It's baffling how Apple on the one hand claims that user privacy is the most important thing to them, but on the other hand they built an anonymous tracking network that can be abused for many nefarious purposes, and everyone who has an iPhone was made a part of the network whether they like it or not.
There are so many things that are questionable about Airtags. Another way to abuse it would be for example, you could place an Airtag somewhere on an iPhone users driveway, and use it to determine when they arrive home by checking for pings. The victim won't even see a notification, since the Airtag is stationary.
Preventing attacks like this would require the victim to know where to opt-out of Apple's tracking network, a setting that Apple hid by giving it a confusing name ("Network & Wireless") and shows a warning that your phone won't work properly anymore if you try to turn it off.
(Also, turning that setting off presumably also turns off the Airtag warning? So you are trading one risk against another?)
The police could get a subpoena for Apple to divulge the iCloud account, credit card, and phone number of the owner of this AirTag. Using air tags to conduct illegal activity is stupid.
Huh, right, with all the talk about the privacy preserving location sharing, I missed that Airtags have a serial number that Apple can look up.
However, my main criticism (that Apple customers were not asked whether they want to participate in a network that may indirectly reveal their location) still stands.
But anytime it sends a ping, it reveals the fact that an iOS device is near. If it's a public place where lots of different people pass by, then that information doesn't identify anyone. But if you place an Airtag at a private location, eg. near someones home, you can use it to detect when the people living there get home.
Now maybe you don't worry about side channels like this, but I really think that it should be up to the individual user to decide whether they want to risk something like this or not.
It's quite telling that Apple does not ask people to opt-in to the Find My network, while every third party app needs explicit user permission for any kind of Bluetooth access.
> Another way to abuse it would be for example, you could place an Airtag somewhere on an iPhone users driveway, and use it to determine when they arrive home by checking for pings. The victim won't even see a notification, since the Airtag is stationary.
You can hide an arbitrary device near a victim's driveway and your choice of surveillance device is an Airtag? Come on.
There are so many things that are questionable about Airtags. Another way to abuse it would be for example, you could place an Airtag somewhere on an iPhone users driveway, and use it to determine when they arrive home by checking for pings. The victim won't even see a notification, since the Airtag is stationary.
Preventing attacks like this would require the victim to know where to opt-out of Apple's tracking network, a setting that Apple hid by giving it a confusing name ("Network & Wireless") and shows a warning that your phone won't work properly anymore if you try to turn it off.
(Also, turning that setting off presumably also turns off the Airtag warning? So you are trading one risk against another?)