What are Apple AirTags and why could they be used to spy on me?
Surely you spend hours looking for your wallet, keys or some everyday object that usually disappears around the house. Well, the AirTag is a smart device able to find our objects quickly in a more elegant and effective way than putting a knot in poor San Cucufato.
AirTags are quite small, about the size of a coin. They can be inserted into any pocket or mounted on an accessory to use it as a kind of key ring. For the location, they do not use GPS technology, since it would have a huge impact on their autonomy. To do their job, these small accessories make use of the ultra broadband technology, known by the acronym UWB. But, where the magic of AirTags really lies is precisely when it comes to making the location itself. The chip apple u1 mounted inside communicates encrypted with any iOS device that enters its proximity radius. For example, if you lose a backpack in a bus station, everyone who has an iPhone on (and Find My activated) will be silently detecting your AirTag and you will be receiving the position on your mobile. In the same way, your mobile will also be collecting encrypted information that can be very useful to other people around you who have lost sight of their belongings.
Seen this way, AirTags are great. However, all disruptive technology also has its downside. In this case, AirTags can also be a double-edged sword. Some criminals they have seen in these small Apple devices a new opportunity to commit crimes. Hence, the Cupertino company has become serious to see that one of its star products last year is being used maliciously.
How can they hurt me with an AirTag?
If criminals have something left over, it is imagination. Shortly after these products were released, a girl from Maryland discovered that someone had put one of these on her locators in his car while having a drink in a bar.
Shortly thereafter, the Ontario Regional Police discovered that a mob of professional robbers were using AirTags to locate and steal luxury cars. However, it is estimated that it is not the only case of car theft that has been done in the world using these Apple smart tags.
How Apple protects your privacy with AirTags
Apple has not stood still, and from the very beginning, Tim Cook’s have wanted to put everything necessary to prevent their product from being used with illegal purposes. However, the AirTags already came standard with a series of quite important security measures to avoid tracking people.
People Tracking Blocking
One of the biggest concerns surrounding AirTags is that they can be used to track people. In the case of the Maryland girl, Jeana, her own cell phone alerted her that she was being tracked by an AirTag. That was how she found out that she was being tracked.
This is related to a security measure implemented in the software itself Find My. Her iPhone detected that there was an AirTag that was moving at the same pace as her, but it was not associated with her Apple ID. Earlier this 2022, another girl from Mississippi was notified also for your iPhone while he was playing with his children in the park. Someone had placed one of these labels on him without him realizing it. Luckily, the security system worked, but surely the story would not be the same if the victim had a mobile phone from another manufacturer. In this aspect, the measure should also cover Android users to be fully effective, although we will talk about that later.
sound warnings
Apple will have to review its product in order to release a second version, we have no doubt about that. Meanwhile, one of the measures they have thought of to alleviate this situation is the sound warnings, which appeared in one of the iOS 15.4 betas. Basically, the iPhone won’t just display a pop-up warning that we are being tracked, but also it will emit a sound so that we realize it as soon as possible.
Correction of false positives
Another way to protect the user is not to overwhelm them with unnecessary alerts. In this case, in the same version of iOS, a bug has been fixed. error that could trigger alerts when detecting AirPods as a ‘unknown accessory‘. In this way, if someone receives one of these notices, they can be sure that the notice poses a real threat to their privacy and security.
Inability to turn off security notifications
From iOS 15.4, You also won’t be able to turn off Find My safety notifications.. Why? Well, because if someone places a tracker on another person and also has access to the victim’s iPhone, they could do the perfect crime.
Precision search
It is not yet available, but it will be a feature that will arrive throughout 2022. It will be a new anti bullying package that will allow you to find an AirTag accurately. This will serve to locate one of these devices that we know we have nearby, but that we cannot find the key to its location. Very useful if they have placed one in our car and we are not able to find it.
Are these security measures enough?
Nobody doubts that Apple wants to solve all the problems that AirTags have been able to cause. But the solution to defend against this technology should not be to buy Apple products to fight on your side.
Apple cares about privacy, yes. But, with the AirTags, he has only proven capable of caring about the privacy of your customers they are being attacked by other of their clients. What if an AirTag is used against a person who doesn’t have an iPhone? Or what if you have it, but it doesn’t work with the latest version of iOS? Considering that tracking other people is a illegal activity in practically every country in the world, Apple should further intensify these measures to protect not only its customers, but anyone to which the AirTags may cause damages.
