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Apple ought to be able to determine these concentrations/pathways of known-stolen phones with a query to whatever database backs Find My.

The query may be easy for the most-egregious operators.

It may be in Apple's interest to look for them, too. "Don't steal Apple phones. A trillion dollar company will pay a data scientist to bust you at scale."

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Find My doesn’t leak device location to Apple, so they do not have this data. (iirc it works something like this: the device includes a public key in its broadcasts and nearby devices encrypt their location for that key and send that blob to iCloud)

I can go to iCloud.com in a browser and ping my phone’s location. They may not be initiating these pings or storing the data, but it’s well within their capacity.

You could also voluntarily share the device location with Apple and friends as part of reporting it stolen. I don’t really care if Apple knows where my stolen phone is after it’s stolen.

(To be clear: no AirTags in this view. Macs, iPhones, iPads, Watches, and AirPods.)

You’re conflating Find My (Mac/iPhone) with AirTags.

"Find my Thief"

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