Appleās Tile-like AirTag trackers are useful for finding lost items, but stalkers have been using them to track potential victims too. Now, Apple has finally spoken up about this more nefarious AirTag usage.
āAirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another personās property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products,ā a new Apple statement notes. āUnwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag. Itās why the Find My network is built with privacy in mind, uses end-to-end encryption, and why we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking.ā
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Apple has long benefited from one-sided reporting on its products, so itās been interesting to see the mainstream news pick up on the AirTag stalking stories. For example, we seem to hear about every instance in which an Apple Watch saves someoneās life despite not being a medical device, but never about the many more times someone with an Apple Watch just dies of a massive heart attack with no warning.
Apple doesnāt issue statements like this lightly as it doesnāt like to admit to problems with its products. But donāt worry, Apple fans. This one isnāt Appleās fault either. As noted above, stalking is a āsocietal problem,ā and Apple simply wishes that āothers also provide the sorts of proactive warnings in their productsā that Apple does with AirTag.
To its credit, Apple is working with law enforcement on āall AirTag-related requests [it has] received,ā unlike, say, all the law enforcement requests it has received to crack open iPhones owned by terrorists. āBased on our knowledge and on discussions with law enforcement, incidents of AirTag misuse are rare,ā it claims, as if the bad press invented itself. āHowever, each instance is one too many.ā
More specifically, Apple will make changes to AirTag and Find My to put this nonsense behind them so they can focus on all the good theyāre doing for the world. Soon, there will be new privacy warnings during setup, updates to the alerts that users receive to indicate that AirPods have been traveling with them, and updated support documentation. And later this year, Apple will introduce other updates that will help victims find unwanted AirTags more precisely, play sounds with alerts, refine unwanted tracking alert logic, and tune AirTagās sound.
Now can we kindly get back to reporting on all those lives that Apple Watch is saving? Come on, people.
dftf
<p><strong><em>"Apple has long benefited from one-sided reporting on its products, so it’s been interesting to see the mainstream news pick up on the AirTag stalking stories."</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p>That is likely a US-bias, given the US tends to be patriotic and give favourable coverage to its own companies — here in the UK, I can assure you it’s been mentioned in the news over-here.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>"Apple […] </em></strong><strong style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><em>doesn’t like to admit to problems with its products"</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p>The product is working as intended though: you put it on, or in, something and can then track where the tracker is via GPS. If people misuse that, they misuse it.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>[TRIGGER WARNING] </strong>It’s like saying <em>Apple </em>would be to blame if someone was to use an <em>iPhone </em>to record child-molestation. Sure, without that <em>iPhone</em> you could argue the video would never have been recorded, but that’s not what the majority of users use the camera for. Or equally, for a less-triggering example, what about strangling someone with the power-cable for their mac computer? Or using an <em>Apple </em>device to hack-into a company, or take part in a DDoS attack?</p><p><br></p><p>Everything can be misused.</p><p><br></p><p>I mean, in this specific example, you could also buy a cheap <em>Android </em>phone, sign-into it with a <em>Google</em> account you create and so know the credentials for, put that phone into a hidden place in, say, someone’s car, and then use the "Find My Phone" feature to do tracking that way. Sure, a phone is a lot-bigger than an <em>AirTag</em> and so more-likely to be found, but it will still let you track the current location online.</p><p><br></p>
dftf
<p>Every country has some level of patriotism, sure, but some more-than others.</p><p><br></p><p>And my point about US-bias still stands, as even you are sometimes guilty of this. I mean, we know that a worldwide silicon shortage is causing supply-issues in many categories, from cars, to medical-devices, to games-consoles.</p><p><br></p><p>And for games-consoles, you covered the main-two recently with different slants:</p><p><br></p><p>For <strong>Xbox</strong>, as US-owned company:</p><p>"Niko Partners reported this week that Microsoft has now sold over 12 million Xbox Series X and S consoles <strong>despite global supply chain issues</strong>."</p><p><br></p><p>For <strong>Sony</strong>, a non-US owned company:</p><p>"PlayStation 5 Sales<strong> are Already Slowing</strong> … As part of its latest quarterly earnings report, Sony revealed that it sold 3.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles, for a total of 17.3 million.</p><p><br></p><p>So for <em>Xbox</em> the message is "if not for this silicon shortage, it could have sold more", but for <em>Sony </em>"demand in the PS5 is clearly decreasing" is how it comes-over, which isn’t true. Both are being hit by the same issue: supply cannot keep-up with demand. Though, at 17.3 million to 12, <em>Sony </em>has actually still sold around 5.3 million <em>more </em>consoles, while facing the same silicon-shortage issue.</p>