Hacker News Reader

Comment by pnw | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible suggestion because Apple has effectively removed the anti-theft features of Airtags in favor of protection against stalking.

The thief will be notified of the tag in less than an hour usually. I see the alert anytime I mind my friends dog. Typically within 45-60 minutes of my friend leaving, I get an alert which includes a map of where I was tracked and my friends email address.

The original Airtag use case included theft but you'll notice any mention of that has now been removed from the marketing material. It's really just for people who lose things.

View on HN

> The thief will be notified of the tag in less than an hour usually. I see the alert anytime I mind my friends dog. Typically within 45-60 minutes of my friend leaving, I get an alert which includes a map of where I was tracked and my friends email address.

In the article, they recommended that you "hide the airtag well", so it's most likely that the thief will receive the notification after a while, and decide to just dump the car.

I'm not sure how the notification stops the thief. If you're half decent at hiding things they won't be able to find it in less than half an hour, so they either stop and look during which time you can catch them or they abandon the car and you get it back since it's still being tracked.

I don’t recommend going and confronting a car thief.

And I doubt the police will be there in half an hour. You’ll be lucky to convince them you have the location sometime the next day, when it’s far too late.

Eric adams does recommend confronting a car thief I guess. Really it just depends on the situation, plenty of New Yorkers would be game. Might even prefer it to hoping the cops deal with it. Personally if my only choice was ask cops for help I'd consider the car gone. I can round up a few of the boys and confront the thief given an hour or two, and at least I'd get my car back. No idea if NYPD is as worthless as my pd though.

> Really it just depends on the situation, plenty of New Yorkers would be game.

You kiddin me? Hell no. There are a lot of guns out there and we know it.

Supreme Court says guns aren’t only for the rich in nyc anymore. Maybe the thief has one, maybe the car owners does too.

> Supreme Court says guns aren’t only for the rich in nyc anymore.

That law evens the playing field for law abiding citizens. But hey man, you wanna cosplay Dirty Harry or Paul Kersey then by all means. Just hope the NYPD and DA are cool with your vigilantism.

If everyone chooses not to confront car thieves, then car thieves have successful careers stealing everyone's cars. If everyone chooses to confront car thieves (preferably with friends, preferably armed), then car thieves quickly choose another career.

Getting the police to do their job would be ideal, but that won't happen so we only have these two options.

I believe you can turn the sound on it when you get that alert, although there's guides on how to remove the speaker

To be fair, 45-60 minutes to track a stolen car is still a lot better than nothing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com