AirTag useless
So I’ve got 8 airtags, and various holders - with 4 currently in use.
I upgraded my wife’s iOS on her phone and then the next day we went to the beach.
Next thing I know she’s blowing up at me.
“Stop Airtagging me”
“Stop sending me airtag messages”
Turns out she carried the bag with my keys in it to the car and she got a whole bunch of “airtag following you” messages. Then in the car I also had my work keys, so on the way home she got more messages about that.
I had a quick look at the screen - it looked like a lot.
She was very upset.
In her distressed state I couldn’t find an easy way to make it clear that I’m not stalking her.
I’ve unlinked all airtags and packed them away and won’t be using them ever again. Maybe I’ll sell them on eBay. maybe I’ll just bin them. But 8 airtags and various holders add up to a tidy sum. I’d expected to use them for various rarely used gear that I frequently misplace.
My observations are:
- Her iPhone was previously on an iOS version that didn’t support airtag
- in some recent iOS release (or maybe airtag firmware) the speed which these notifications appear seems to have shot up
- The alerts are great for when someone is tracking you, but this frequency inhibits its utility
- Regardless of whether they fix this bug, I’m unlikely to ever use the airtag again
- My wife is happy I’ve thrown away the airtags and that she is no longer getting messages
- This leads me to be rather sympathetic of the technical feasibility of the recent “license plate tiktok” video
How do other people explain these messages to their friends and family?
What alternatives are there to living peacefully with airtag? I couldn’t find a way to disable the notifications (which I guess is a good thing for security). I could have disabled Bluetooth, until she wants to use headphones. Throwing away the airtags seems the only solution
technical note: since we are in COVID lockdown here in Sydney, Australia, we rarely leave the house and when we do we are all together - so it is very likely my wife had been in fairly close proximity to my car keys for quite some time before the alert.
Comments
https://lifehacker.com/how-to-turn-off-airtag-alerts-when-someone-borrows-your-1847424956
I don't know why Apple wouldn't just let you turn off the alerts indefinitely when you know that the airtag is a trusted one. I wonder what happens on a bus/plane/train with a bunch of people with iPhones and someone with an airtag on their keys or luggage if it would alert all of them within range that an airtag was following them. That could be a bit chaotic if multiple people had airtags.
It's important that people are alerted of unwanted trackers but it's very hard to tell between trusted and untrusted trackers when you can only base it on proximity to the device. They certainly shouldn't need to spam the alerts, they could alert one time, keep it in a log somewhere or visible notification on the lock screen until the user decides what to do about it.