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Comment by nikdoof | Hacker News Reader

I had the (dumb) idea of putting an AirTag in the family car, with the idea of being able to get a rough idea of where it is parked without depending on the terrible manf provided app. Every time my partner would drive the car it would ping away for a good 2-3 minutes due to the safety notifications. We're all part of the same family account, I don't really understand why it isn't an option to just ignore it.

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> We're all part of the same family account, I don't really understand why it isn't an option to just ignore it.

Because there are way too many spouses who go to as absurd lengths as setting private investigators on their partners. Stalking is just as much a concern inside families as it is for everyday persons - I might be tempted to say that the impact is worse given the potential for domestic violence. Or just imagine fundamentalist parents tracking their children to Planned Parenthood, a known LGBT-friendly place or whatever.

Ideally, there would be laws and regulations on trackers - and not just hardware-ones like the AirTags, but also software-based ones - that mandate features to prevent abuse, but sadly politicians haven't caught up on tech developments yet.

That still doesn't explain why it's not an option _for nikdoof's partner_ to choose to disable notifications from that particular AirPod. It makes total sense why nikdoof shouldn't be able to disable it for their partner.

> That still doesn't explain why it's not an option _for nikdoof's partner_ to choose to disable notifications from that particular AirPod.

Coercion, simple as that.

Wait, I might not be understanding the threat model here. The situation I imagined was: persons A and B are spouses, A wants to track B, so since A and B are in a family unit, A would want to disable the "You're being followed" alert for B without B knowing.

If A had to coerce B to turn of the alert, then the alert would have already served its purpose to tell B that they're being tracked by A. Moreover, there should still be some interface which B can use to figure out which AirTag is following them, so person B would 1) know that A is tracking them in general, and 2) have the ability to check whether A is tracking them in the moment.

Please explain what additional information or utility the continued notification is giving person B in this moment, or if my understanding of the hypothetical is wrong.

The threat model is that B has no way of knowing if she is actually being tracked (or if she could potentially be), or if A has just made empty threats. By coercion - or by manipulating the setting on his own on B's phone without A knowing -, A could prevent her from finding out that she could be tracked by someone.

And here we are - I haven’t bought any.

I want to track the dog, the shared cars’ keys. I want to track a shared bike. There are a load of items I’d put them on, but they aren’t just mine.

I don’t believe it’s a security thing. It’s the Apple way to get software to a point then just stop development, there are plenty of examples.

Apple however can't differentiate between someone wishing to track their dog and someone wishing to track their spouse - at that point basic ethics come to play. It's bad enough that AirTags even exist, the absurd amount of stalking cases proves it, but now Apple is all but forced to rein the bullshit in.

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