I once left my umbrella in a hire car. It took me 2 weeks to realize it was missing. Turns out no one touched it and I could see it on the map, in the parking lot of the hire car company. So I showed up, and within minutes, we pinned down which car it was in. Without Airtag, I would not even remember where I could have possibly left it, after two weeks! Learnt my lesson to turn on separation alert after that.
Now I need a smaller Airtag for my sunglasses — expensive and easy to leave behind.
Needing an Airtag is like needing a case for your phone. A lot of people keep dropping their phone so they put a case on it. In 13 years of owning a smart phone, I've never dropped mine. But I don't claim that phone cases are only useful if you throw your partner's phone off the balcony after a fight.
You are missing the point.
They are not the target audience, but they are affected negatively by it regardless. It's for Apple users at the expense of everyone else.
The criticism is not about the individual utility of airtags, it's about how it creates a privacy issue for everyone who is not an Apple user.
And you should read past the first line.
> The criticism is not about the individual utility of airtags, it's about how it creates a privacy issue for everyone who is not an Apple user.
In the same manner, it’s not about utility of individual phone cases, it’s about all the plastic waste it creates for the whole planet.
Normally I buy $10 umbrellas from Australia's big hardware store chain. They aren't great but they're easily robust enough to last for a year or two. (Cheap umbrellas from anywhere else tend to break if you look at them funny, and they rust if you get them wet.)
I'd be willing to pay $120 AUD (or $80 USD) for an umbrella that was seriously good quality, recognising that the economics imply that it would need to last for at least a decade to be cost competitive.
It's why Amsterdam bicyclists don't ride $5000 bikes.
*Especially in Tokyo. If you drop a wallet full of cash on the street in Tokyo, someone will chase you down to return it. But if you turn your back on your umbrella in Tokyo, kiss it goodbye. Then you have to steal another one.
How civilized, I thought, that a company would provide free umbrellas to shoppers when it rains, and so I took one.
Turns out that's where you out your umbrella when entering the store...
https://au.davekny.com/ has good stuff although I haven't had one long enough (only 5 years) to attest its durability.
They also have some promising guarantee terms: https://au.davekny.com/pages/lifetime-guarantee
My partner has probably been through about ten umbrellas in the same time-span, because she was reluctant to spend the modest extra amount for something she doubted would last so long. I recently bought her the same model of umbrella from MUJI, although it’s too early to say whether the company has maintained the build quality.
I think it’s this one (but hard to tell on their awful website) https://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?PID=14951&qclr=45503441...
Sports direct (of all places) ships them to Australia and they are around half of your budget (https://au.sportsdirect.com/fulton).
Totally agree with your point.
That is hardly true. Case in point - my wife put down her keys at a store and managed to leave without noticing (this was early after AirTags hit the market). I was driving and we left without recognizing that a few hundred dollars of keys had been lost.
Later that day, we noticed. She called a few stores all said there were no keys found. We then tracked the AirTag - and in fact, it was at the store. We returned and were able to locate it, at one of the registers in a lost and found. We never would have found that it not for the AirTag.
Since then, we’ve used them to not leave things behind, to find things lost at home and elsewhere. There are indeed many legitimate uses despite your want to claim otherwise.
What do you mean by "a few hundred dollars of keys?" Do hardware stores charge more than a few dollars per key in your area? Were these private keys to a crypto wallet?
Edit, more things that are expensive:
- if you live in an apartment with nfc entry, they might charge an arm and a leg to replace it, even if the actual device is only a few dollars
- IDK how much it costs to replace an apartment mailbox key, but I've been warned that if you lose one they need to re-key the whole mailbox
- maybe you don't feel safe with a house key in the wild and need to re-key your house (same for your car/s)
- if you have work keys, they might over-charge to replace lost keys
That's just theft — plain and simple. The only half valid argument I've heard is to discourage carelessness leading to loss of the key and weakening of the building security. But that's moot in places where the garage gate is broken and left open half the year (my current place) or where people can casually wait for someone to walk in and tail gate them without anyone complaining.
By the way, I purchased a proxmark a long time ago to play with and to date, it has paid for itself many times over, by allowing me to carry my building keys the way I like to (cards vs bulky key fobs) by duplicating them where otherwise it would cost $100 or impossible.
Can't wait for keys on Apple Wallet to become mainstream.
In my case, with a London apartment, it's an "Administrative Fee", £150 to replace your lost fob.
Then for my costs as an individual, it was not only that fee, but also new locks for external door(s) and mail box, another administrative fee for the communal meter cabinet/room key, new Kensington lock and a car key/fob when my wife's keys were "lost in a known location yet never again found".
That is to say, "losing" those keys is a £300-500 affair.
Some tags are easier to read than others. But so far, with a bit of digging around the net, I've been able to read various key cards and copy them.
- U2F authentication keys
- really expensive AirTag holders (https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMN73AM/A/airtag-herm%C3%...)
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMN73AM/A/airtag-herm%C3%...
I didn’t make up those numbers.
Its a clever little device that will let you rekey a lock yourself with a new key as long as you still have at least one of the original keys.
If you're living in an apartment complex or skyscraper, re-keying can get extremely expensive.
A replacement key for my wife's car costs $1,200. And it's not even a newer, or expensive car.
It's been a long time since you could get many car keys done at a hardware store.
And it's not even the electronics anymore. One locksmith I called said it's about the fancy engraving. They can't afford the tools to do that kind of work, and they just refer people to the dealer and to suck up the $1,200.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if that might have been covered under insurance.
I feel like this is ignoring the fact that if any company other than Apple made these trackers, it wouldn't do this with anyone's phones. The fact that these work out of the box with iPhones is a bonus, not an entitlement that any phone of any brand should have full support for them without installing any apps and without the user even knowing that the product exists.
> All a stalker needs to do, is remove the speaker.
I guess they could make the packaging more tamper resistant somehow, but again this is kind of shifting the goals a bit. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that every device will be physically resistant to modifications that would enhance illegal use. An iPhone with the speaker removed and screen cable cut to look dead would make a pretty good tracker too.
> AirTags are cheaper than competing GPS trackers, most of which require subscriptions.
If you are risking prison time to commit premeditated violence, I think you can spare a few extra bucks for the best technology available. I'm pretty sure professional hitman services run well into the trunk loaded with bags of cash territory.
Isn't this the whole clue, rather than just a bonus? When someone slips an AirTag on to you every single iPhone in the world forms a sort of ad-hoc spying network against you. Without you or the iPhone's owners knowing.
Right, and Apple have provided everything that AOSP would need to implement this, someone even made their own version of the entire Find My client long ago (https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack), so technically AOSP could even integrate using Find My, although I imagine Apples lawyers would have a field day with this if they did.
Identifying the AirTags has also been implemented as a background service by the same organisation as above (https://github.com/seemoo-lab/AirGuard).
> I guess they could make the packaging more tamper resistant somehow, but again this is kind of shifting the goals a bit. I don't think it's reasonable to expect that every device will be physically resistant to modifications that would enhance illegal use. An iPhone with the speaker removed and screen cable cut to look dead would make a pretty good tracker too.
This. Plus, the noise AirTags make isn't the only way of finding them, you get the notifications, and soon (when the changes mentioned in the article are implemented) it'll be easier to find them using precision finding.
Stolen iPhones should already be parts only because of activation lock.
Perhaps removing them from the Find My network and only operating locally would be a better option, but I just can’t see them going back on it at this point.
They just didn't have the reach that Apple has, by far.
I relate to it and respect it, but it's doubtful anyone would switch to iPhone because of AirTags. Samsung and others also make trackers, and you don't need the Find My network if you lost your keys inside your house, any tracker will do.
> Not only are air tags useful, but I'm sure that there are people who would be willing to switch to iOS surely to get access to airtags.
After a Google search, I can't find a single anecdote of this from reddit or elsewhere. I doubt it's even a blip on Apple's balance sheet.
I am so happy that these exist.
We can have nice things even if they can get abused, stalkers are going to stalk and have superior alternatives without Apple. These new features are solely intended to scare them off into using their old methods. So if stalkers are going to do what they do anyway, I might as well find my items, thanks.
Edit: Also, in your own point, you say "AirTags are cheaper than competing GPS trackers, most of which require subscriptions."
Has a tracker costing too much ever stopped a stalker? For a creep, the difference between $25 one time and $10-20 a month for a more-accurate GPS tracker is unimportant. They'll pay the price of Netflix to continue their creepiness.
Remember that stalking isn't a profession; it's often a crime of opportunity, with plenty of reported cases of e.g. people slipping GPS trackers into spouses' cars/bags before or during divorces.
Those people aren't sophisticated, and might go on Amazon and see Tiles that won't work (sparse detection network), or GPS trackers that cost the same as AirTags and have a monthly subscription. Or they could just pick a spare AirTag they have, and use that, because they know their spouse has an Android and wouldn't detect it.
Again, the problem isn't that AirTags have been nerfed into uselessness because of anti-stalking protection. The problem is that AirTags still, to this day, present a major Android stalking risk (no AirTags notifications on Android with Apple's app, you have to manually scan), and Apple seems uninterested in doing anything about it (or even promising to do anything about it, since this announcement doesn't mention Android).
It is foolish to underestimate stalkers and stereotype it as just a crime of opportunity.
> "problem is that AirTags still, to this day, present a major Android stalking risk"
Ironically, so did Tile for the last 8 years, and Samsung's own Galaxy trackers for Android, but there is no outcry about them. Also, considering how long Tile has been on the market, this doesn't seem like a new issue. Also, Apple has built-in "Find My Friends" in iPhone. A stalker could just flip that on without telling the person being stalked (assuming he/she is close to him/her), and the phone would be tracking them, no tag necessary. Yet nobody ever hears about this being abused much.
> "AirTags have been nerfed into uselessness because of anti-stalking protection"
Hey, if I lose my wallet in my own home, it's great. If I can't find my wallet at the gas station, I can figure out where in the car it fell. There are plenty of ways it is still plenty useful. Also, if you are complaining about uselessness, maybe Apple should roll-back some anti-stalking protections but you'd be against that too.
This leaves you in the impossible position of wanting Apple to restrict it more (reduce stalking) and simultaneously unlock it more (to improve utility), all while competitors don't bother with stalking prevention at all.
It’s so frustrating to see this kind of thoughtless Apple criticism based on brand only when they so many things that are actually bad.
AirTags are better in nearly every way to the competition. They have considered design factors, like privacy, that no one else has. Yet, they are the bad guys that should never have released this product.
Apple should be releasing products like this. They offer significant improvements over their competitors because they consider more than pure profit seeking. AirTags without privacy protection is the same as everything else available, is cheaper to make and easier to design.
I like Apple pushing the bar here. Because their products are perfect, and balance different trade offs, they encourage other manufacturers to fill those gaps. This is a win that wasn’t happening when Tile was the dominant player.
https://help.apple.com/pdf/personal-safety/en_US/personal-sa...
(also a web version: https://support.apple.com/guide/personal-safety/welcome/web )
(and yes, it covers AirTags).
I never said Apple should unlock it more, I said they should discontinue it, and their executives displayed poor judgment in approving the product.
I never argued that AirTags were nerfed into uselessness, I responded to your argument that they were nerfed into becoming useless for stalking, which I don't think is true.
> Ironically, so did Tile for the last 8 years, and Samsung's own Galaxy trackers for Android, but there is no outcry about them
Plenty of people have iPads catching dust in drawers, who would never have bought Android tablets (or any tablet) if the iPad had never existed. It's the power of Apple's marketing. Anytime I argue against AirTags, I argue that availability is a game-changer, and nobody actually tried to address this argument convincingly.
- Someone at a club or rave might impulsively or drunkenly decide to remove the AirTag they use for their keyring, and slip it into someone's pocket. They might never have bought a tracker if Apple didn't have one.
- Again, the iPad-catching-dust-in-a-drawer argument. Plenty of people buy Apple products on a whim who would never have considered that product category if the Apple product didn't exist. iPads popularized tablets, Apple Watches popularized smartwatches (at least among US teens), AirPods popularized bluetooth earphones). Apple's marketing doesn't just increase sales for their products, it promotes the entire product category. People hear about iPad, are interested, and might buy an iPad or a cheaper competitor; when they would never have bought a tablet if the iPad hadn't created a "halo effect". You can argue the effect is less for AirTags, but don't tell me it's nonexistent!
- The copycat effect is strong among criminals. Ransomware attacks were almost nonexistent, and became common very rapidly, as awareness spread among criminals, as they rushed to take advantage of the opportunity before the crypto, legal, or antivirus ecosystems catch up and make it less rewarding. In 2009 around 1 in 13 stalkers used trackers of any kind; that number's surely gone up between 2009 and 2021 (AirTag release), but you really think that number won't go over the next few years, partly because of increased popular awareness of trackers?
> It is foolish to underestimate stalkers and stereotype it as just a crime of opportunity.
I said often a crime of opportunity, not always (or even mostly), and that those for whom it was a crime of opportunity, weren't sophisticated. The average bank robber might have done a good deal of research on bank security systems and circumvention. The average stalker might not think of using GPS tracking unless he's reminded of their existence, since there are so many other methods (likely, most stalking is online nowadays). Hence my "availability" argument.
Every Android user needs Airguard, which will scan constantly for airtags. It's open source
I bet you Google has had conversations about integrating some kind of airtag tracking feature into their software.
The OP is right. Airtags are not the greatest idea and the abuse of them is disastrous for people who are not on the apple ecosystem.
The attitude of apple so far has been horrible... Their app sucks.. only works when you open it.... They can do better but refuse to, because they don't care for our safety unless we buy an Apple product.
Sorry but that's unacceptable
Can you pay for that subscription of a tracker with an anonymous payment? If someone was to find a tracker, and even having to go through court orders of whatever type, the subscriber could be found out. I think that would be the bigger deterrent for a thinking stalker than the price as that's the cost of doing business. (shivers from making stalking out to be a sane thing) Lot's of plausible deniability, "oops, i lost that sometime ago, and totally forgot to play dark pattern UI games to end my auto-pay subscription. totally wasn't me, we swears it."
Very true, the only real difference is that Airtags are simply a better product, but that means their use as stalking devices (along with their legitimate uses) is now much more practical and casual.
I think the real long-term solution is for Apple to open up the U1 chip/protocol so at the very least Google/Tile/Samsung are able to implement the same countermeasures Apple has, if not use it in their own tracker devices. It would probably cost them revenue, but I imagine it would be worth it compared to the negative press they're getting from this, particularly since they're also making huge strategic missteps wrt App Store 3rd party payments.
Or with decent operational security can you purchase and activate airtags in an untraceable way?
If you can that undermines your point, however if you can't then your making a very good point.
If a user has that level of tech savvy, there are plenty of other cellular GPS devices they could use.
I suspect they could get several cellular GPS devices for the cost of an iPhone + some AirTags - meaning they could easily offer up one or two sacrificial ones for easy finding in order to hide a smaller one "in plain sight" (as it were.)
Or they could just hire a private detective to do some stalking for them.
Or someone even less scrupulous for even less money, I'd assume?
People are subjecting themselves to voluntary surveillance and it's amazing to watch, Apple's promise to cooperate with "Law Enforcement" in most of the world was chilling. J Edgar Hoover would have creamed his pants - "Did you say MLK Jr. has several airtags? I want daily updates on where he's going."
Most criminals wouldn't be doing what they're doing anyway if they were clever or did a modicum of research on what they can actually get away with.
It is the usual Apple strategy for decades. AirTags product play was the technological groundwork for UWB and possibly AR/VR. They always need a product, hobby or something adjacent to iron out all the problems. Chip Packaging, Next Gen OLED, Low Power Profiling all landed on Apple Watch first before they moved to iPhone. The Sound work on AirPod before they moved to HomePod and later MacBook and iPad.
This way they could spread their R&D and gain synergy across product range.
On the subject of tracking, I am not entirely sure AirTag, or the idea of Tagging ( so to speak ) is as useless as you claim it to be, but I am also extremely uneasy with the concept of AirTag. Like many if not all things in life, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
If you have an Apple AR/VR headset, you could just stick tiny AirTag-like trackers in your environment and the headset could use those for location.
Then offered a solution only to it's own customers.
That's some dystopian Apple shit right there.
Without that network it wouldn't work, you can't do this over the public internet without a swarm of physical devices you control on the other side. Companies like Apple remotely controlling devices used to mainly be a personal issue and thus a personal choice, you can just opt out of Apple to avoid it.
There is no opt out of Apple airtags.
Now every Apple user is an Apple snoop, your choice to use Apple affects _everyone_ around you... quite literally.
One could argue it's pretty distasteful to try to cash in on people's fears.
I was personally eager to pay for the cellular-equipped Watch as long as I was getting one, because even without an explicit data plan, if you fall off a bike, it will call 911 for you automatically unless you tell it not to.
That's insurance of a kind I couldn't purchase prior to that, in a form I would actually use and have on me if this actually happened. Fine by me.
The older you get, the more ways to fall down and need 911 start to exist. I'm okay with Apple "cashing in" on that.
Survival food? Fear.
Antivirus software? Fear.
Expensive Organic Cat Food? Fear (of the inorganic cheap food).
LifeLock? Fear.
Insurance of any kind? Fear.
Solar panels for off-grid? Fear (of the grid going down).
Your cousin's extensive gun collection? Fear (if things get bad).
And so on...
Solar panels is pretty much targeted as a way to avoid high utility bills, trying to go green, etc. If you're in a circle of consipiracy types, then maybe the off-grid aspect is preached more. Mainly though, it's just about avoiding the bills, and maybe avoiding power interruptions. That requires batteries though. That might qualify as fear advertising.
They expect me to consent to having my physical location tracked by Apple in order to avoid having my physical location tracked by someone other than Apple. Unbelievable.
So: sort out the privacy implications with a low-priority product like AirTag first.
But I am not a guessing person. ;)
I didn’t want my tile part of their “network”, I didn’t want other tile users to relay the location, I didn’t want my phone relaying other tile users’ locations. I didn’t want my tiles location going to any server at any point. I just wanted a to be able to make my wallet beep if I’m near enough to it for it to be in range of my phone. But the rest of the “features” couldn’t be disabled, so I threw my tiles out.
And none of these problems are airtag specific. You can buy fairly accurate GPS trackers for about $30 that don't even have the android scan feature.
Also, AirTags look far more innocent, giving a plausible deniability excuse to a potential stalker. Oh, that's where I lost that key, it's on the floor of your car! With specialised tracker that excuse won't work.
I mean, increase from 0.00001% to 0.0001% is still significant and yet I still wouldn't worry about it in the slightest.
I think there's probably a little gender bias at play in your risk estimation. I too am not particularly worried about someone stalking my 6ft ass - but I'd say a majority of my female friends have experiences with stalking at some point in their life.
With statistical arguments, why do we spend so many resources on prevention of anything, e.g. cancer, when it only impacts a small number of people?
This kind of argument always comes down to choice. You care or you don't. Hard to argue. If you don't care about the fate of those "few", mostly women, well... there is no law of physics that I could throw at you, my negative judgement of your argument is not based on anything hard. Which is the case for a huge amount of such choices. You can have a society based on and steered by pure statistics and benefits, but what you will miss is that the very nature of such a society changes because you cannot put that into numbers.
The core of the argument is qualitative, which does not lend itself well to number-based reasoning.
I don't know why would you say such a thing.
Let me give you another example - the chance of getting stabbed on the streets of London is probably comparably miniscule to being stalked.
And now if we extend that argument - almost 100% of people getting stabbed are men.
Does that mean that as a man I should start wearing a knife-proof vest? Is me refusing to do so "not caring" or that "it's only statistics for me"?
After all, people getting stabbed have a 100% risk of getting stabbed - that's a pointless statement if I have ever seen one.
I just don't understand the aggression of that statement - just because my gender is statistically unlikely to be stalked doesn't mean that somehow I suddenly don't care, or that women shouldn't care - just that in your daily life you should really consider how big of a risk something really is.
>>With statistical arguments, why do we spend so many resources on prevention of anything, e.g. cancer, when it only impacts a small number of people?
That isn't the argument though. We aren't arguing spending or not spending money to prevent a small number of cases(in which case I'd say absolutely this money should be spent). I replied to someone who said AirTags should be completely and entirely banned over a very small number of cases where they were used maliciously.
To use the cancer comparison - it's like someone saying that we should ban bacon worldwide because it's a known factor in certain cancers. I'd also argue against it, because the risk to any one individual from eating bacon is absolutely miniscule.
We should also stop producing cars because someone may crash someone.
Almost every technological device (or even a simple device) can be abused in wrong hands, nothing to do with Apple or AirTags.
i don't think the jury is out on airtags just yet. it's clearly revolutionary technology in terms of reach, for better or worse.
>I continue to think Apple should have never released AirTags to the public, and should discontinue it
This discussion is specifically about what Apple should do, so I don't see how this is relevant.
You sure have a lot of strong opinions on what apple "should" do.
Don't like it? It's a free market. Don't buy it and if you're afraid of being stalked, check out the app they released.
I wonder how come all you people come out of the woodwork now that Apple released this thing, yet when Tile did there was no such forced concerned anywhere.
People lose stuff all the time. That's why most public places have Lost And Founds.
[0]: https://f-droid.org/packages/de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection
> Display alert with sound: When AirTag automatically emits a sound to alert anyone nearby of its presence and is detected moving with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, we will also display an alert on your device that you can then take action on, like playing a sound or using Precision Finding, if available. This will help in cases where the AirTag may be in a location where it is hard to hear, or if the AirTag speaker has been tampered with.
What am I missing here-- it seems like it would have been trivial for Apple to add a microphone and have the AirTag stop sending location if the speaker isn't working. And have the firmware check the speaker is actually emitting sound, so no amount of physical rewiring can defeat it.
Anyone know why they didn't do this?
Finding a detached ski in titty-deep backcountry powder. AirTags can be literally life saving.
The fact that this post from Apple even EXISTS is direct acknowledgement of this being a horrible, dangerous mistake.
I know what they were trying to achieve, but it isn't worth the misuse by a long shot.
People will think it's not a problem until someone is tracked with one and killed.
The only thing I can think of (besides not selling them) is to open them up so they can be used with Android, and work with Google to add support for them to Android's OS.
So for stolen items, it is also useless.
It's not. I've recovered my phone after it was stolen by simply showing up to the house it wandered off to the next morning.
I've done this a number of times for friends (perhaps not really the brightest idea in retrospect) and you'd be surprised at how many folks simply apologize and hand it over when confronted. If they refuse, at least you tried.
Plenty of folks will take matters into their own hands for a $1,000 device that may be a source of their livelihood. Not everyone can simply walk away from that and absorb the loss.
Do these people expect to extort a finder's fee? I just don't think "criminal" enough to understand the value of a stolen phone.
> Plenty of folks will take matters into their own hands for a $1,000 device
I was once mugged at gun point and the 2 guys took my wallet/cash/phone. For some stupid reason, I thought it a good idea to kindly ask for my wallet and phone back by convincing them the phone was several generations older, it would be locked as soon as I returned home, as well as any cards in my wallet being canceled. Also, just to avoid the pain in the ass of dealing with the banks and not going to the DMV for a new ID. The 2 guys laughed, and gave me everything back except the cash. To this day, I don't know what made me think that was going to happen. However, as soon as I turned the corner, I was on the phone with 911.
About a decade ago when El Salvador was more dangerous, cell phone theft at gun point or knife point was more common. And well SIM cards used to be easier to remove from phones.
So the "good thieves" would allow you to remove the sim card from the phone before stealing it from you.
There were also times where the thief would be "pickier" than you, so if you had a very old or a damaged phone they would just give you your phone back after mugging you.
Two tricks were faking an ugly phone while carrying without a battery cover and cover it with duct tape. Or carrying a hidden good phone and a visible old phone.
I work on a busy robbery squad in London and iPhones are absolutely the target, whether they're locked or unlocked.
Is that a feeling or something you can source?
Source?
This isn't really under Apples control though. But I guess they could go out of their way to provide an AOSP pull request, that would be big of them.
does 2) get updated if someone deletes the app?
You misunderstand how airtags work. Airtags can't track an android user. It can only track people with iPhones (and possibly other apple devices).
> Your AirTag sends out a secure Bluetooth signal that can be detected by nearby devices in the Find My network. These devices send the location of your AirTag to iCloud — then you can go to the Find My app and see it on a map.
Airtags broadcast their ID via bluetooth and then any nearby iPhone with "Find My" enabled will be looking for these signals. If something is found, it sends the information to Apple and Apple then makes it available to the Airtag user.
The person or object doesn't need a phone (be it Android or iPhone) to be tracked. All Airtag needs is to be detected by someone else's iPhone.
Why are Android users vulnerable? Because iPhones will automatically warn you if a tag that isn't yours stays near you for a long time while Android users have no idea. Apple released an app for Android, but it requires users to perform manual scans...
You as Android user live in a an apartment block. Your neighbor below has iPhone. Your neighbor keep getting warnings on his phone that unrecognized AirTag is nearby. He can’t find any and doesn’t speak with you about it.
When moving across the city it would be even worse as there is no neighbor that would get the tracking warnings.
1) know AirTags exist (many obviously don't)
2) go out of their way to install Apple's Android AirTag scanner app (only 100k-500k worldwide have done so according to Google Play stats)
3) manually open the scanner app and scan, since it doesn't scan passively in the background; and even then, it won't help you find the speaker-less AirTag, since it doesn't tell you proximity & direction.
I continue to think Apple should have never released AirTags to the public, and should discontinue it. It's a very limited income stream, with limited use cases, and significantly increases the average person's risk of stalking.
Practically all positive social media coverage of AirTags involves someone tracking a stolen stolen items (car, bike). Those use cases are dead, since thieves with iPhones will get alerts, and most thieves with Android will know to scan for AirTags. And since most lost items turn into stolen items after a few hours, that removes most use cases involving losing objects in public.
That leaves "finding your keys within your home" as the only truly "officially supported" use case. Is that worth all the problems, and brand damage?
People will argue that stalkers could always buy trackers, but Apple increased their availability, ease-of-acquisition and ease-of-use by orders of magnitude. AirTags are cheaper than competing GPS trackers, most of which require subscriptions.
I remember seeing a chills-down-your-spine Apple Watch Series 7 TV ad, that featured beautiful remote nature landscapes, with the audio of 911 calls made from people's Apple Watches whose lives were saved by their Watch. Probably one of Apple's best and most impactful ad in the past decade. Compare that to AirTag's impact on Apple's brand. Why did Apple even bother?