Apple To Address 'AirTag Stalking' With New Alerts | Screen Rant
Apple’s AirTags have become quite popular, but not just among regular folks who genuinely need the location trackers. They're also prized in the circle of bad actors for crimes like stalking. Soon after the release, numerous concerns were raised following reports of hidden AirTags planted to covertly follow an unsuspecting victim. Apple has been addressing some of those concerns but at a rather slow pace.
For example, the company recently released an AirTag companion app for Android phones that will let users precisely scan for an unknown tracker in their vicinity. But more than just stalking, thieves are now using Apple’s coin-sized tracking gizmo for stealing cars. All that, on top of some hardware and functional loopholes that Apple is yet to address. But it looks like Apple is now trying to fix a lot of those issues very soon.
Apple has announced a series of changes, some of which are going to arrive with an upcoming update, while the rest will show up later this year. Starting with the most notable tweaks, Apple will switch to using the loudest sequence of tones from an AirTags’ speaker so that users can easily find them once they get a notification about an unidentified tracker. One of the earliest concerns about the abusive usage of AirTags was that the alert beep was not loud enough, especially if it was hidden deep inside a car or buried between noisy parts.
However, AirTags with intentionally disabled speakers are already up for grabs on online marketplaces, ready to be misused by bad actors. Apple has a solution for that situation as well, sort of. That solution is called Precision Finding. It relies on input from a phone’s camera, ARKit, and onboard sensors like the accelerometer and gyroscope to help iPhone users locate an unidentified AirTag via audio, visual, and haptic cues. However, this feature will be exclusive to the iPhone 13, iPhone 12, and the iPhone 11 series phones only. And every time an unmarked AirTag is sending audio alerts, a display alert will automatically be sent to iPhones, iPads, and iPods nearby. From three, users can rely on Precision Finding to easily locate it.
Experts also raised alarms about how the alert system takes its own sweet time to alert a person that an unidentified AirTag was traveling with them. Apple is cutting short that warning delay as well. “We plan to update our unwanted tracking alert system to notify users earlier that an unknown AirTag or Find My network accessory may be traveling with them,” the company says in its latest release. Apple is also taking some proactive warning measures from the get-go. During the setup process, Apple will warn users that AirTags are meant for location tracking and not crimes like stalking. Apple also makes it clear that it provides details like linked Apple ID of an AirTag to law enforcement officials, allowing them to track an unidentified AirTag back to the owner.
Source: Apple