This month, more than three dozen victims allegedly terrorized by stalkers using Apple AirTags have joined a class-action lawsuit filed in a California court last December against Apple. They alleged in an amended complaint that, partly due to Apple’s negligence, AirTags have become “one of the most dangerous and frightening technologies employed by stalkers” because they can be easily, cheaply, and covertly used to determine “real-time location information to track victims.”
Since the lawsuit was initially filed in 2022, plaintiffs have alleged that there has been an “explosion of reporting” showing that AirTags are frequently being used for stalking, including a spike in international AirTags stalking cases and more than 150 police reports in the US as of April 2022. More recently, there were 19 AirTags stalking cases in one US metropolitan area—Tulsa, Oklahoma—alone, the complaint said.
[…]“Consequences have been as severe as possible: multiple murders have occurred in which the murderer used an AirTag to track the victim,” their complaint alleged. One plaintiff from Indiana, LaPrecia Sanders, lost her son after his girlfriend allegedly used an AirTag to track his movements and then “followed him to a bar and ran him over with her car, killing him at the scene.”
It’s almost as if selling cheap trackers and turning every iPhone into a tracking device was a terrible idea. If only the creators had talked to any woman, ever.
While the European Union’s heroic regulators are busy forcing coffee machine makers put 45-minute off switches on the machines, instead of banning cheap trackers.
Just to play Devils advocate though, they are more regularly used for legitimate purposes
I have a tile pro, and it has been a huge help for me.
I was dating a girl whose ex-husband swerved at me on the road once (and it wasn’t from using a tracker, I think he just saw my car, or was just stalking her like normal, or went through her contacts to find my address).
I think in practice, if airtags didn’t exist, these people would simply stalk people another way
Some months ago Apple and Google reached an agreement about a shared network. Part of that is an anti tracking specification to avoid this problems.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-google-partner-on-an-industry-specification-to-address-unwanted-tracking/
As always as soon as Apple does it 1. They copy everyone else then 2. Oh man it’s Apples fault for everything.
Are the people suing Samsung, Tile or the other 10 companies that make even cheaper trackers?
I mean there are a lot more Android users than Apple users right? And things like tiles have been around. But hey what do I know.
It depends on market, but at least in the US apple are dominant, outselling all android manufacturers combined in a typical year (ie >50%).
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/02/15/apples-iphone-dominated-us-smartphone-market-in-2021
I’m not familiar with them. I looked up airtag alternatives for android, but I get the impression these would be fair less effective without apple’s vast network of devices to do the tracking. After all, this isn’t a function of “android” phones by default. Tracking capabilities will be limited to active customers of each respective tracker. and none can match the popularity of iphones, which have tracking enabled by default.
https://www.howtogeek.com/724198/the-best-airtag-alternative-for-android/
Interestingly I did learn that there is a class action against Tile’s corporate owner Life360 for tracking users and allegedly selling the data.
https://www.classaction.org/news/life360-secretly-sells-users-geolocation-data-to-third-parties-class-action-claims
In any case though, these all work on a similar principal. Apple’s happens to be the largest and for better or worse their products will dominate the headlines.
Google is going to launch its own network and i think it’s going to be interoperable with Apple’s. I pre-ordered one device for it.
https://chipolo.net/en/products/chipolo-one-point
jgfenix,
Thanks for the info, I am curious about this.
The FAQ from your link suggests the interoperability is complicated and the networks themselves aren’t compatible…you might need hardware that separately handles both apple and google protocols (ie a device with multiple tracker implementations).
Aside: It’s too bad for alt-os users like me that these are all proprietary solutions. Cryptography done right would not depend on proprietary google binaries.
There is nothing as effective as an airtag in the market. The difference between airtag and tile is HUGE. If airtags didn’t exist, I would buy nothing rather than a tile. Thats how useless it is to me, and how wide of a gap. on paper they sound really similar, but they’re night and day.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
iphones being everywhere gives apple a huge advantage here.
In theory, if ipv6 and “5G” had evolved as advertised, every appliance and device including these trackers would just have it’s own internet connection and not need to piggyback off of phones. Alas, that world never really came to be. For all the hype that was generated, the revolution everyone was promised didn’t happen and 5G technology didn’t do too much to change the way we use technology. The carriers didn’t care to offer the affordable plans that would have allowed all of this to happen. The subscription pricing model would need some serious adjustments before it makes financial sense to hook everything up via 5G.