WTH

lkrupp said:

Well, Tile has been around for some time now so shouldn’t we already know of any real-world issues like you describe?

There are a multitude of electronic gadgets you can buy to surreptitiously track a person.  For $29 you can buy a GPS tracker from Amcrest and secure it under someone's car, then get location updates every 5 minutes via the cellular data network.  Tile is no different; I do not doubt that Tile trackers have been used to stalk people.

The difference is that now Apple is the one marketing such a device.  Abuses that the technology press would have shrugged about with any other manufacturer's products will now get giant screaming clickbait headlines of "APPLE AIRTAGS USED BY STALKERS!"

That, in my opinion, is why Tile shouldn't be complaining too much about AirTags.  They have the opportunity to capture the anti-theft tracker market which Apple clearly wants to steer clear of.  If Tile can gain access to the "Find My" network, then they will be able to sell the device that I want to buy.

netrox said:

Can I use it to track a stolen vehicle? Will it be able to locate? Does it require that there are iPhone users or wireless networks nearby to transmit the location? 

In theory it would be an outstanding way to locate a stolen vehicle, as every iPhone owner who passed within range of your AirTag equipped stolen car would update the location over the "Find My" app.  It would be Tile on steroids.  You'd be able to tell the police exactly where to find your vehicle.

In practice, Apple will warn the thief within a short amount of time (perhaps 30 minutes to an hour, but not long) that he is in the vicinity of an AirTag that is tracking his location, assuming he has an iPhone of his own.  That pretty much negates its utility as an anti-theft device, in my opinion.

22july2013 said:

What you don't understand is that iPhones, iPads, and Macs already have internet connections and therefore they do NOT request nearby bluetooth iOS devices to report their location. That's the difference. (I'm ignoring AirPods because they don't have U1 chips and I'm quite sure that they do NOT use the Find My network; they report directly and solely to your iOS devices.) AirTags are NOT connected to the Find My network so they must ALWAYS request to nearby iOS devices that their location be sent to the Find My network.

Except that my iPhone typically has a WiFi connection in areas where I'd probably encounter lots of AirTags, in which case the data usage of forwarding those packets to Apple's "Find My" servers is irrelevant.  As for my cellular data, "Find My" used a whopping 0.14% of my unlimited plan over the past 6 months, which (again) is irrelevant.  Even increasing that 20-fold would hardly be a blip in my overall data usage.

Of course, if enough people such as yourself can manufacture sufficient outrage because Apple is "stealing" from their pay-as-you-go cellular data plans, Apple will probably include a software switch along the lines of "Only Forward 'Find My' Data Packets When Connected to WiFi", and you can then rest assured that all those AirTag users won't be stealing your precious cellular data.  

22july2013 said:

I'm surprised there hasn't been outrage that people's iPhones are using their own data plans to transmit location data of other people's Tags. I think the reason there is no outrage is that people still haven't figured out what's actually happening.

Why would there be outrage?  That location data is already being sent out to locate iPhones, iPads, MacBooks, AirPods, and every other Apple gadget.  The "Find My" location system has been in operation for a long time.  The only difference is that Apple will be adding a new type of device to it.

You can opt out of the "Find My" system, but most people keep it turned on because it's so useful.  I doubt the data required to enable it is more than a drop in the bucket compared to the typical video and audio streaming that most people do with their portable devices.

Okay, here is more detail about the privacy protection features from the Apple website:

AirTag is also designed with a set of proactive features that discourage unwanted tracking, an industry first. Bluetooth signal identifiers transmitted by AirTag rotate frequently to prevent unwanted location tracking. iOS devices can also detect an AirTag that isn’t with its owner, and notify the user if an unknown AirTag is seen to be traveling with them from place to place over time. And even if users don’t have an iOS device, an AirTag separated from its owner for an extended period of time will play a sound when moved to draw attention to it. If a user detects an unknown AirTag, they can tap it with their iPhone or NFC-capable device and instructions will guide them to disable the unknown AirTag.

So you'll have only a limited amount of time before the AirTag audibly alerts the thief and allows him to disable it.  That is definitely going to cripple it as an anti-theft gadget.  Hopefully, there will still be companies like Tile that will be able to sell people a more useful device.