Pro tip: if you ever invade Ukraine, don’t steal their Apple gear, they’ll just use it against you! Ukrainians are using Apple’s Find My device-tracking technology to track Russian soldiers’ movements after those troops stole Apple devices during the invasion. The real owners of the devices can see and report on the troops’ positions in real-time. (Via Cult of Mac)
It’s a sad fact of war that troops often take the spoils of war as they pass capture an area. As you might expect, Apple devices are some of the most attractive of these “spoils.” Because many Apple devices, like iPhones and AirPods, are mostly carried on a person’s body, Ukrainians are able to use “Find My” to track the troops’ movements.
“Ukrainians are locating their devices on the territory of the Homiel region, Belarus, where part of the Russian army retreated,” read a tweet from Franak Viačorka, senior adviser to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, democratic opposition leader in Belarus. He shared the location of a pair of AirPods taken by Russian soldiers.
Replies to the tweet express how impressed observers are with this wartime use of technology.
“This reminds me of when people were discovering secret overseas military bases by watching the public data of people’s fitbits. You could usually tell where the fence lines and gate posts were too just from the track data,” one person wrote.
Another tweet read:
“When Russians steal your trackable devices, you can find those Russians by tracking those devices! Putin’s incompetence is our ally against his evil.”