What do you think?
My only feedback would be re: the site, specifically this part:
“ Airtag is a trademark registered by apple and we have nothing to do with apple.”
Might want to capitalize Apple; just a nitpick.
I fully understand why you would want to do this, but as a consumer I would never buy this product with this clause.
> "(thiefs use apps to locate AirTags around, and AirTags will warn the thief if an unknown AirTag is travelling with them, for example if they steal your car)"
The reason this was introduced is exactly because people used AirTags to stalk others. Advertising that your product turns that off is basically targeting that specific demographic.
Police won't or can't do anything if it could be in multiple units or would require any kind of warrant for the building as well as the specific unit you think it's in.
If you're "lucky" some might chaperone you knocking yourself, which itself is not something most want to entertain.
On account of police policy, AirTags are effectively useless for actually getting anything stolen back. You'll get more use out of them in filing your insurance claim if the theft of the item is covered under for example your homeowner's insurance policy.
There were anti-stalking features from the start. It didn’t stop the media hysteria however.
why should protecting my belongings from thieves be illegal?
> You shouldn't go get back your belongings from a thief anyways.
you can also send the police to the thieves if you know where they are
seriously, there are like 10 stalkers worldwide but 2 billion thieves. most likely any stalking story was made up by thieves because they hate if people get their stuff back...
A concealed tracker doesn’t protect you at all. It only aids in recovery.
> you can also send the police to the thieves if you know where they are
No, you can’t. The police do not recover stolen property based on an AirTag ping. They won’t lift a finger.
Have you experimented with a setup (more complicated to package) where you have two AirTags and alternately power one at a time? Could that bypass apples detection whilst also broadcasting location?
Edit: at sufficiently small time durations to run under apples detection radar, but for long enough to be picked up as a location
I don’t know how Apple detects the tracking; this would easily be solved by them.
Making tracking devices illegal does not make it illegal to protect your belongings from thieves.
>there are like 10 stalkers worldwide
Given how many women I know who had issues with stalkers, all ten must live near me.
Nobody has a right to a successful business but when consumers can trust their purchases they are more likely to make additional purchases.
Not trying to be creepy, I’m just trying to demonstrate how we all need to think like adversaries (eg creeps) when designing products.
In the UK 1 in 7 has been stalked. Usually the victims are women or young people. The second link says that in the western world 2-15% of the population have been stalked.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...
I once donated an infant car seat to a coworker but forgot I had put an AirTag on it. After she had taken it home, her iPhone told there was an unknown AirTag and she texted me. I apologized profusely and she wasn't bothered by it. Nonetheless had I been nefarious, I would have been able to get her home address.
imo no level of stalking is appropriate. while this device might not do everything a stalker wants it to, it surely makes it easier for them
your previous response to the stalking concerns was "it's 4 hours off / 1 hour on, the device is not very suitable for stalking someone"; wouldn't this comment - allowing that to change - then make it even easier for stalkers?
Probably worth it for a vehicle, but maybe not for a backpack.
Other impactful variants might be:
* senses whether another 'sibling' AirTag is present, if so, stays off. If not, waits X hours & then turns on.
* has its own motion sensor; only after X minutes of being stationary, it waits Y hours to turn on briefly
* has its own clock & (original-user-known) randomization seed; turns on at pseudorandom intervals the original user can predict
* low-power/low-bandwidth receivers so cheap & tiny now: could wait for national or even global unit-specific 'wake' request - perhaps even with parameters for duration/intervals – before powering-on AirTag portion
For stolen items you don't want to track them. You want to be able to ask them where they are. The advantage is you can make a locator that doesn't reveal itself by transmitting. And it doesn't waste power receiving gps signals. You could literally have a device that runs for years on a AA battery.
The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data.
There are several much cheaper nock offs that inherently will never update the firmware. Why not support those? And just to be sure, offer a package deal, include such tracker.
Through what presently-existing technology, exactly, is this idea supposed to work over distances greater than at best a couple of miles with say LoRA?
> The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data.
I'm not equipped to analyse their claims in detail, but Apple claims the design of their find-my network is end-to-end encrypted, and presumably it would be a huge scandal if this turned out to be a massive lie.
> if it stops working.
It doesn't magically stop working though, it would be apple explicitly putting in effort to break this functionality and forcing you to update a device you own, forcing you to use it only how they want you to use it.
No. Everyone that builds projects inside someone else's ecosystem is subject to this. Even companies that like what your are doing might break it if they aren't specifically testing against your product.
It was very effective. 98% recovery rate.
> despite the absence of the device on Tile’s app, it can still be tracked and located through other means available on the device.
> Tile Tracker with Anti-Theft mode has a static Mac-Address, which may make it even more trackable
https://techryptic.github.io/2023/03/11/Tile-Anti-Theft-Mode...
I assume because it's a network that relies on its reputation among participating nodes to trust it will not be used to track them involuntarily, else they would opt out and collapse the network.
otherwise 25 dollars at TSC for a fence post driver will make 95% of residential entryways irrelevant.
so it's better to just leave the door open.
https://support.google.com/android/thread/284190689/how-to-o...
Turning off Bluetooth seems to disable the traffic, but then you can no longer access your local Bluetooth devices.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28691191/Why-did-...
EDIT: Like in the hotels, you got a key for your room, but the hotel management has a "passpartout" key (for back in the day when we had physical keys). The phrase "<thing> must accept interference, but not cause any". So you/we must be able to receive the 'punch' and not resist.
Or is that why the tag flashes and makes sounds frequently so that people without phones can know they’re being tracked?
If they are forcing you to transmit data, then it might make even more sense that Apple would steer clear of usage that could create liability for their users.
It's probably because the only people using the app are those that bought one and they're not very common here in Europe. With Apple's, Samsung's and Google's network most phones report them. Not just those of the people who own a tag.