Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

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> New privacy warnings during AirTag setup: In an upcoming software update, every user setting up their AirTag for the first time will see a message that clearly states that AirTag is meant to track their own belongings, that using AirTag to track people without consent is a crime in many regions around the world, that AirTag is designed to be detected by victims,

I expect that this will be about as effective as the antipiracy warning at the beginning of every movie is.

> and that law enforcement can request identifying information about the owner of the AirTag.

Haven't there been a lot of stories of victims going to police with an AirTag, but this not happening?

> iPhone 11, iPhone 12, and iPhone 13 users will be able to use Precision Finding

How convenient. Now you need a modern, expensive Apple product to protect yourself from stalkers.

> How convenient. Now you need a modern, expensive Apple product to protect yourself from stalkers.

To be honest, this is more about technical capability than an intentional lock-out.

If older phones simply don't have the hardware to do precision finding, what would you propose Apple does? No precision finding for anyone?

I'm pretty sure many modern Android devices have the required technical functionality including UWB.

Airtags as global trackers should not exist. Finding things locally is a completely different use case.

Design products so this isn't a problem in the first place.

What do you want, a time machine?

You can still find the AirTag just fine, you just won't get the fancy "hot potato" animation and precision distance/direction that UWB offers.

I had someone in the law enforcement community reach out this week to ask if I knew of a way to determine an owner of an AirTag. I mentioned that they should be able to reach out to Apple to identify the owner, but, the serial number had been removed and wanted to know if there was a way to pull it from memory in a forensically safe way, as Apple required the serial number for these requests.

You can just hold the AirTag to an NFC-enabled phone and it'll open a webpage with the tag's details.

Honestly they should be required to offer an Android app that even though don't let you pair your own airtag, could notify you if someone is stalking you.

They do offer that - it's called 'Tracker Detect' on the play store (by Apple).

Unlike iPhones, it doesn't notify you. You have to open the app and start a scan manually every time.

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