“Air tag and stalker measures are not enough”

With regards to the lost and found tracker AirTag, Apple has expressed its view that it has implemented sufficient stalker countermeasures and cannot track people. However, according to reports that have actually performed a follow-up test, they are warned that the countermeasures are insufficient, saying that they were able to stalk fearfully and easily.

The Washington Post reporter Jeffrey Fowler put an air tag in his bag and conducted a week’s experiment with a colleague who acted as a stalker. As a result, it was concluded that Air Tag is a new tool for inexpensive and effective stalkers.

The first thing that is surprising is that AirTag delivers a terrifyingly accurate location to the stalker in real time. When I biked through downtown San Francisco, location information was updated every few minutes, and the correct address was sent to a colleague at home.

The heart of this article is the stalker countermeasure. According to Apple’s official support document, if you have an AirTag away from its owner nearby, it will indicate that you have found your AirTag. Although the feature worked and popped up, it was often said that the Airtag on the iPhone couldn’t fit well, and that the original warning doesn’t come out on Android devices, which about half of Americans use.

In addition, the experimental Air Tag made a sound three days later, according to Apple’s official opinion, but there is no big difference from the sound of a bird crying outside the window about 60 decibels at a distance of 1.5m. Moreover, it lasts only 15 seconds and remains silent for several hours afterward. It is said that even the 15-second sound can be easily fixed by applying pressure to the white plastic cover that functions as a speaker. In other words, if you put it in a narrow car seat or tape it up, the victim may not know for days.

The bigger problem is that there’s room for a lot of stalking in three days until you can hear the sound. It is pointed out that if the victim and the stalker live together, the sound may not be heard at all because there is a possibility of resetting through the iPhone after 3 days.

The article praised the AirTag alert function and said it would benefit not only other smartphone users, but also people tracked by third-party devices such as tiles, and that it is expected to be widely distributed. However, it is said that there are doubts about whether Apple has considered all the actual scenarios for the damage to the stalker. In this regard, an expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation says that although the product doesn’t think it’s perfect at the moment it hits the market, he believes that if even one expert on the abuse of intimate partners had consulted, this option would not have been possible.

Apple products have taken privacy as an important value and have been raising it with software updates. By listening to this experience and the opinions of security experts, Airtag may be able to further improve its stalker countermeasures in the future. Related information can be found here.