The Washington Post‘s Geoffrey Fowler says Apple’s AirTags are a “new means of inexpensive, effective stalking.” The report says that while the safeguards Apple built into its AirTags to prevent them from being used are better than similar solutions like Tile, they “just aren’t sufficient.”
Fowler planted an AirTag on himself and a colleague pretended to stalk him. Fowler came to the conclusion the AirTags is a “new means of inexpensive, effective stalking.”
Apple does offer safeguards, including privacy alerts to let iPhone users know that an unknown AirTag is traveling with them and may be secreted among their belongings. The accessory also gives off regular sound alerts when an AirTag has been separated from its owner for three days.
Fowler said that over a week’s time, he received alerts both from the hidden AirTag and from his iPhone. After three days the AirTag played a sound, but it was “just 15 seconds of light chirping” that measured in at about 60 decibels. The AirTag would chirp, then go silent for several hours, then chirped again. The chirping could be easily muffled with pressure applied to the top of the AirTag.
The three-day timer gets reset whenever it comes in contact with the owner’s iPhone, so spouses could use the AirTagt to track their partner without the sound ever alerting the tracked party.
While Fowler’s iPhone sounded off to give regular alerts about an unknown AirTag moving with him, but those alerts are not available for Android users. He also said that the AirTag feature that is designed to help find a nearby AirTag allows tracking by sound, a feature he says often did not work.
The colleague was kept well-updated with his location information from the planted AirTag. The colleague was updated once every few minutes with a range of around half a block. When Fowler was at his home, the AirTag reported his exact location, thanks to the Find My app.
Apple’s vice president of iPhone marketing Kaiann Drance told The Washington Post that the safeguards built into the AirTags are an “industry-first, strong set of proactive deterrents.” She went on to explain that AirTags anti-tracking measures can be improved over time. “It’s a smart and tunable system, and we can continue improving the logic and timing so that we can improve the set of deterrents.”
Drance says Apple chose a three-day timeline before an AirTag starts playing a sound because the company “wanted to balance how these alerts are going off in the environment as well as the unwanted tracking.”
Fowler’s full report can be found at The Washington Post website.