The anti-stalking feature also seems to contradict its privacy features:
> Bluetooth signal identifiers transmitted by AirTag rotate frequently to prevent unwanted location tracking.
But also, in the next sentence:
> iOS devices can also detect an AirTag that isn’t with its owner, and notify the user if an unknown AirTag is seen to be traveling with them from place to place over time.
If an AirTag is supposed to be "anonymous", then how can a user be informed that this tag has been seen with them over an extended period? This would mean that there is a way to identify a particular AirTag in the first place.
My guess would be that you, as the tag owner, locally store the master beacon key and can use it to derive key required to decrypt received beacon payloads for your own tags. You can then filter out your own and approximate how many others (which you cannot link over time) you permanently see. If it is more than one most of the time, you’re probably tagged without your consent.
Edit: looks like it doesn't start beeping for three days (though Apple can change this server-side if they decide three days was a bad choice), which seems like way too long. A stalker could probably make good use of this in just a few hours, let alone three days.
The stalking potential is greatly reduced if the victim has an android as the location will only be sent when its detected by an iphone.
If the stalkee has an android they will never know. Their position will be snitched by every iDevice they come near.
"Lost devices. Devices that determine to be in a lost state start sending out BLE advertisements with a public key to be discovered by finder devices. Devices are considered to be lost when they lose Internet connectivity.
Third-party accessories [6] are small battery-powered devices that can be attached to a personal item and are set up through an owner device.
Accessories are determined to be lost when they lose their BLE connection to the owner device. Finder devices.
Finder devices form the core of the OF network. As of 2020, only iPhones and iPads with a GPS module are offering finder capabilities. Finder devices can discover lost devices and accessories by scanning for BLE advertisements. Upon receiving an OF advertisement, a finder creates an end-to-end encrypted location report that includes its current location and sends it to Apple’s servers."
Elsewhere, it is clear that this operates even when flight mode is enabled.
If you can't stand criticism of Apple, please fuck off back to reddit and fanboi there.
Conceivably the beacons co-operate in preventing tracking by conversing with iPhones nearby to store a random code supplied by the phone for a period of time, and allowing any iDevice to ask for the list. If your iDevice sees the same random code it transmitted to a stranger beacon appear in multiple time periods it knows it is colocated.
I would guess that the colocation feature would allow you to track devices actively (tailing someone).
Spies will have to be alert the potential for both exposure and tracking. Hopefully Apple commissions Spy Vs Spy ad campaigns!
Random tags passing by wouldn't maintain the same distance or RSSI, and they wouldn't be spaced perfectly apart in time either.
Of course I'm making assumptions here about the key rotation frequency, or even if it's a regular intervals. I guess if you're spending a lot of time in crowds, the rotating beacon that's with you would be hard to pick out of the myriad other beacons coming within range all the time. ("Was that a key rotation, or another person?")
Also, I wonder if it is a fixed time with no overlap? Because you could certainly track someone, eg through a shopping centre, by seeing when a beacon turns off and then listening to new beacons. Correlation would be trivial. And if the e.g. 30m clock is accurate then you could reidentify hours later by just listening to the rollover time, so they would have to vary the rollover at least.
I wonder about false alarms, because you can easily sit on commuter train for an hour and have someone next to you, even more so for long distance travel.
Apply this principle to everything apple does and says about privacy and you see it everywhere in their products.
Even more cynically, you can say it's private from their competitors.
I've heard this from a few people recently, but I don't understand the implied criticism. What should Apple do here? Keep my data mostly private but also slip a copy of it to Google and Microsoft?
Obviously not. Through the high purchase price of their products, I'm paying (and trusting) Apple to manage my privacy and keep it private from everyone else. The fact that "everyone" necessarily includes all of Apple's competitors isn't just irrelevant, it's a red herring.
In other instances where Apple does have access to your data, there is a plausible justification for that access and no evidence shown where Apple has ever abused that access for commercial gain.
That is one example of many where apple could do it, but doesn't. To do many things on your apple device requires an apple id, which requires a phone number which is linked to identity. Location services uploads your location to apple constantly via close by wifi APs + GPS location, there is no option to do GPS only location w/ no network activity. All of this info is one secret supoena away to be uploaded to violent people with guns. YOU may trust your nice government, but many do not have the luxury of living in such a nice place.
Over and over again, you see the pattern of apple doing of 'private from everyone, except us'. And not mentioning the 'but us' part.
Obviously Apple is internally maintaining an association between the AirTag's permanent identifier, and its current temporary signal identifier.
This isn't E2EE or anything.
"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."
So no, Apple actively doesn't want to know anything. I'd wager a guess that the airtag query system is using the same kind of method as the COVID tracker API.
"Whether attached to a handbag, keys, backpack, or other items, AirTag taps into the vast, global Find My network1 and can help locate a lost item, all while keeping location data private and anonymous with end-to-end encryption."
I think it's referring to other aspects of the system -- this sentence is specifically referring to location data, not Bluetooth ID's.
In any case, my point remains that obviously Apple has to be internally associating the Bluetooth ID's with owner ID's.
They should have been practically begging oems to embed it.
I tried a couple of cheap Tile competitors but they all wanted you to use their apps and thus weren't very valuable. I almost bought some Tile products around the last Apple event in Fall 2020 but waited because I thought AirTags were going to be released then.
I'm still tracker-less so I'll be picking up a 4 pack of these and I am excited to use them. Here in the US at least, Apple has great marketshare to support a service like this and a proven track record with Find My already. I'm planning a cross country road trip that starts in about 2 months, and I'll feel a lot better about not accidentally leaving my wallet behind at campsite or hotel while I'm in a rush to get back on the road. Then, even if I did, all it takes to hopefully get my stuff back is for someone with an iPhone to walk by it to update it's location.
Unless Apple royally screws up this rollout, I don't see how Tile can continue to dominate marketshare for this sector.
>[...] And even if users don’t have an iOS device, an AirTag separated from its owner for an extended period of time will play a sound when moved to draw attention to it. If a user detects an unknown AirTag, they can tap it with their iPhone or NFC-capable device and instructions will guide them to disable the unknown AirTag.
It is better supported on iPhones, but that's acceptable:
>iOS devices can also detect an AirTag that isn’t with its owner, and notify the user if an unknown AirTag is seen to be traveling with them from place to place over time.
I'd like this detection to come in stock Android, similar to how the Contact Tracing thing was shared b/w Apple/Google.
This would be an ideal scenario, even if it took longer to roll out for Android phones thanks to the OS fragmentation
Even if that's not happening, I think its not entirely unreasonable for some reliable third party app to pop up an make disabling the AirTags with an Android device almost as easy as an iPhone.
Tile uses everyone with the tile app installed.
It's not the same by sheer numbers
Imagine I'm some kind of creep looking for victims in a club or whatever. I'm planning to accomplish this by dropping Tiles into their bags.
Statistically, how many Tiles would I need to buy and sneak onto persons in order to have a reasonable chance of snaring a victim who just happens to have the Tile app installed? 50? 100? 1000? Not impossible, but not particularly feasible.
How many AirTags would I need to sneak onto victims? Perhaps only one, if they happen to use their phone in public and I see it's from Apple -- that's something I can tell at a glance, unlike wondering if they have the Tile app installed.
Even a hairbrush: http://www.mccalltech.net/images/0TrackBrush.jpg
What is certain is that we'll see sophisticated modifications to AirTags that (1) disable the beep, (2) disable anti-stalking.
Theoretically remote attestation and self-disabling anti-tamper could be used, but the potential wins for bypassing the Apple protocol are enormous, the Holy Grail of surveillance espionage.
Why are firmware modifications for this "certain" first off?
And what modifications allow this to work as designed without setting off anti-stalking? If you somehow change the ID it's reporting which afaik is a signed value anyways, how are you going to get access to it's location?
If you don't disable anti-stalking then this is no better than run of the mill GPS trackers which can already run for days to weeks
If you can change the ID you can cycle through a list of valid IDs. You can even use it for bit rate comms, ~16 bits an hour or something, which is enough to signal events like "number of iDevices in vicinity", or, if other hardware is used, step count/hour, which works even in GPS denied environments.
The beacon location reported by Find My is generated by the reporting phones' GPS/cellular/wifi location system.
Regular GPS trackers have no means to exfil their data. They don't work in GPS denied environments (poor inside buildings, underground, anywhere a $20 jammer is enabled). OCGs routinely use low power GPS jammers now. Using GPS or 3G requires much more energy, and 3G is easily detected by motivated groups.
So while it might not be great for stalking your partner/ex, it is very tempting for professionals.
... yeah I'm not going to play this game.
Nation states are certainly doing better than AirTags if that's what you're worried about Secret Agent.
Passive trackers will let you pinpoint someone indefinitely.
And someone motivated is going to catch your spurious 3G emissions but miss an AirTag literally designed to be noticable?
Puhlease. If a nation state is chasing you and this is what turns the tides I strongly suggest turning yourself into their embassy now, save yourself the trouble.
Nation states don't have a global network of iPhones.
> Passive trackers will let you pinpoint someone indefinitely.
How?
> Puhlease. If a nation state is chasing you and this is what turns the tides I strongly suggest turning yourself into their embassy now, save yourself the trouble.
"Puhlease" enjoy pretending that nation states are all IDF 8200 elite cyber hackers. The future ubiquity and deniability of these devices will see them feature widely. And some people do need to defend against skilled attackers who can buy custom gear from Shenzhen, and telling them to give up is stupid.
If an actual nation state is out to get you what's so difficult about tracking you from half a mile away? Surely they're not chasing someone who's actively evading them since you think this person won't find an... AirTag. Something that's actively transmitting at regular intervals and has NFC capabilities.
https://marshallradio.com/ww/product/field-marshall-digital-...
> Adding a Field Marshall UHF to your GPS system allows you to precisely locate the transmitter inside GPS denied environments (inside a building, or locate the signals when GPS satellites are blocked), or when the transmitter is in thick cover.
Or attaching a GPS tracker that logs to it's internal storage that they then recover?
> enjoy pretending that nation states are all IDF 8200 elite cyber hackers
You can't even stay internally consistent to your own fantasy. First you're saying these people will crack Apple's state-of-the-art firmware systems on a brand new platform and signing arrangements to boot, now suddenly they're script kiddies?
And honestly it's disgusting how shameless you are about shoving words in my mouth "telling them to give up" where the fuck did I say that?
Go find something useful to do kid.
- How does the anti stalking alert in apartment buildings or people frequently in close proximity for long periods of time?
- Since they considered that this is a risk in the first place then are non Apple users are risk here too? Did they provide appropriate mitigations for them as well?
- What's the future for the Find My network? It would be interesting to standardize and allow for more interoperability in the Find My network.
For a stolen item you'd have that much time to track it down.
They could even track if different non-owned tags track the same person to stop stalkers diligent enough to swap these frequently.
It's an impressively good balancing of usefulness and avoiding bad spillover effects.
> I talked to folks from Apple today about some of this. The timeout period for when an AirTag will play a sound if separated from its owner is currently three days — but that’s not baked into the AirTags themselves. It’s a server-side setting in the Find My network, so Apple can adjust it if real-world use suggests that three days is too long or too short.
> The “NFC-capable device” thing means Android phones.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/04/20/moren-fine-prin...
It would make sense to do the anti stalking
notification after say 4 days
You haven't thought this through! Seriously, the use cases for 96 hours of tracking are frightening.
1. Meet victim in club/bus/supermarket/wherever
2. Drop AirTag in their bag/pocket/whatever.
3. Now you know where they live and/or work assuming they go to one of those places in the next 96 hours.
Meet victim in club/bus/supermarket/wherever
I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is how stalking works in practice. People don't stalk random strangers they meet in the supermarket. They stalk former partners, and (more rarely) people they've developed an obsession about. That means the stalker has to worry about being recognized by the victim, and consequently will have fewer opportunities to plant a device and retrieve a device than you imagine.
Furthermore, while being tracked for up to 96 hours indeed is a frightening thought, the typical stalker's goal is to track their victim at all times. Having to plant and retrieve a device at least every four days, without being detected by the victim, makes for a very impractical way to achieve that goal.
I'm not an expert, but I don't think this is how
stalking works in practice. People don't stalk random
strangers they meet in the supermarket. They stalk
former partners, and (more rarely) people they've
developed an obsession about.
However, if not properly safeguarded, this sort of tech clearly can enable some new types of bad behavior.
Ultimately I'm a technology optimist and we shouldn't reject new tech simply because it might be misused. However it's also true that even the most cursory glance at history shows us that just about any new technology is also used for nefarious purposes.
But of course as I linked in another comment, trackers have been fit into anything and everything now. Hairbrushes, random trinkets like clocks, even a phone charging brick itself
If it's someone's backpack or leather jacket, it won't be obvious in any way if there's an AirTag slid deep into some pocket.
Sure a professional thief might check, but plenty of things are stolen casually by people who simply see something lying around.
...putting it in a faraday bag? Since tags are cheap, they can even smash it.
A related question: can you geofence an airtag so that you are notified if an item leaves an area without you? This could be especially helpful for things like bikes that you would park for long periods of time and would want to know if they’re being moved by someone other than you.
If they're outside they can get gravely injured as they pass through the smallest holes and cracks. There are very NSFL images of resulting injuries. The collars often lead to suffocation or very bloody scenes - no matter how well they seem to fit.
https://www.pdsa.org.uk/taking-care-of-your-pet/looking-afte...
> Available from today (April 7, 2021), the latest VanMoof S3 & X3 bikes will work with Apple’s Find My app, which means you can track your ride securely using the vast and global Find My network, made up of hundreds of millions of Apple devices. With the new Items tab in the Find My app, you can locate your bike on a map from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
A shame. It would've been cool standing at that conveyor belt at the airport and rather than staring at the luggage as it comes, being able to sense one's own stuff.
Also, seems that it's not suitable for putting on a cat or dog's collar for the same reason.
Think about a stalker dropping a tracker into the pocket/bag/etc of their victim.
They slip a tracker in their co-worker's bag at the end of the day. Coworker goes home. Attacker knows where they live now.
Or, maybe it's a stranger on the bus. Or in a club.
The victim is likely going to be home in less than a few hours. Perhaps less than an hour.
No, I don't think so.
As I understand it, the idea is that AirTags would only beep if they detect being moved (probably, accelerometer/motion based, as everything else is probably energy cost-prohibitive). So, no, a forgotten keychain left on a table shouldn't beep on its own, unless someone takes it and carries with themselves for some time. It shouldn't even beep if your coworker notices your keys and moves them to another room for safekeeping.
The idea is that it should eventually alert if you put a tag in someone's back pocket and you or they walk away.
Of course, if the person being stalked wasn't carrying a cell phone, then this raises the possibility the anti-stalking wouldn't be activated.
I could see businesses being a lot more willing to loan equipment for a trial period if they could put a tag on it.
you're not supposed to put batteries in your luggage
Seems like it should be able to detect that it's always traveling together with a single Android phone's WiFi signal, for example.
However it might be better to disconect the speaker which should save lots of energy the peeper would consume otherwise.
I don't think apple checks for the speeker to be connected if the speaker breaks for example it would make the tag unusable resulting in more warrenty complains.
It's hard to make tracking devices hidden. They need to phone home, so that means they emit a signal. Someone can sniff that out using a RF detector. that's why tracking devices tend to be integrated into the product itself (eg. into the ECU for cars, or part of the CPU/motherboard for computers).
They wouldn't because we already have TONS of historical data that thieves don't do that.
I am a motorcycle lover and like every owner of a nice bike I know that apart from properly chaining your bike down the single most effective way of retrieving your bike back is by having a tracker on it. In fact some insurance companies give a big discount if you have a professionally mounted tracker on your bike.
History has shown that despite motorcycles being worth 10-20k thieves still don't go through the effort of locating and removing a GPS tracker. What they do is the following... they steal your bike and only move it like 10 streets further away from its original location into some hidden dark dead end alley where no person would normally go and where the owner wouldn't find it by accident. Then they leave it there standing for like 2 weeks and if nobody comes to pick it up within those 2 weeks then they know there is no GPS tracker at which point they can safely take it back to their garage where it gets dismantled into and rebuild. Otherwise they risk of having their garage being exposed.
Now you might ask why only take it 10 streets further away? Because the easiest way is to cut a chain or some poor security and then wheel it down the road for 5 minutes. Only two weeks later they come with a proper vehicle to transport it away.
So if professional thieves can't be bothered (or is just practically too difficult) to locate a tracker then I'm sure normal opportunistic thieves won't be able either.
Their modus operandi is to throw a bicycle into a truck or van, move them in lots of fifty across state lines, and tear them down to components.
Any trackers will be quickly rendered useless once they're in the van, and immediately found and discarded.
I'm definitely planning on getting Airtags for my bikes, but mostly for amusement and occasionally forgetting where I parked, I don't have much faith in them as an anti-theft device.
You can build a custom LoRa based tracker with 100+km range (line of sight), a van won't disable that. You'll have to use signal triangulation, though, because GPS reception in a van won't be great.
For a custom solution, ExpressLRS [2] is an open source system that can be flashed to FrSky R9mm receivers that you can hack on to add features you want. Or buy Semtech [3] and ESP32 modules and build your own hardware to maximize transmit power (standard hobby receivers only have 25-40mW telemetry)
PS. TTGO LORA32 modules [4] already have ESP32 and Semtech module assembled, only need flashing (again, lower power than a dedicated 30dbm module)
[1] https://www.team-blacksheep.com/products/prod:xf_nano_div_rx
[2] https://github.com/ExpressLRS/ExpressLRS
[1] http://www.phreakmonkey.com/2016/08/towl-telemetry-over-oppo...
They do have an easier job, I think, given that bicycles don't usually weigh between 400lb (sports motorcycles) and 900lb (cruisers).
still kind of silly since a saddle is an easily stolen part
Seems feasible that having a sniffer for fancy apple trackers could locate some potentially valuable things to steal.
The difference between the GPS and these tags is they actively respond to bluetooth. If you can sniff the bluetooth traffic then you would be able to detect them easily?
The other question is: when presented with evidence of stolen property, will the local PD enforce the law and assist with the retrieval of said property?
To be fair when my bicycle was stolen the police did care, but they were quite frank with me about the odds of recovery being virtually zero despite having CCTV of the incident and the getaway vehicle.
Tracking with AirTags assumes the thief (or someone closeby) uses an iPhone AND has the 'Fine my' feature activated, which is, given how motorcycle thieves operate in some areas of the world, is relatively unlikely. So you're probably still better off using a GPS+GSM tracker
In fact I would hazard to say most are not.
A few smart thieves will share the tricks. Probably many smart peoples are even going to try building detector devices.
Vs.
"AirTag notifies bike thief about itself"
For Apple this is a no-brainer.
Another case of your device working against your interests.
I don't care if you have something to hide or not. This just sucks at a fundamental level.
Apple's trying to prevent misuse of their device. They want you to use it to find your keys, not your ex. If you consider that an invalid limitation of your device (by notifying your ex that they seem to be carrying an unknown tracker)... well, let's just say I disagree.
And this can be perceived as - arguably - restrictive and user-hostile by some.
As far as I can tell from reading the article, all it does is say, "Hey, did you know you've been carrying around a tracker that's not yours?" Your cat or your luggage don't care if you attach a tracker to them. Your ex does.
Just go buy some other tracker for your cat or whatever.
Current GPS collars are absolutely trash (3 day battery life, bulky, etc), this would be about 10,000 times better if effective. But if it starts beeping randomly unprompted and scares the dog, it's a problem.
Everyone has their own needs, requirements and ideas what's essential and what's not. Importance and justifications are subjective matters.
Only thing everyone can certainly agree on that those use cases were not deemed important (or even considered) by Apple, as they would've designed it differently otherwise.
That’s anti-user. The user is the one trying to do the tracking.
Anyways, I don't think there was ever any intent for AirTags to function as an anti-theft tracking device. Anti-theft is much harder to do well than anti-loss (which is what Apple is targeting), and is very difficult to distinguish from stalkerware for a mass-market product.
But the "anti-stalking" feature will notify someone if an AirTag they don't own appears to be traveling with them.
Does this render it useless for anti-theft, then? Since it will just notify a thief that the bike they just stole is being tracked, and they can look for the AirTag and throw it in the nearest trash can?
Not criticizing Apple here -- anti-stalking is super-important -- but just looking for clarification if this will help you find lost items, but not stolen ones.