Thanks for this - I never thought that the act of disabling would create a record, but that makes sense! I wonder if that is something law enforcement can track and act on.
There is no feature that allows the thief to disable the AirTag at all. In the notification for "an AirTag is following you" the link for disabling the AirTag is simply instructions for removing the battery. It's up to the thief to find the AirTag using the audio ping (which, as mentioned elsewhere, you can deactivate by disconnecting the speaker) and their human eyeballs.
