "phone") has previously manually added the tracking device ("AirTag"). Allow up to 10 devices to add an AirTag, so everyone in your family/friend group can help find your lost property. No more snitching back to Apple when the tracking device sees any beacon at all.
This will satisfy the vast majority of use cases where you lose a physical possession ("where are my keys?") while preventing the vast majority of stalking and targeted muggings, rape, and burglaries, etc.
They will also notify an Android phone if they have installed the app which Apple created for this purpose. I have to imagine thieves would know about this.
A thief can use the Apple provided app to discover if there is a tag, but I don't know that I would say it notifies them since unlike on an iPhone it would require the thief to actively open the app and perform a manual scan for the tag.
That's true for Apple's Tracker Detect app, but any thief or other user could simply use the free and open source AirGuard app on Android, which has more functionality than both Tracker Detect and the AirTag anti-tracking features built into iOS:
For example, AirGuard lets the user activate the alarm on any AirTag in range immediately without waiting any period of time. iOS and Tracker Detect only let the user do this if they determine that the AirTag is following the user, and Tracker Detect adds another 10 minute waiting period for no good reason.
I wish more hardware products supported the "embedded airtag" feature enabled by the Apple Find My program that enables 3rd party manufactures to effectively embed airtags into their products.
Better idea. Maybe car manufacturers could introduce 2 factor to start your car.
Of course one could disable this. But when you feel you are in a shady spot. Your car prompts your phone to enable two factor to start etc
Here's an even better idea: car theft should be practically non-existent in a modern, western city and instead of the mayor telling people to put airtags in their car he should be announcing how the literal armed police force he commands will be dealing with the issue.
After years of being subjected to property crime including multiple car breakins, getting threatened at knife point by crazy folks on the street, and seeing a woman on my street get forcibly abducted into a car with the police refusing to even report the crimes in all cases we left San Francisco. What's worse is bringing up how this is not OK gets you called some extremist nutjob.
Sad to see NYC is now in a similar state where they'd rather penalize the victims than the perpetrators.
> What's worse is bringing up how this is not OK gets you called some extremist nutjob.
I'm going to go ahead and bet you said something other than "this is not OK" about crime and bad policing, if you got that reaction. Or you put that statement somewhere with very bad context.
If they could implement this on an open protocol, that'd be great too. The last thing I need is some proprietary cloud service that goes down twice a month to start my car.
But what would be even better is just enabling a password.
Reality check. Car gets stolen. You tell the cops the exact location of car. They tell you to fill out paperwork. You pick up said paper work two weeks later. Insurance does ( or doesn't ) do it's thing.
I would have a totally different feeling - if I believed that the cops would 'do' anything. They have impressed me, and my five decades on this planet, at the lengths they will go to not do their job ( or flat out do the opposite if it fits their wants. )
Philosopher ( me ) urges corporation known as United States of America, and it’s sworn so called “peace officers”, to implement the following pilot program for car thieves and catalytic converter thieves:
When apprehended and proven guilty, drop them off 20 miles out in the ocean with an ankle gps bracelet, food rations, $100 usd, a raft, and life-jacket.
IMO this would have a profound impact on the criminal, and would be an effective deterrent.
How is car theft in 2023 still a problem? What happens to a stolen car? It doesn't seem feasible or realistic to try to sell it for parts (where are you going to store all these cars before/after parting them out), and there's no way you can just sell the car and expect it not to get flagged. WTF is going on?
On the contrary, pulling apart a car and selling it for parts is frequently worth more than the car itself on the used market. It's especially profitable when you've stolen the car. The hardest part is probably getting rid of the parts of the shell that have VINs stamped into them.
Used to be that they would drive it somewhere quiet, pull parts off, and leave the carcas on the side of the road. At least, that's what happened to my cars a few times in the early 2000's.
body panels and related polymer. interior re-options, operations like that have established shops, and compounds. they just have to be wary of buying from a "heatscore" with cops on thier tail.
> Adams, as the city did when announcing litigation against Kia and Hyundai on April 7, largely blamed the rise in car thefts on Kia and Hyundai, which he said are "leading the way" in stolen car brands.
Love this. NYC's response to crime: sue auto manufacturers rather than make the city safer.
Precisely what I did when I got my first car. Though I often wonder how effective it will be, wouldn't be surprised if the thief notices the AirTag's presence fairly quickly.
Drive to Faraday cage. Scan car for outgoing signals. Remove source of outgoing signals. Move the stolen car to safe zone. I'm talking out my ass but is this even difficult?
> Adams was asked during the press conference if AirTags work with Android (they don't).
>"Why would anyone have one [an Android phone]?" Adams responded.
how does this not become giveaway stalkerware, instead of vehicle tracking, remove the noisemaker thing, and its just a matter of victim not having an ios phone to out the stalker airtag.
Police do plenty good behind the scenes, you just never hear about it on the media.
In fact, the solution is to increase funding specifically to attract quality people and provide adequate training. You want quality officers patrolling neighborhoods preventing the car theft happening in the first place.
> Defund the police. Not for any socialist reasons, or because they're racist or whatever people are angry about - but because they are so incompetent at their job
Who on Earth thinks the answer to attracting competent people to a middle-class job is lowering pay?
Classic LoJack had good privacy. It's a box hidden somewhere in the car, with a connection to vehicle power. It has a transmitter, but normally doesn't transmit. If your car is stolen, you report this to the police, which report it to LoJack. That broadcasts an ID over a subcarrier of some local FM broadcast station. The receiver in the Lojack unit listens for those IDs, and if its own ID comes up, it turns on. It starts loudly transmitting to units in police cars, giving approximate direction and range. If you see a police car with four short whip antennas on the roof in a square pattern, that's a Lojack-equipped vehicle. It's uses radio direction finding. The vehicle box has no idea where it is. It's a totally independent system - no cellular, no GPS.
So this only tracks vehicles which have flagged as stolen. It's not constantly phoning home.
Classic Lojack is a one-time charge, with no annual fees.
The current product, LoJack AnalProbe™, which they call "Connected Car", constantly phones home, reporting your location, battery level, etc. to the mothership. There's an app to review where you've been. And, inevitably, the EULA says that Lojack may "share information with LoJack’s affiliated companies, Service Providers and/or third parties in conjunction with the Software and Services and for the purpose of providing You with any promotional offers and marketing materials as may be permitted by applicable law."
You get to pay a subscription fee for this.