I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress

Re:I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress by wklauss on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @07:05PM (#27124734)

Well, the problem here is that there's no easy way to prevent false positives otherwise. Imagine if you leave your phone at home but take your keys with an AirTag to go shopping using public transportation. Everyone on the bus or the train will be getting notifications about an AirTag that is following them. Same if you lost an item with an AirTag in that bus or train even if you had your phone with you when you boarded it in the first place.

That's why the alert only pops up when you get to a known location (home/office).

As for Android, I wonder if an app could be made for phones equipped with UWB radios that alerts you if a tag is always in close proximity, just based on the tags radio activity.

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Re:I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress by SilverRed on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @10:08PM (#27125873)

You don't need UWB for safety alerts. Simply bluetooth is enough. These tags send out a message every 2 seconds and have a predictable part of the rotating key so if you see the same fixed portion multiple times in a row, its very likely to be the same tag (unlikely that multiple different tags were near you one at a time with exactly the same fixed part) but if you do something like set up tracking stations at malls, there will be too many duplicates.

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