This is an utterly pointless non-story. They didn’t even find a device and it was likely someone wandering around the park as they were. Why even report this here? How are we better informed?
Because non-Apple publications miss the point of stories like this, and lack context that we provide. It's great that you know how AirTags work, but the same cannot be said for the folks that are finding this story as we speak from the Internet as a whole.
As a reminder, AppleInsider is for everybody, not just the forum-goers.
Yet this story doesn't exhibit much skepticism at all. The lead sentence adds fuel to this very fire by suggesting they "may have been stalked", not that they may have misunderstood what nearby AirTags were doing:
"A family's trip to Disney World turned sour after it was discovered they may have been stalked throughout the theme park using AirTag."
...it isn't until 12 paragraphs later that it mentions the crowds & lines, and it's easy to miss. So no, it doesn't really seem to be working to inform the general public about this.
Our emails that we're getting thanking us for the additional information that nobody else seems to be including disagree with your doubling-down on your original point.
This aspect of the discussion has concluded. If you wish to discuss your opinion on the story further, my DMs are always open, as you're aware.
This happened to me on our last trip to Disneyworld. No one was stalking us. When you are on a ride, or in a line for a while with someone who has an Apple device - air tag, AirPods, etc - the tracking notification can get confused thinking that device is trying to track you when it’s just a device on someone close by.
I think you're probably right. There are guides to the "optimum" route to take around Disney: two parties that read the same website could well stay in close proximity for a sequence of rides.
Thats not quite like this though is it? If someone remains in close proximity to you, for example a friend takes a long road trio with you and has a tracker, you would not get that alert unless that person didn't also have his iPhone with him.
Actually changing phones can cause this same alert to come up as well. There is a tedious process that must be done to totally reset the Airtag in order to sync it with a new phone regardless of the Apple ID.
We swapped out her 12 Pro Max at the Apple store recently because when we took it get checked out for intermittently losing cellular connection it got stuck in diagnostics and the a boot loop where the Apple log just showed up over and over. We restored her phone from the recent back up in the Apple store and were on our way. After we left the store and went back home she started getting the notification that there was an Airtag in close proximity that didn't belong to her. Then it hit my phone as well.
We also realized after while of being home that her airtag would beep every
few minutes ( took me forever to realize what was making the sound as
it isn't the same as the ping notification sound and at a lower volume). I wonder if others here this little chirp as well and don't know what it is while they think they are being stalked.
I grabbed her phone and her airtag showed up in "find my" on her phone so I though it was ok. When I tried to ping her Airtag it gave me a message saying that it was unable to locate the Airtag? I had it in my hand and still unable to locate. After a bit of reading I found the reset process online and got the airtag reset, and paired to her new phone and the messages stopped.
Comments
This aspect of the discussion has concluded. If you wish to discuss your opinion on the story further, my DMs are always open, as you're aware.