Re:An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking
by mschuster91 on Friday February 11, 2022 @06:50AM
(#30300310)
I wonder if Apple one day decides to put AirTags into iPhones and other iDevices - or if other vendors follow suit. Basically, that would eliminate phone theft since even shutting the phone off or, for those phones that still have replaceable batteries, removing said battery would still be discoverable.
Re:An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking
by rekoil on Friday February 11, 2022 @08:25AM
(#30301168)
Phones will still be stolen for spare parts. I don't see how that ever stops being a thing.
Re:An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking
by mschuster91 on Friday February 11, 2022 @08:28AM
(#30301197)
Yes, but they will now leave a breadcrumb location trail that can be followed up by the authorities, unless thieves become smart enough to disable the embedded AirTag while still on the road - and if that becomes hard enough to be infeasible, theft will become too risky.
Re:An update on AirTag and unwanted tracking
by morpheuskafka on Friday February 11, 2022 @09:56AM
(#30302159)
iPhones can already be tracked after power off via the Find Me network. But as far as I know removing the internal battery would still stop it. More importantly, so would a Farady cage.
Stolen iPhones should already be parts only because of activation lock.
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.