I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/technology/airtags-gps-surveillance.html

by danso • 4 years ago

231 311 4 years ago

nytimes.com

danso2• 4 years ago

Non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/technology/airtags-gps-su...

ameminator10• 4 years ago

Btw, thanks for posting these types of links - it's appreciated.

ameminator10• 4 years ago

Look, I usually try to be charitable. However, this article offered no new insight on Apple Airtags. If you don't want to waste your time, allow me to summarize:

Woman puts Airtags in a car. Her husband isn't able to find them, even using Apple's "anti-stalk" features. Ergo, Apple needs to do more.

I ask - what new insight did this article offer on Airtags? I don't think anyone can conclude either way on the effectiveness of Apple's "safety measures" when it comes to Airtags, from this small anecdote.

In my mind, the article buries the Lede on the real discussion - should Apple be doing these measures at all? I find that issue far from settled when this article takes it for granted that not only should Apple take these safety measures, they should do more!

The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive - "I sound like a terrible wife, but it's for journalism!" No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

Anyways, I do think there is interesting discussion to be had about Airtags and if/what Apple should be doing to prevent unwanted tracking. However, this article didn't have that discussion or contribute to it in a meaningful way.

bberenberg• 4 years ago

I found the key quote to be

"My husband, of course, had agreed to this in principle, but didn’t realize just how many devices I had planted on him. Of the seven trackers, he found only two: a Tile he felt in the breast pocket of his coat and an AirTag in his backpack when he was looking for something else. “It is impossible to find a device that makes no noise and gives no warning,” he said, when I showed him the ones he missed."

which I read as "Apple needs to improve, but still drastically better than everything else out there"

I am not in the market for AirTags, but if you are completely scatterbrained and this provides you a helpful way to manage your stuff, AirTags seem to be least bad way of doing this.

ameminator10• 4 years ago

I actually tend to agree somewhat with your arguments. However, from the article, I don't think you can reach those conclusions like:

"Apple needs to improve, but still drastically better than everything else out there"

Where does the article talk about this class of device? Nowhere is a competing product mentioned or compared against. Even a Bluetooth keyfob, used to track keys by emitting a sound (and widely available) could have been used there.

I like and agree with what you said, I just don't think the article makes those points, to its detriment.

Cthulhu_• 4 years ago

I mean for personal use, airtags seem all right. But it's the ones that don't come with a warning that they're around that worry me.

I mean if you're paranoid, I'm sure there's detectors that can find bluetooth signals and whichever other technologies they use (I'm fairly sure GPS is passive, that is, they only need to receive satellite signals, not send anything).

major505• 4 years ago

The fact that she was to tired to take a baby to the hospital, but not to follow husband every step is what concerns me.

ameminator10• 4 years ago

I do try to be charitable, but it almost seemed like a sick game to me.

"Here, let me convince my husband that he needs to go take the baby to the hospital. Now, let's stalk him to see if he actually did it!"

Anyways, this turned me off. It could have been "forgiven" (if this word even applies) had it contributed something meaningful. Sadly, it didn't, so it just comes off as neurotic stalking.

danso2• 4 years ago

I'm sorry, but what? The ostensible benefits of AirTags is that they're extremely easy to use and track with an iPhone. Why is it concerning that the author feels too tired to go to the hospital (during covid-heightened restrictions), but not too tired to use her iphone? Is going to the hospital for pediatric care generally easy? Is actively calling her husband easier than passive notification via the Find My app?

“I’m worried,” I told my husband. “I want you to take her to the hospital.”
“Doctors always tell us to take the baby to the E.R. whenever we call about anything,” he replied, exasperated. (This was true.) “She is fine. She is eating and playing and happy. This is not an emergency.”
He eventually caved and set out for the hospital a half-hour away. Knowing he was already annoyed by me, I did not want to pepper him with questions about how it was going.
Instead, I turned to the location-monitoring devices that I had secretly stashed in our car a week earlier.

ppseafield• 4 years ago

My impression was that she was both a) already up with the baby all night, and b) was too tired to drive 30 minutes to the nearest hospital with their baby. The article didn't say if the husband was also up with the baby all night. While tired I'd be wary of drifting off while driving with my newborn in the car.

dekhn2• 4 years ago

baby-hospital visits are brutal. It's about 8 hours of waiting (usually in the middle of the night) with a screaming child while staff ignores you and then finally says there isn't a problem.

Recently during a bout of covid my son's tongue was blue and he couldn't figure out what was up. My wife wanted to the go to ER, the doctor said to go to the ER. I said, "no, there's another explanation for this and nobody is losing a night of sleep over this". The next day we noticed the blue tongue happened after taking some blue-colored vitamin gummies.

ajford2• 4 years ago

Taking a child to the hospital, in particular a toddler/infant, is extremely stressful. If one is already tired from caring for that child all night, I'd completely understand asking the other parent to take the child. In fact, I have done so personally, though having two children meant it also made more sense for one of us to stay home with the other child instead of towing a second (healthy) child through the hospital as well.

Also, this is an opinion/editorial piece, so whether the author watched their spouse the entire time or if the author pieced the evening together after the fact while writing this article is up for speculation.

nooyurrsdey• 4 years ago

Not everything has to offer new info. Sometimes things bear repeating, it's how we add emphasis and continue the conversation.

Coming out with "Apple is doing a poor job" just once isn't going to move the needle. People have to hear it over and over in a relatable way.

ameminator10• 4 years ago

Fair point - but in that case, I found the author's account unrelatable, so much as to approach uncredible.

Maybe it hits different for other people, but I don't appreciate being given a conclusion without any good discussion

BeefWellington4• 4 years ago

I ask - what new insight did this article offer on Airtags? I don't think anyone can conclude either way on the effectiveness of Apple's "safety measures" when it comes to Airtags, from this small anecdote.

While I understand where you're coming from, I think there's value in adding to the chorus when it comes to putting pressure on a company to rethink a strategy.

Certainly, while articles such as this may not be news to you or I, they are likely to be news to a number of people on HN, their friends & family, etc.

The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive - "I sound like a terrible wife, but it's for journalism!" No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

This point misses the mark IMO. The issue with AirTags at their core is that they permit people who are deceptive and shady to do bad things much easier than they could before.

I think the cat's out of the bag now on this type of tech though. Tile's been around for a while, AirTags are now everywhere, the goal now should be developing detection systems (which shouldn't be too hard).

xoa• 4 years ago

The issue with AirTags at their core is that they permit people who are deceptive and shady to do bad things much easier than they could before.

But that's just not true. Seriously, right now, go to Amazon and type in "GPS Tracker" and look at the results:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=gps+tracker

Literally $30 gets you a 1oz cellular magnetized tracker you put a SIM into for real time tracking anywhere with cell coverage with voice monitoring included! Literally for tracking and they proudly advertise it. No warnings or nags about "a device is following you", no noises. Comes with Prime shipping, get it as soon as Sunday February 13!

Apple being Apple may well have brought more publicity to the issue but no, AirTags do not do what you say they do. If anything there are reasonable arguments that Apple has been too careful to the extent of making them pretty irritating in family/friends usage where everyone gets nagged for normal shared item activity and cannot use them in a shared way (despite being able to do so for devices!).

eddieroger2• 4 years ago

> The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive - "I sound like a terrible wife, but it's for journalism!" No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

You need to read more of the article.

Some states, including New York, where we live, have laws criminalizing this sort of thing. Not wanting to break the law, or my husband’s trust, I had asked him for permission.

It may be fluff, but it wasn't deceptive.

r00fus2• 4 years ago

Apple is literally the best vendor in the field in terms of providing privacy controls for their tracking products.

Great if criticizing them sets a baseline for all other vendors, but given how the US government decided Apple was price-fixing ebooks while ignoring Amazon's monopsony (2012), I'm not really confident that they'll do something that isn't essentially a bill-of-retainer to limit Apple while not solving the tracker privacy problem at all.

BiteCode_dev2• 4 years ago

should Apple be doing these measures at all?

Apple no, but law makers should require a licence to use those. This is not a tech that anybody should be able to use on a whim. Too much potential for abuses.

Not to mention the more there are, the bigger the cake for a nation that want to get control of the biggest offline spying network of all time. Somebody is going to crack that thing sooner or later. There will be an NSO for airtags.

nomel2• 4 years ago

What until you hear about the tracking device that everyone has in their pockets, used by cellular companies, ad companies, and the government!

dylan6043• 4 years ago

what new insight did this article

author found a trending topic, and is making the mostest

kelnos6• 4 years ago

No, it seems like the author played a prank on her husband a while back and used that to neuroticaly follow him, then tried to excuse that behavior by writing this fluff piece.

She planted the tracking devices on him with his permission, after discussing with him that she wanted to write a piece on the experience. This information is right in the article.

bhelkey2• 4 years ago

I found these three portions intersting:

[LandAirSea] which sells about 15,000 devices per month... tells these callers they should go to the police, because they will need a subpoena to determine who owns the device they discovered.
My husband, of course, had agreed to this in principle, but didn’t realize just how many devices I had planted on him. Of the seven trackers, he found only two..It is impossible to find a device that makes no noise and gives no warning
For all the bad press the AirTags have gotten...at least I was consistently getting notifications they were following me...The privacy dangers of the other trackers were way worse

nostromo2• 4 years ago

Yes, this isn’t good journalism.

“I drove over my husband with an F150 for journalism. Ford clearly needs to do more.”

lemmsjid• 4 years ago

The average NYT Reader knows what an F150 would do if driven over a husband. Presumably, the average NYT Reader does not know about the capabilities of tracking devices or the ramifications of stashing them on a husband's person. I personally kind of knew about Airtags and knew nothing about Tiles until a fairly recent Hacker News post, and it was news to me how Airtags used surrounding devices for locational info.

Furthermore, there's a place for journalism that grounds a hypothetical experience in descriptive prose / photography in order to transform abstract facts to something closer to lived experience. In that aforementioned HN post I learned about using those devices for stalking as a hypothetical, but this article's actual photographs did make me uncomfortable and drove home the ramifications.

reaperducer2• 4 years ago

I ask - what new insight did this article offer on Airtags?

Ask the author: https://mobile.twitter.com/kashhill

Let us know what she says.

The author also seems to be somewhat deceptive

Let us know what she has to say about that, too.

ameminator10• 4 years ago

I don't have twitter and I don't think twitter is a good platform for discussion.

caffeine• 4 years ago

The only clear conclusion to be drawn from this is - never marry the author of this piece!

rjsw• 4 years ago

Next week, an article written by the husband on how to get a patio really flat in your garden.

bhelkey2• 4 years ago

This is extremely uncharitable. It was buried, but the husband consented to this.

“You can do it,” [The author's husband] said. “But it’ll be boring. We’re in a pandemic. I never go anywhere.”

tinalumfoil• 4 years ago

I hate this AirTag because besides being pointless (nothing you couldn't do before), it fosters a fear of your neighbor while placing tech companies as your trusted friends. There's no evidence these, "people have freaked out after finding AirTags hidden in their bags and on their cars" are anything other than just stray airtags their owners would very much like back. Just because police (or journalists for that matter) are helping to foster this environment doesn't matter because most police are technologically illiterate and under-trained, and frankly don't know what they're doing.

Google using hidden terms to track your every location is your enemy. Your wife leaving an AirTag in the car is not the enemy. You live in a tech dystopia, not a Liam Neeson film. Nobody is following is following you to QuickCheck to kidnap you.

Also, AirTags suck. If you drop one in your friends car and drive around trying to find it you're now (1) effectively a stalker (2) won't find your AirTag if they have Android which kind of defeats the purpose, since these things are supposed to want to be found, and (3) correct me if I'm wrong, but even if someone finds your lost item and doesn't immediately send the police on you -- they have no way to contact you to setup a return of your lost item? You have to go through the police? Why would anyone want that?

EDIT: Appearantly Apple says you can give it a message if lost of how to contact you, but no way to message without giving additional contact info, and only if you mark it as lost.

spywaregorilla• 4 years ago

I disagree. I mean yeah, obviously mistakes are mistakes, but I doubt many people are seriously suspecting anything else than that.

However, it seems unusual for people to be carrying around air tags in such a way that they are casually lost. I would guess mistakes aren't THAT common. I would guess domestic abuse is not an uncommon use case of these things. I would also guess that thieves do have an eye for it. You don't need to be Liam Neeson for someone to want to steal your shit. The alert that an air tag is following you mostly negates this.

I do agree they don't seem to have much utility on their own

dschep• 4 years ago

won't find your AirTag if they have Android which kind of defeats the purpose

While they're alone in a car, sure. But as soon as they're around folks with iPhones, they're tracked just fine and will never get the notifications the husband in the article got.

etskinner• 4 years ago

https://archive.is/VGDKw

dangoor• 4 years ago

Regarding her husband not being able to find the Airtag, Apple's announcement this week of planned improvements[1] also include the ability for recent-model iPhones to be able to do precision tracking of unknown Airtags, just as they can when looking for known Airtags.

I've personally come around to the idea that Airtags are a product that shouldn't exist, but at least Apple is making an effort to make these less attractive to stalkers.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/10/airtag-updates-unwanted...

rustybolt2• 4 years ago

All these people received warnings on their iPhones, a feature Apple had built into the AirTag system to help prevent unwanted tracking.

So if you don't have an iPhone, enjoy being stalked!

boopmaster• 4 years ago

I stalk iPhone users with Tiles

lostlogin• 4 years ago

No you don't. Their CEO is here saying that doesn't happen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30305461

jeromegv• 4 years ago

What are your plans regarding Tile and GPS trackers that provide no warnings? What was your opinion on it before the current hysteria, did that bother you?

rustybolt2• 4 years ago

I don't know, I never thought about them before the AirTags were widely used, so I never really formed an opinion on them.

It just seems strangle that a safety measures is only made available for iPhone users.

bla3• 4 years ago

One way to look at this is that Apple is democratizing surveillance capitalism. Is that good? Bad?

Seems a bit at odds with their pro-privacy marketing though, which might be why they get so much flak for something presumably fairly minor.

gwbas1c2• 4 years ago

I often peek at my wife when she's coming home from work via our car's app. She knows I do this. (When my kids are with me they love watching the car move on the map. I hope she peeks at me when she's with the kids and I have the car.)

What made it funny one time was when I was between jobs, and she went to her gynecologist after work. Even though she told me, I forgot, and the map only showed that there was a divorce lawyer's office in the parking lot. I really needed a hug when she walked in the door.

supergeek• 4 years ago

Yeah, it's been very surprising as a Tesla owner to learn that there's no way to opt-out of this tracking in the car. Your location is always relayed to the app, and your only option is to log out of your account in the car, which still relays the data to Tesla for the super paranoid.

KyleJune• 4 years ago

Only people with access to your Tesla account can access location information. The information is limited, you just see where the vehicle is at live, not a history of where it has been. You can opt out of people being able to check your location via the app. You can just go to the Safety & Security settings on the display in your car and turn off Mobile Access.

kelnos6• 4 years ago

Even though she told me, I forgot, and the map only showed that there was a divorce lawyer's office in the parking lot. I really needed a hug when she walked in the door.

A fine example of why pervasive tracking is terrible for relationships. I'm assuming based on your tone that you were calm and collected and didn't fly off the handle with accusations when she got home. But I think there are many people who would give into their insecurities (we all have them) and create a big mess with this sort of knowledge. The "accidental" nature of it just makes it worse.

I'm getting a new car soon, and I'm weighing losing the utility of the things in the app vs. my desire not to be tracked. It's really annoying that I have to make that trade off.

nomel2• 4 years ago

A fine example of why pervasive tracking is terrible for relationships.

Seems like an example of a relationship that’s lacking a good connection and understanding, if someone thinks the other is going to swing by to get a divorce. Tracking didn’t cause that, and lack of tracking wouldn’t fix it.

xtracto• 4 years ago

Stanley Kubrick put it very well in Eyes Wide Shut. A person can let his imagination fly so wildly when he is fixated in one issue.

gwbas1c2• 4 years ago

I didn't think she was filling for divorce. I was feeling insecure about being between jobs.

kbos873• 4 years ago

My comment isn’t specific to AirTags, but there’s a much larger conversation that needs to be had about this gray area of stalking capabilities that are now built into many mainstream products.

Here’s a pattern I’ve seen play out more than once among friends and family - they share their location willingly and for seemingly benign reasons. It’s helpful to know when you’ll be getting home so I can start dinner! Just in case something happens to you! This is the innocent end of the spectrum; subtle or outright coercion in a controlling relationship is the darker end of the spectrum.

How it starts really doesn’t matter, because the truth is that even among otherwise well meaning and well intentioned people, tracking tech can turn them obsessive. Checking in constantly. Wondering and/or quizzing their child, partner or friend about what they were doing at location X.

The truth is that most people aren’t immune to being on either end of a situation like this, and the negative outcomes can range from feeling like your everyday movements are under a microscope, to outright abusive behavior more easily taken to the extreme.

I don’t claim that there are simple solutions here, but a starting point would be tech companies making it easier to see an audit of how this “innocent” tracking tech is being used on the trackee. For example, I bet my grandpa would think twice about checking in on my cousins location as often as he probably does if he knew that my cousin got a notification every time he checked in.

micromacrofoot3• 4 years ago

For example, I bet my grandpa would think twice about checking in on my cousins location as often as he probably does if he knew that my cousin got a notification every time he checked in.

I think this is a partial solution to keep honest people honest. Like door locks. They keep the temptation at bay for the average person.

In abusive relationships it likely wouldn't accomplish much, but notifying might at least create known windows of "escape" when the tracking isn't being actively monitored. Maybe it could even draw someone's attention to abusive situations... if you're out with a friend and her phone "pings" that someone is tracking her 10 times over an hour maybe that's enough for someone to ask "hey is everything ok?"

kbos873• 4 years ago

Exactly. Being held accountable, and knowing you are being held accountable, could likely stem some amount of bad behavior from the start, and at the very least it makes bad behavior harder to conceal.

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

You can’t fix a lack of emotional fortitude and insecurities with technology. These are mental health challenges exacerbated by the tools available.

oarsinsync• 4 years ago

You can’t fix a lack of emotional fortitude and insecurities with technology. These are mental health challenges exacerbated by the tools available.

I dont think the GP is suggesting that there's no technological changes required, just lamenting the root cause of the problem.

Similarly, technology can exacerbate gambling addictions, and we have measures we've put in place there.

It'll probably take some time to work that out though.

kbos873• 4 years ago

I don’t disagree with you. I would say that these are mental health challenges that can not only be exacerbated, but caused in the first place in some cases by having this technology so readily available. The other commenters’ point about gambling tech is a good one.

advisedwang• 4 years ago

How do you fix a "lack of emotional fortitude"? Can everyone succeed at that? How long does it take to fix?

The reality is that some people are emotionally vulnerable and our we should keep that in mind as we develop products. Most new products (and indeed all changes in society) have some kind of negative impact to someone, and we can't get that to zero, but we should strive to minimize the harm we do.

AtlasBarfed• 4 years ago

We live in a society with total propaganda immersion designed to keep you insecure so you consume consume consume.

So basically everyone is like this in some way, or will be.

nicbou4• 4 years ago

You can decide not to make the tools available.

pluc• 4 years ago

The road to authoritarian technology is paved with convenience

heinternets• 4 years ago

I always knew pizza delivery would end up in total loss of freedoms

andrewia• 4 years ago

Most technology is a double-edged sword. Front-facing cameras on phone are immensely useful for video calls and impromptu portraits, but in event of software compromise, can disclose a lot of info. Cell networks revolutionized communication and network availability, but make all other tech omnipresent and allow rough tracking of users by signal strength.

The existence of technologies are fine, but we need to set strong social norms, laws (and resilient enforcing institutions), and smart design limitations to protect against abuse.

trinovantes• 4 years ago

Only a matter of time before we start seeing news of couples fixing their marriage by sharing AirTags with each other. I say this with sarcasm but recent years have made me wonder what is reality anymore.

not2b• 4 years ago

A marriage that can only be "fixed" if each member is continuously surveilling the other is not "fixed".

outworlder3• 4 years ago

We should get them ankle bracelets while we are at it.

Gigachad3• 4 years ago

You could have location shared with Find My for a long time now.

dylan6043• 4 years ago

Essentially, this is why we can't have nice things. Human nature will always have someone take something to the dark places. Does that mean the rest of us can't use the things in non-creepy ways just because some will? After all, if you don't build it, someone else will, so why not you? These are all valid questions. Some people choose to do violence with weapons, so nobody should have weapons? These questions are always polarizing.

adambyrtek• 4 years ago

I'm not sure this is a good metaphor since weapons are designed for violence, regardless of whether that violence is legally justified or not. Just to be clear, I'm not trying to make a political stand, this is simply the dictionary definition: "weapon /ˈwɛp(ə)n/ a thing designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage".

acomjean4• 4 years ago

Yeah. I took my partners dog for the afternoon. It has an airtag (not an official supported use). I knew the dog had it but there was some comment made about our walk. Monitoring by proxy.

When I worked at a power monitoring startup (we monitored home power use, by individual circuit) this passive monitoring came up. And our CEO mentioned to his wife that she was home early.. "how did you know?" He saw the garage door circuit draw power... He was told he could keep his toys, but not to talk about them.

Our sales guy had a potential partners remote door installed. He noted one time the dog walker did a pretty short walk (the door opens where x minutes apart), and was wondering if he could mention it..

Passive monitoring is everywhere. Not just cell phones.

hnrodey2• 4 years ago

Care to share the competitors in the power monitoring space? I could really use a solution to this because my home electric bill is crazy high. We moved in to a new house about eight months ago and this electric bill is like 30% higher than my previous home. Not just the raw total of the bill - my consumption is higher in this house.

I know of sense.com but perhaps there are others?

6510• 4 years ago

Someone told me that by examining smart meter data by amount, time and duration different appliances could be identified. He was rather surprised himself by the level of detail.

908B64B1972• 4 years ago

One great use case of passive monitoring is detecting water leaks, especially for vacation homes.

It has an airtag (not an official supported use)

I'm surprised. That sounds like a great use for it, especially for a larger breed that runs fast.

joshspankit2• 4 years ago

Even back 20 years ago I was monitored by my ex-spouse by them simply watching the bank card transactions then calculating travel time. It was (or evolved in to) a full-blown anxiety disorder.

It’s easy to imagine that this higher level of easy surveillance is going to efficiently send others down the same path.

loceng• 4 years ago

Does anyone know of any communities who are designing to avoid passive monitoring or at least have a "dark mode" that's possible to enable?

I think such things should be enshrined in law, however we've not reached that state with the law yet in most places - I don't think?

megablast• 4 years ago

I knew the dog had it but there was some comment made about our walk. Monitoring by proxy.

What does this even mean?? Your partner commented on it??

Johnny5552• 4 years ago

Yeah. I took my partners dog for the afternoon. It has an airtag (not an official supported use). I knew the dog had it but there was some comment made about our walk. Monitoring by proxy.

We have a tracking collar for our dog. The actual tracker is around 1" x 2", and gives realtime reports via the cell network. it would be easy to use it to track a spouse or car or whatever.

Terry_Roll2• 4 years ago

Supermarket loyalty card schemes give away medical insights into people & households, that they perhaps wouldnt want as public knowledge.

Search engines get given all sorts of data by people who give away medical data, financial data, crimes, both as victim and as perpetrator, past and present.

Social media interests give away data about people as well.

The internet is one giant intelligence tool and your every move, your every click gives away stuff.

In the 90's I had a Visual Basic addon AI which could work out who was typing at the keyboard. There was no need to have login screens and passwords, your typing pattern identified you.

Today smart phone's can tell if its you from the pressure of your finger, the surface area and shapes made by your finger as it moves around the screen. Again no need for login screens, but some people do know just how often women go through their partners smart phones! I'm surprised more women dont play poker!

This information wont be made known for a very long time if at all because not everyone on the planet is using the tech. If the true scale of surveillance was known, it would have to be broken to them gently as it could cause civil unrest.

Carte blanche access to peoples computers has been going on since the internet appeared.

rootusrootus6• 4 years ago

I would think that the problem isn't just auditing, it is control. Reasonable people using the technology for good do not want to be bombarded with notifications. Better that we focus on control, making it more difficult to coerce someone into accepting tracking against their will, and making it easy to disable.

underwater• 4 years ago

Facebook Messenger implements this as "send location" which lets the other party track you for the next hour. I've found this useful without being creepy. I can share my location contextually, like if I'm picking someone up or meeting them somewhere.

stronglikedan• 4 years ago

Google maps too. I've used it with friends on camping trips.

greiskul• 4 years ago

I've used this in whatsapp so much. You can set it to 15 minutes, 1 hour, or 8 hours. Great way to meet up with someone, for Carnival me and some friends used to share our location in a group chat, so we could find each other if we wanted to, without the risk of accidentally forgetting to remove the location sharing, and having to constantly check our phones to respond to messages of people asking where we are.

sleepybrett• 4 years ago

yeah, concerning the feature in the apple ecosystem to share your location with someone else is great, i just wish it had a feature that alerted the you whenever someone used it to locate one of your devices. That way if say i went to the big state fair with my friend and we shared our locations with each other in case we got separated but then forgot to shut it off. If a few days later i got notified that my friend had just located me i could shut it off and/or have a conversation with them about boundries.

The airtag/tile makes this much harder, perhaps the airtag should loudly beep or notify nearby devices whenever it's being actively located.

eigen• 4 years ago

That way if say i went to the big state fair with my friend and we shared our locations with each other in case we got separated but then forgot to shut it off.

you can share location for 1 hour or until end of day rather than Indefinitely.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210514

verve_rat• 4 years ago

The airtag/tile makes this much harder, perhaps the airtag should loudly beep or notify nearby devices whenever it's being actively located.

They absolutely should. It boggles my mind a bit that they don't do this. It would even help you find them. Is there any downside to making noise?

hackerfromthefu• 4 years ago

This is a great solution to this issue - two way transparency.

munchenphile2• 4 years ago

i just wish it had a feature that alerted the you whenever someone used it to locate one of your devices.

I’m shocked that the very security-minded Apple doesn’t do this. I shared my location indefinitely with my wife and was shocked that I didn’t get a notification when she was tracking me. How is this not an option for the indefinite location share?

The airtag/tile makes this much harder, perhaps the airtag should loudly beep or notify nearby devices whenever it's being actively located.

AirTags do have a feature like this. If an AirTag is detected on your person, it will make an alarm sound. Basically they can’t be carried near a device that isn’t their owner’s device for long without sounding an alarm.

technothrasher3• 4 years ago

Checking in constantly. Wondering and/or quizzing their child

This behavior is rampant in my peer group. Most of my friends/neighbors are constantly monitoring their teen age children's location, reading their recent calls, texts, and emails, looking at internet usage logs, etc. One of my neighbors even calls her daughter every time she sees she's driving over the speed limit and yells at her. It all seems so creepy to me, and I give my kid way more privacy than that, but it looks like I'm in the minority of parents.

toxik• 4 years ago

How do they see their texts calls emails etc? Surely that’s illegal.

cmckn• 4 years ago

I definitely did things as a teenager that were dangerous, unnecessary, detrimental to my physical or mental health, etc. etc. I don't have kids, but I would probably make some effort to dissuade my kids from doing the same things I did. How do you approach that, without heavy surveillance? Did you just get lucky with good kids? Is having conversations about it enough?

seanmcdirmid5• 4 years ago

I want to let me kid (now 5) be more independent. These days, at least in the USA, kids aren't allowed out until they are 10 or even older, and even then they often don't get to take the bus alone (I started doing that when I was in 2nd grade, in the 80s when crime was much worse than it is today, I was biking on my own outside when I was in Kindergarten). But I thought...something like an air tag, cellphone, and maybe a bodycam, might be a great way to balance a need to let the kid explore some things independently and keep safe at the same time. I don't know, I'm still in the planning stage on this.

908B64B1972• 4 years ago

Most of my friends/neighbors are constantly monitoring their teen age children's location, reading their recent calls, texts, and emails, looking at internet usage logs, etc.

I'll be very blunt: Do they really want to read text messages from their teenage daughter/son? They might regret that decision really fast.

One of my neighbors even calls her daughter every time she sees she's driving over the speed limit and yells at her

If he doesn’t trust her why is she driving his car?

Gigachad3• 4 years ago

My bf and I share location, I think its pretty useful. Just shortcuts the "how far away are you" conversation every time we need to meet up.

rootusrootus6• 4 years ago

Neurotic people are neurotic, they just use whatever tools are available to them. I can locate my daughter, my son, my wife, and even my own mother if I want to. I don't stalk them, ask questions about where they are going or where they have been, etc. But if I need a little peace of mind, I know where my loved ones are. We use the location & communication tools with respect, just like anything else.

franga20002• 4 years ago

Holy shit what happened to "have fun, just be back by dinner time"? I'm not that far from my teenage years so the fact that this is already happening to today's teens is a bit terrifying to me. We had cellphones back then and I had an early smartphone (Nokia N95 - anyone remember those?) when at least half my school didn't even have a brickphone, so the capability was there. Bot neither my parents nor the parents of any of my peers ever used it, even later when all of us had proper smartphones with parental control options only a few clicks away.

So what happened? Crime rates are down, kinds these days do drugs and drink at lower rates than back then, I can't remember the last time I heard of a kid go missing... We now have many privacy-preserving options for emergency tracking so there's less of a reason for total control than ever. Even monitoring Internet usage - there are fewer "predators" out there and kids are better at recognising and avoiding them than ever. I don't get it.

cafard• 4 years ago

When my son was in his teens, the phone company still sent with the bill a log of every call, maybe even every SMS. I marveled at the thickness of the list, but never inspected it.

djrogers• 4 years ago

The truth is that most people aren’t immune to being on either end of a situation like this

Hard disagree here - most people are not going to go all obsessive on their spouses, kids, etc.

BrandoElFollito• 4 years ago

There is also the special case of my wife who has my position on Google maps, and an automation where she gets it when sending me a special SMS.

Yet she always calls to ask where I am (in your first scenario: because dinner or that she will kill the children if I am not back quickly).

everforward3• 4 years ago

I think there needs to be a delineation between anti-theft devices and anti-loss devices.

The sticking point now is that you want to let innocent people know if they're being tracked, but you don't want to let thieves know that they're being tracked. It seems an intractable problem, because there's no way that I can think of for a device to tell the difference between the two.

Anti-loss devices should be portable and detachable, but required to be able to be easily found via some kind of standard tooling. Maybe like the Bluetooth equivalent of pinging the broadcast IP. They should also make an audible noise when the owner tracks them.

Anti-theft devices should be silent, but required to be semi-permanently installed into the device to be tracked. Something annoying to remove, but not impossible. The ownership of the tracker should also be required to be registered with someone; logically the police, since that's who you would call anyways if your stuff was stolen. Anyone who finds an anti-theft device on their person or property that they didn't place there should automatically qualify for a restraining order against the device's owner (that they could opt not to pursue if they wanted). The restraining order should also prevent the device's owner from owning or registering any other anti-theft devices for the duration of the restraining order.

There would also need to be some kind of penalties for unregistered anti-theft devices, and for anti-loss devices that have been tampered with to not make noise or respond to the standard signal.

Also likely some kind of contract two people can enter into that says "I acknowledge that person X has tracker Y in thing Z, and I absolve my right to pursue a restraining order for it" for people who share a car or bike or whatever.

I haven't fully fleshed out the ideas, but I think something like the above reinforces that it's okay to track your own stuff but that's it not OK to track other people.

Melatonic• 4 years ago

I agree completely. No mater what Apple and Tile can only do so much to prevent these kinds of things - at some point it is really down to criminals being criminals. We are perfectly fine with selling anyone with a license a motor vehicle but as we have seen many times in the wrong hands they can easily be dangerous killing machines.

I like that Apple is making changes to how they work to discourage Air Tags used for this but to fully stop it would just mean not selling the product at all. And even though I am DEFINITELY not an Apple fan I think that is a poor solution to the problem.

Instead of making anti-theft devices semi permanent I think it makes much more sense to just discourage using them for stalking in the first place at the time of purchase. If you make a device that is semi permanent people will just find a way to hack it and repackage it into something else. And realistically people may want smaller anti theft devices for small but very valuable items.

What I think would probably be the best solution is to do something along the lines of what you said about registering with the police. Instead of manually having to do that though it would probably be easier if at the time of sale you had to sign a terms of service and the vendor automatically registered the serial number to your name in some kind of semi-public registry that law enforcement and others have access to. Even if would be thieves find ways around this it is going to discourage a ton of stalking in the first place.

I am hoping we get a fully open airtag platform out of this with Android apps, devices, windows, linux, etc. In addition I think a setting on your phone that you could manually activate that told any airtags within a close vicinity to NOT track you could also be interesting - there may be many false positives but someone explicitly worried about someone stalking them could activate this feature for at least some piece of mind.

Gigachad3• 4 years ago

Ideally you want the tracker deeply embedded in the thing being stolen. So for an ebike the tracker is on the main chip of the control board. And the thief gets a message saying "the bike is tracking you" and their only option is to dump the bike rather than rip the tracker off.

riversflow• 4 years ago

Checking in constantly. Wondering and/or quizzing their child, partner or friend about what they were doing at location X.

Fwiw, I’m a pretty big fan of FindMy and share my location with friends and family, I haven’t experienced this at all. My experience is that its convenient and cuts down on the number of “whats up” type messages I get when busy.

All of these people are fairly well-adjusted adults though. I don’t care if people I trust track me, or even ask about someplace they saw me — why would I? There’s a pretty bright line between controlling/judgmental/suspicious behavior related to tracking, and just curiosity. If your grandpa tracks your cousin because he’s old and bored and wants to live vicariously, to me thats fine, if he grills your cousin about where he saw him thats wrong.

I think a lot of this has to do with how open/accepting the group is. I can say confidently that all the people in my findMy group share the attitude of live and let live, and would tell me what they were up to, honestly, when asked “whats up?”. Its the anti-social network, lol.

thaumasiotes• 4 years ago

For example, I bet my grandpa would think twice about checking in on my cousins location as often as he probably does if he knew that my cousin got a notification every time he checked in.

That depends. If that's a way to start up a conversation, it might lead to a lot more location-checking.

pengaru• 4 years ago

Totally.

A decade ago I setup an RPi Zero W garage camera for my sister, using the GPIO for driving a relay to move the garage door remotely.

Ostensibly the specific use case for this thing was so the fam. could check the garage door status and close it remotely if it was forgotten open. Innocent enough, totally sane.

Except I setup the MotionEye software to not be too sensitive about people walking around in the garage or quick open-close cycles like returning home so it wouldn't wear out the SD card with writing irrelevant minutiae.

Years later I get an email from my sister asking if the garage camera I set up was failing to capture her son coming and going via the garage door keypad. I had to explain that the thing was setup to detect just the garage door being left in a changed state for an extended period, not if it opens and closes in a short window of time. But that it could be reconfigured to be more sensitive if needed.

Turned out she'd been abusing what was supposed to be a simple "did you forget the garage door open again? close it" facility as a surveillance tool from literally the moment I'd set it up, unbeknownst to me.

Sigh.

fullstackchris• 4 years ago

Ah, yet another chilling reminder why Black Mirror doesn't have to make any new episodes.

hnlmorg2• 4 years ago

Can someone explain to me (because I cannot work it myself) why everyone is suddenly worried about AirTags yet these kinds of devices have been around for a while (eg the Samsung Galaxy SmartTag was released last year and little was talked about it). And GPS tracking isn't even a new thing either.

So why is it most conversations focus on the AirTag? What is it that the AirTag does better/worse/differently to the other options out there?

xondono• 4 years ago

Because there is vibrant a market for content hating on Apple, from forums, to magazines, podcasts,…

orev• 4 years ago

AirTags do sort of change the tracking game. GPS trackers need a relatively large power supply and some kind of data connection. Tile devices are not ubiquitous, and their tracking network is limited to other Tile users.

AirTags have a huge advantage in that they use ALL iPhones as part of the tracking network, regardless of whether the iPhone owner has an AirTag themself. This allows them to work over short ranges with a tiny battery as they only need to be close enough to any iPhone for them to be trackable.

darkwizard42• 4 years ago

- Massively improved battery life vs. price

- No network connectivity required, simply being near an iPhone creates location accuracy (so instantly a bigger network than any competitor)

Probably the two biggest things right there.

andrewaylett• 4 years ago

Apple may not have invented the technology, but they've definitely popularised it. Sounds familiar :P.

AirTags are (at least as far as I can tell) maybe a bit easier to use for this purpose than other tech, but that's not quite the point: we didn't have these discussions earlier because people didn't realise they were discussions we needed to have.

As another data point, I've met several people who put AirTags on their dogs, and have been disappointed by how poorly they've worked: if the dog runs off and there's no-one with an iPhone around, the AirTag is no help. I have a battery-powered GPS and GPRS tracker on my dog, which works just about anywhere. The AirTag-using dog owners just don't know these things exist.

xeromal3• 4 years ago

Because Samsung or Tile is a subset of a subset compared to Apple. When apple does something, hundreds of millions of people are instantly involved. The scale is what matters.

apetrovic• 4 years ago

So, basically, the argument is that is ok to make shitty tracker.

babypuncher• 4 years ago

Any time an iPhone, iPad, or newer MacBook sees an AirTag, its location is reported back to the owner. Apple devices are so ubiquitous that you can effectively get real time tracking anywhere in the developed world where there are people.

Similar products like Tile have existed for years, but their real-time tracking abilities are poor because they rely on a network of devices that have their app installed and running in the background.

tqi• 4 years ago

Well, I think that no one talked about it until now doesn't mean these concerns are invalid.

That said, I think these concerns are way overblown and coverage/conversation is largely driven by a larger narrative pushed by news outlets.

hnlmorg2• 4 years ago

You're arguing a completely different point. I didn't ask if the concerns are valid, I asked why the argument is a hot topic right now with Apple at the centre of it when Apple are not the only ones (nor even the first) to make such technology.

The other comments (eg about Apple popularising the tech and discussing how AirTags differs from existing solutions) explains this situation.

joe5150• 4 years ago

"Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, thinks the devices are 'too ripe for abuse' to exist."

besides the fact that these devices cover a wide spectrum of abuse potential, in what way is this even a tenable position to take? it would be hard enough to get them banned, but if we're talking about actually making them not "exist" anymore, we're talking about confiscating millions and millions of devices.

other comments have noted that devices that are much more effective for actual tracking/stalking purposes are cheap and readily available, so I don't understand why AirTags have become the center of this conversation.

nickthegreek• 4 years ago

When it comes to AirTags, what I care about is my use cases and if this tech is serving me well. I have one in my motorcycle, vespa and backpack. I’ve previously had a bike stolen and never recovered. My mom looses her keys so what often, so I got her one as well. These AirTags provide me with an affordable peace of mind that works better than my Tile ever did.

mettamage• 4 years ago

Same, I was once drunk and I thought my backpack was stolen (it wasn't), because I didn't see it in the bar. It turned out it was in the car that was parked quite far away (15 min.). That saved a whooooollllleeeee load of anxiety.

Recently I had to go at a moment's notice and needed my wallet. I couldn't find it, but I airtagged it, so I could. That saved an awful ton of stress, which helped me in keeping my head cool. The moment's notice was really stressful, searching my wallet for 5 to 10 minutes in a time-pressure sensitive task with stakes that are too high for my taste would only have compounded my stress.

So in that sense, Apple is helping me preserve my sanity at moments where I could otherwise lose it. There only have been these two situations for it, but IMO that's worth it. I have one on my keys, my wallet and my backpack.

And of course, I've used it dozens of times because I'm too lazy to go search them. That's just a convenience feature. The real reason I have them is to reduce stress.

Unbeliever69• 4 years ago

Not much to add to the conversation here except that I love my Airtag in my wallet. So many times I've lost it for days and sometimes weeks on end only to find it in the crack of my couch, behind the seat in the car, under a pile of paper etc. Not anymore! Works like a charm within seconds.

maeln• 4 years ago

I think it is important to mention that clever people already managed to reverse engineer the Apple "Find My" network/protocol to "make tour own airtag" : https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack

This notably allow one to easily create a tracker that is silent and potentially smaller than an AirTag. Also easier to hid in a daily object since all you need is basically a nRF51822 and a battery.

People who don't own an iPhone, or in general a recent iPhone might be tracked without their knowledge (and, obviously, their consent).

The potential of misuse of this kind of tool is so great, we should really regulate against those.

operator-name2• 4 years ago

Wow, this is wonderful and scary at the same time. We as a society really are pushing the boundaries of privacy.

shmatt• 4 years ago

I have to guess some of these "bugs" have to do with the writer and her husband sharing an Apple family. When AirTag just started, my S.O would get alerts when we walked together, that my AirPods are following them. Well yeah, we were doing errands together and the AirPods were in my pocket.

These days it doesn't happen, I have to assume having a AirTag from your own defined family "track" you is not considered alert worthy anymore, at least not for the first few hours. Or somehow this bug still randomly pops up, but not right away

parasense2• 4 years ago

I cannot see the content, paywall. Not even with incognito mode.

What is the gist of the article?

AdrianB1• 4 years ago

Quote: "I realize I sound like the worst wife ever, so let me explain. It was for journalism.".

johnwalkr• 4 years ago

I understand the negative points about airtags, and one negative point I thought of but never see mentioned is the fact that all iphones are opted in by default to use battery life and data (however little) to operate the findmy network. In fact not many non-tech people realize that a) airtags work globally, not just near your iphone and b) relay data through any nearby iphone and not somehow directly to apple. People are usually blown away when I show them my map with a bunch things

But as a forgetful person, I got a pack of four on the day they were released. I used one when shipping an important, time sensitive and expensive item to a client. It was a huge value compared to the usual tracking of packages. I could see exactly when it moved from customs to an airplane, and surprisingly the location even updated in flight! I used and am still using this data, many times to confirm when the item was actually on the way or not, and if related travel and work can be done or not. It's saved thousands of dollars.

Another time, I was just about to board a train from Paris to Luxembourg when my iphone notified me that I left my bag behind (at a cafe in the station). I bought 8 more after that and put them in anything of value I have the experience to leave behind somewhere. Bags, ski boots, glasses case, inside the ear cup of my good headphones. Come to think of it, I should put one in my work notebook. Early in my career I had a work trip to sketch all of the dimensions of some heavy machinery so I could automate it (replace actuators and control them with an added PLC). I lost the notebook and had to go back, which was probably a $20k mistake in travel costs + not working on other projects.

kemayo• 4 years ago

It's difficult, because the very thing that make AirTags specifically so useful for legitimate purposes -- the vast network they participate in, and the ease of use -- is also what makes them particularly usable for shady things.

I mostly accept it because I'm aware of how trivial it is to get a cheap GPS+SIM tracker that's even better for nefarious purposes, so worrying about AirTags seems a bit overblown.

privacyking2• 4 years ago

somethoughts• 4 years ago

Yes it seems like Apple should be able to limit the Airtags to just the bluetooth of the owner and then mark the GPS location of the last known connection.

If more people knew about the piggybacking feature of Airtags, I think few would opt in.

r00fus2• 4 years ago

I used one when shipping an important, time sensitive and expensive item to a client. It was a huge value compared to the usual tracking of packages.

Imagine this included as part of shipping. Vendor puts an airtag (or equivalent commercial item) and once you receive, you "turn off" this tracking device (with a code or NFC) confirming receipt of the package, either disabling the device or enabling it for another (return?) shipping request.

Ideally, eventually legislation will exist to constrain the capabilities of such trackers. With the current state of Congress I'm not sure this will happen at a federal level in the US.

Osiris3• 4 years ago

My wife and I have Google maps location sharing turned on all the time. It's not stepping because we agreed to it. Last night I got home from a motorcycle ride and the garage door opened as I pulled up because my wife knew I was coming home from a movie and saw I was almost home.

ei8htyfi5e• 4 years ago

We do the same.

We realized we were calling each other too often asking where the other is and just decided to let tech solve the problem. Now I can push a button and see how far away from home she is.

If I decide to do something sketchy, I can turn off location temporarily and just lie to her about what I was doing if she checks while I was crime-ing. Same as the pretech way. :-P

SkyPuncher• 4 years ago

My wife and I do the same. She often has to drive long distances, at night, in the winter. It's a nice way for me to both see her progress and make sure she isn't stuck somewhere.

I also struggle to send a "hey, I'm on my way message". My wife really appreciates being able to check on the map quickly.

Osiris3• 4 years ago

As a motorcycle rider I don't have access to my phone while riding so I actually prefer that she can just check on me. It also makes her feel better when she sees me moving and not stopped.

operator-name2• 4 years ago

I'm also quite liberal with sharing my location (via Google maps) when traveling to meet up with friends, but it's always been a huge battery drain. I can't imagine what it's like being on all the time!

derimagia• 4 years ago

It's not a huge battery drain when I use it at all. Google already has a history of where you go so I don't even know why they would need more battery for it.

kelnos6• 4 years ago

I have friends who do this too, but it always just feels icky to me. Yes, I know that my mobile carrier knows more or less where I am at all times, and Google knows with even greater precision. But I don't want people I know, even my partner, to have that kind of access (and I don't want to be able to track my partner, either).

Another poster mentioned their wife went to a doctor's appointment, but it was in the same building as a divorce lawyer. Having forgotten about the appointment, they panicked. That sort of thing tells me that this sort of thing isn't harmless, even if there's nothing nefarious going on. There are enough reasons in life for miscommunications and misunderstandings to pop up; adding extra ways for that to happen by accident is not something I'm interested in.

I think targeted, time-limited, explicit sharing can be useful. I used to use Glympse sometimes, when I was on my way somewhere, to make it easy for other people I'd be meeting to know where I was and how long they'd expect to be waiting for me. That let me share with specific people, on demand, and only for a certain amount of time that I specify up-front. But blanket, always-on sharing? No thanks.

Osiris3• 4 years ago

Another poster mentioned their wife went to a doctor's appointment, but it was in the same building as a divorce lawyer.

This exact thing happened to me. However if your first thought is they are at the lawyer at not the hospital... You probably have some things to work out in your relationship anyway.

password4321• 4 years ago

Can anyone share how they do this self-hosted? I'd guess a custom protocol would be worse battery-wise, but I would be able to plug in while in the car.

calculatte• 4 years ago

I use NextTracks/OwnTracks and a self-hosted MQTT server. It's great!

crhulls10• 4 years ago

Hi All, I'm the cofounder and CEO of Life360, which is the relatively new owner of Tile. Stalking hasn't been much of an issue for us, but we are in the process expanding the finding network via our 35 million+ active user base (will require opt-in consent) and we also do offer a location device for kids and pets (Jiobit) that has its own cell connection which is actually meant for finding people in real-time.

We have a number of initiatives in the works to help allay concerns. I would be curious if the community here has any suggestions. I know our very existence is controversial - so please be kind - I'm here to listen.

latchkey3• 4 years ago

Stalking hasn't been much of an issue for us

How would you know?

crhulls10• 4 years ago

We get I think something on the order of 10,000 customer service tickets a week, and we regularly get subpoenas. We've heard almost every story you can think of. Although we are getting inquiries with this recent press, in terms of actual reports of stalking via our devices it is essentially zero.

AirTags has a much broader network than us as of now. Part of why we bought Tile is because we can expand their network. We aren't as big as Apple but we have about 10% of devices so it will get us way up the S curve.

So I could see it becoming more of an issue, which is why I'm looking for ideas. One thought would be to rate limit updates - at some frequency you get 90% of the benefit for lost items (since they don't move unless it was lost on say a train) but it dramatically hampers more nefarious use cases. That is just one thought. Or perhaps requiring ID verification and registering each device to a real human.

Klonoar2• 4 years ago

I have a slightly unrelated question about Life360.

When Life360 sold Couple in 2016, did it sell all the data that users had stored up to that point as well? As best I can tell it was announced via tweet and sold to what looked like a 1-person dev shop.

Myself and a number of others who used to use the app have often wondered this[1]. If I’m incorrect on anything in this article I would be happy to edit it, but I’d really like to know.

https://rymc.io/blog/2019/decoupling/

crhulls10• 4 years ago

We sold the app in its entirety, which did include data, to a startup run by a former employee. It didn't really get going and the servers are all wound down, so I assume the data is gone into the ether for good (I am 90% confident on this last point - I will confirm).

xeromal3• 4 years ago

Another couple user in the wild. My girl and I used that for SO long! It's sad to see it gone. I stole the cute little dog and beaver emojis before it went offline and incorporated them into whatsapp.

dstaley• 4 years ago

Hello, Tile owner here! I have a Tile on my house keys and my wallet, which are the two devices I misplace the most often. They've saved me countless times, primarily helping me find them when I leave them in my car, or put them someone in my house that they aren't supposed to be.

I'm most excited for the upcoming UWB tracker, and especially for the work that Google and Tile are apparently doing to ensure devices with UWB support are all compatible. I was wondering if you could give a quick update on the status of UWB tracking on Android? As far as I know, there's only two devices that support it (Samsung's S21 Ultra and S22 Ultra), but it hasn't been confirmed whether Tile's UWB tracker is compatible. As mentioned in the article, BLE tracking isn't as accurate as UWB, so I assume that UWB support would be necessary for most of these tracking concerns to materialize with Tile's trackers.

crhulls10• 4 years ago

Glad we have you as a customer. UWB is coming - I imagine there will be compatibility and chipset issues in the short run, in particular on Android, but over the long run it will be a game changer. I'm a couple degrees removed from this part of the business so sorry about the vague answer.

One thing to note - UWB is very short range now. Even now AirTags and Tile are primarily BLE. Upcoming chips and standards updates will be dramatically increasing range. I think that is when the magic happens.

CharlesW• 4 years ago

It's interesting that you decided to appear here in an effort to position Life360 as a more-private alternative to Apple solutions.

"We see data as an important part of our business model that allows us to keep the core Life360 services free for the majority of our users, including features that have improved driver safety and saved numerous lives." — You

"In 2020, the company made $16 million—nearly 20 percent of its revenue that year—from selling location data, plus an additional $6 million from its partnership with Arity." — The Markup

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/12/06/the-popular-family-...

This is the part where you respond how you're sharing surveillance data to the CDC for people's own good, and that you've stopped selling "precise location data".

crhulls10• 4 years ago

I was a bit worried about posting here because I had a suspicion I would get comments like this which assume I'm here on a PR pitch and clearly come at me with assumptions of negative intent.

I'll make a few points:

1) Stalking is completely different than a data platform used for targeted advertising and research.

2) Good minds can disagree on how user data should be used. We decided to shut down our data business because it wasn't worth the distraction - we have over $200m of revenue and it is not core to our business so we decided to move on. It should be noted we have always been extremely transparent with our customer and allowed anyone, whether a free or paying user, to have fine grain control over how we use data.

3) I am not positioning us as a more-private alternative to Apple. If this is a real problem that is emerging, I'd like to understand how we can address it. There are a lot of smart minds here.

4) Our user base is largely middle American moms - this is not the place we go to do PR!

rootusrootus6• 4 years ago

I am a mostly happy user of Life360, not currently paying (but I have in the past). I would be more likely to pay real money for the service if it came with a contractual guarantee that by paying for it, my data would never get sold. Not even in aggregate, 'anonymized'. I like the service, I'm willing to be a customer, but I hate the privacy leak.

nostromo2• 4 years ago

Consider just using AirTags then if you can. It’s built such that Apple can’t even read the location data, and it’s a onetime cost. The value prop is much nicer for someone that cares about privacy.

crhulls10• 4 years ago

We are now on record that data from Tile and Jiobit will NEVER be sold. Period. Some of the other stuff on our data practices were highly sensationalized, and we have a privacy center that allows any user - free or paid - to opt in/out of any portion of our platform they don't like, even ads within the system. So this is something you absolutely don't need to worry about.

vineyardmike• 4 years ago

Someone else in another thread has a really good idea: tell people how often someone checks in on them (for location sharing info).

I don’t claim that there are simple solutions here, but a starting point would be tech companies making it easier to see an audit of how this “innocent” tracking tech is being used on the trackee. For example, I bet my grandpa would think twice about checking in on my cousins location as often as he probably does if he knew that my cousin got a notification every time he checked in.

Doesn't solve the Tile problem, of course. A solution there might be counter-intuitive: make the battery worse. Its a lot harder to stalk someone if you need to re-seed a device every few days. Of course, i can barely remember to charge my phone, nevermind keys, so that might kill tile's utility all together.

Or, maybe you could have some sort of "did someone else's tile follow me home" sort of feature. You set your home location, and if any tile that isn't yours is at home, you get notified. (unless the owner is with it, or you white-list one for eg. partner's, children, etc). This tells you if someone planted you with it to stalk (you'd have to have tile app even if you don't have one i guess). Don't tiles support findmy? That means that any apple device will already warn people, so you just need to cover android users. Maybe the alexa/sidewalk partnership can impl similar features for when you come home? Maybe partner with google for built-in tracking warning standards? If they're open to it.

I think > half the use of tile is "ring my X at home" where x is probably mostly keys, or "did i leave X at Y place". Based on this, you might be able to not track tiles everywhere, but just at pre-set locations. Only if you set it to a "lost mode" can you track it everywhere outside of certain pre-set locations, but then it'll beep and have annoying antistalking features like airtags - where you notify people nearby. Maybe orphaned tiles could try to collect to random bluetooth devices after a period of time to make their presence known? It would help people who didnt set up an app to listen ahead of time. That could be annoying though if the balance isn't right. Can probs still be abused, but should make it a complex task, and you can never stop everyone anyways.

----

aside, I'm surprised tile never tried to build any static infra in major urban areas to supplement their phone-based network (which seemed lacking when i used it compared to airtags). Do you see the use of Alexa/Sidewalk as a significant boost or advantage? Have you considered things like LoRaWAN based networks (thing network etc) as a supplement? A lot of that is built in major areas, and would just need a mapping step which may be able to be collected by existing users phones+tags in day to day use.

Aside again: this seems like a fun problem to work on, are you hiring?

robocat• 4 years ago

There needs to be a privacy mode for the App, and the Tiles.

I only want to enable Bluetooth on my Android when I am searching for keys - and I am happy with the admittedly large compromise that I need to be near the keys to find them. I do wish to be able to scan for keys, but only as I demand. For that purpose the App does not need any location information at all.

I don’t want to have any location information shared with your company at any point in time, and I never want to be scanning for other people’s Tile devices either (I only have Bluetooth on when I am actively using it for speakers, which is rare). The App nags for many more permission’s than I wish to share.

nicbou4• 4 years ago

This sounds like it was typed by a department instead of a human being

kelnos6• 4 years ago

I opened an app linked to the most precise tracker in my arsenal, the $30 LandAirSea device. To activate it costs extra, because it needs a cellular plan to ping global positioning satellites.

I feel like someone who writes about privacy and surveillance should at least know how GPS works... nothing "pings" a GPS satellite here. GPS signals are constantly being broadcast to the ground for anyone to receive. The cellular plan is so the device can phone home to tell an online service what the device's position is, after determining it from the (free to use, open air) GPS broadcasts.

ezfe• 4 years ago

does this distinction matter at all, in any way to the point they were trying to get across?

kelnos6• 4 years ago

If someone is going to write an article about tracking and surveillance, to me it reduces their credibility if they don't understand something very basic about how GPS works. It makes me wonder what else they got wrong in the article, and whether or not I should trust their overall conclusions.

This might not matter to you, and that's fine; it does matter to me.

bitminers• 4 years ago

I didn't find any analysis here of what these companies are doing with all this location data they are collecting. The consumer gets some detail of single devices which they can see on a screen, but the mother ship is collecting a ton of detailed location data from every device that they can run through their advanced computing to refine into predictive products or advertising. This is the bigger story to me.

greatjack613• 4 years ago

https://webreader.app/?url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/1...

throw7• 4 years ago

tl;dr the baby was fine.

coding123• 4 years ago

So they can more than double detection if Apple opens a web service that lets you find out if you're recent coordinates were also tracked by giving such a service to Google. So instead of having your phone ping Apple, Google could do it for you and find out if you're being tracked.

alistairSH• 4 years ago

And, if I'm reading the documentation correctly, for the only use case I personally care about (theft recovery for expensive bicycles), it's useless because the thief can utilize the anti-stalk features to locate/disable the tag?

Zigurd• 4 years ago

It would make a good decoy: "Ah! I found the airtag under the saddle!"

andrewstuart• 4 years ago

Whenever I open the front door my cat tries to zip out and run away.

He doesn't go far, and generally stops running from me after a few meters and gives up. But I am concerned what might happen if he's away a few hours before I discover.

So I put an airtag on his collar. It's already paid off once when I found the front door open I just looked up where he was and went and got him.

McHankHenry• 4 years ago

Apple have reluctantly been in the surveilance industry for years, due the governments far-reaching and uncontestable court orders. Now it seems they've willingly jumped in with both feet.

pbhjpbhj• 4 years ago

I often wonder with USA whether TLA's have a bounty on certain tech, like implement a tracker we can piggyback on and we'll provide a $X00M bonus, implement an email parsing service, implement a street-facing webcam system, implement a household based microphone array with remote access, etc..

They'd be state level equivalents to a parent slipping a tracker in a kids bag, or reading their messages, or whatever.

pyman• 4 years ago

Paywall!!

gnicholas2• 4 years ago

... but I think I’ll leave the AirTag in it. It will make it easier to find the car in a vast parking lot.

It sounds like the author has an iPhone, and it has a feature that will show you where you parked your car if you connect it to your car via BT. It basically takes note of the location where you disconnected from the car and stores it in Maps as Parked Car.

Leaving a tracker in your car is not a bad idea if you're worried about theft, though.

ubermonkey• 4 years ago

OH, I remember this person's story about setting up way-too-much smart tech in their house. Her whole shtick is this kind of IT HAPPENED TO ME weird quasi-alarmist immersive reporting, and I imagine it's incredibly tedious in real life. It definitely is on the page.

I closed the tab once I realized it was the same person.

arthurofbabylon• 4 years ago

This may sound nuts - but I don’t want certain kinds of security.

For example, I don’t want my home in specific to be safe – I want my society to be safe. So I’m less interested in cameras/locks and more interested in social programs, education, and access to resources.

As another example familiar to those who travel in wild places, there’s not much value in trying to avoid getting robbed. Mitigate the losses with pragmatic decisions but by all means enjoy a great adventure. (Preventing violence is a different equation.) Being robbed might be scary - but there are much more important things worthy of attention in some of these places.

Last example, closer to privacy -> One of the healthiest opportunities for humans is to get early morning light (it establishes endocrine function, literally curing depression) - for most people sacrificing this is not worth increased privacy in the form of closed blinds.

Calculations of privacy and security are rarely intuitive. They inherently touch numerous webs of interconnection. And folks who use AirTags will find the same challenges and realize similar lessons.

maccard• 4 years ago

for most people sacrificing this is not worth increased privacy in the form of closed blinds.

There is an assumption here that people wake after sunrise and that people go to bed after sunset. I live in Scotland where during winter it's dark at 4:30 pm and bright at 9am, and during summer it's mostly dark by midnight (we've technically had sundown but it doesn't dark dark) and bright at 4am.

I sure as hell am not going to be a healthier person for being awake at 4am after having gone to bed at midnight

aeturnum2• 4 years ago

I've been aggressively sharing my location with anyone who will have it[1] because I think it's important that we grapple with how many people might be aware of our location at this point. Our locations are all shared with many people we will never meet, often in ways that are indirect. The social experience of being able to see a 'location'[2] at any time is a pretty new idea (relatively) and I think the only way we (collectively) are going to form an opinion about how we would like engage or block it is to engage.

What I mean by 'engage' is not to use location sharing (tho I do), but to hypothesize what each one of us thinks is the right approach to location monitoring (embrace, block, etc) and try to implement it. It's the only way we'll develop informed opinions about what should be different and how to improve the system we are building.

[1] If you reply to this with a Gmail address (or message me on twitter or email me: aeturnum@gmail.com) I'll share my location with you. Feel free to share back, or don't! I am not picky.

[2] The idea of a location is super complicated. It involves coordinate systems and maps and abstraction. So I am loath to just talk about it like it's straightforward.

3-cheese-sundae• 4 years ago

Can you elaborate a bit on how sharing your location to others indiscriminately will increase awareness of involuntary location tracking?

aeturnum2• 4 years ago

Sure!

So it's easy to think about all of the things someone could do to you if they have your location: hurt you, delay you, rob you, etc. But it's also very mundanely easy to get the location of a human. I'm sure, if you look outside your window, you can probably find one now.

So the question is how do we draw the lines? When does some random person on the internet knowing my location go from being amusing to being creepy? The only way I've found is to share with people and see how that feels. Because I have the opportunity to learn when someone new can see where I am and reflect on how I feel about that. Or, when I am going somewhere, it reminds me that people can see where I am going. The idea is to increase the opportunities to think about it and, potentially, to find fellow interested people to think about it with.

But, again, my *whole point* is that people can see where all of us are going and we have no idea who. None of us can say exactly how many people are aware of our locations. So the best we can do is reach out and choose to engage (or block) in the location interfaces we have access to and reflect on how those actions impact us and our lives. What do you get from telling Google where you are? What do you get from telling your mom where you are? What do you get from telling a stranger where you are? Are the three related and how?

brian_herman• 4 years ago

I just bought one to put in my car incase it gets car jacked.

Vixel• 4 years ago

Cool article. Either I'm getting old or the NYT is hiring some great new writers. I have really liked a lot of the reporters from the last year or so.

I used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS tracker to watch my husband’s every move

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