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Over the past year, numerous cases of surveillance using AirTags have come to light. We explain how it works and what to do to protect yourself.
Apple's AirTag keychains only went on sale last spring, but they've already earned a bad reputation as a means of aiding criminals and spying on people without permission. In this article, we'll look at how AirTag works, why it can be dangerous, and how to protect yourself from AirTag surveillance and other types of cyberstalking.
In the simplest case, the tags work like this: you attach the “tablet” to your keys like a keychain, and if you are suddenly late for work and your keys are lost somewhere in your apartment, you activate the search mode on your iPhone. Using ultra-wide band (aka UWB) technology, the phone shows you the direction of the tag and gives you hints like “hot/cold.”
A more complicated case: you attach an AirTag to a backpack, but you successfully forget the backpack on the subway. Since you and your iPhone are already very far from the backpack when you discover the loss, UWB will not help here. All users of relatively modern Apple mobile devices (iPhone 7 and newer) come into play. Using Bluetooth technology, they determine the presence of a tag nearby and transmit approximate or exact coordinates to your Apple account. Using the Apple Find My service, you can see where your backpack ended up - in the lost and found office or to a new owner. The most important thing is that all this happens automatically, and you don’t even need to install anything. Everything needed for the AirTag search system to work is already built into iOS for hundreds of millions of users.
True, given the maximum range of Bluetooth in tens of meters, such a scheme only works in large cities, where there are a lot of people with iPhones. If your backpack ended up in a village where all the residents use Android smartphones (or even the latest push-button phones with almost no Internet), it will be difficult to determine the location of the AirTag. In this case, the third detection mechanism is triggered: the speaker built into the tag will start making a sound after a few hours of no connection with at least some iPhone. If the finder is smart enough to put a smartphone with NFC support to the tag, it will give him a phone number to contact the owner of the missing item.
In practice, immediately after the devices went on sale, reports began to appear about their not entirely legal use or even about outright crime. Here are the most important examples:
And you know, this is not the worst scenario. Theoretically, AirTag can be hacked and the behavior of the tag can be modified programmatically. Certain steps have already been taken to this end: in particular, in May of last year, a researcher managed to gain access to the secure firmware of the device. And this will be the most dangerous for both Apple and users - a situation where someone can use a network of hundreds of millions of iPhones for illegal surveillance without the knowledge of the manufacturer, the owners of the smartphones participating in the search operation, and the victims themselves.
Moreover, even consumer key fobs with similar functionality have been on sale for a long time. Tile tags have been produced since 2013, and they also have means of finding lost items at long distances using the same principle. Of course, this company is unlikely to achieve “coverage” of hundreds of millions of iPhones - this requires the power of the Apple ecosystem. Plus, such devices cost money, sometimes a lot, and are relatively easy to find.
In the case of AirTags, tags must be linked to an Apple account, which is difficult to create anonymously, without indicating a real name and (most often) a credit card number. If the police contact Apple about illegal surveillance, the company will provide this data (however, it remains to convince the police to request such data, which, according to victims in different countries, is not always possible).
In the end, it's business as usual: AirTag is a useful technology that can also be used for harm. Apple didn't invent cyberstalking, but it did come up with a convenient technology that just so happens to allow illegal surveillance. So the company has a responsibility to make unwanted use more difficult.
Here, criticism of the closed ecosystem of Apple programs and devices has become relevant again. If you own an iPhone and someone has planted an AirTag in your bag, your phone will notify you. But what if you don’t have an iPhone? For now, the manufacturer has solved this problem by releasing an app for Android smartphones. Which still needs to be installed to detect surveillance. It turns out that Apple has created a problem for everyone, and only offered a simple solution for its own customers. Everyone else has to somehow adapt.
In February 2022, Apple tried to respond to the mass of criticism with one big statement. In it, it acknowledged that not all AirTag use cases (both legal and illegal) were envisaged before the device was released. It promised to more clearly inform AirTag buyers that they cannot be used for surveillance. It plans to make the sound signal louder by which you can find “someone else’s” AirTag. This is commendable, but it does not solve all the problems yet. Let's hope that over time, Apple will be able to clearly distinguish between legal and illegal uses of AirTag.
Developers of spyware and stalkerware apps, on the contrary, try their best to make them as invisible as possible. In addition, stalkerware and spyware, in addition to tracking location, give the tracker a bunch of other opportunities. In particular, they open access to documents, photos and correspondence of the victim, which can be even more dangerous than geolocation. Therefore, if you are afraid of surveillance, then first of all you need to take care of the security of your smartphone - this is the most obvious goal.
And then you can look for unidentified AirTags around you. If you use an iPhone, you will be notified of the presence of a bug fairly quickly. If you have an Android and want to protect yourself from surveillance using AirTag, install the Apple Tracker Detect app.
Source
Apple's AirTag keychains only went on sale last spring, but they've already earned a bad reputation as a means of aiding criminals and spying on people without permission. In this article, we'll look at how AirTag works, why it can be dangerous, and how to protect yourself from AirTag surveillance and other types of cyberstalking.
How AirTag Works
AirTags were introduced in April 2021 as a way to find easily lost items. Inside the tag is a board with a wireless module and a replaceable battery. AirTag also has a fairly large speaker, part of which is, in fact, the body of the device.In the simplest case, the tags work like this: you attach the “tablet” to your keys like a keychain, and if you are suddenly late for work and your keys are lost somewhere in your apartment, you activate the search mode on your iPhone. Using ultra-wide band (aka UWB) technology, the phone shows you the direction of the tag and gives you hints like “hot/cold.”
A more complicated case: you attach an AirTag to a backpack, but you successfully forget the backpack on the subway. Since you and your iPhone are already very far from the backpack when you discover the loss, UWB will not help here. All users of relatively modern Apple mobile devices (iPhone 7 and newer) come into play. Using Bluetooth technology, they determine the presence of a tag nearby and transmit approximate or exact coordinates to your Apple account. Using the Apple Find My service, you can see where your backpack ended up - in the lost and found office or to a new owner. The most important thing is that all this happens automatically, and you don’t even need to install anything. Everything needed for the AirTag search system to work is already built into iOS for hundreds of millions of users.
True, given the maximum range of Bluetooth in tens of meters, such a scheme only works in large cities, where there are a lot of people with iPhones. If your backpack ended up in a village where all the residents use Android smartphones (or even the latest push-button phones with almost no Internet), it will be difficult to determine the location of the AirTag. In this case, the third detection mechanism is triggered: the speaker built into the tag will start making a sound after a few hours of no connection with at least some iPhone. If the finder is smart enough to put a smartphone with NFC support to the tag, it will give him a phone number to contact the owner of the missing item.
AirTag and Dark Deeds
In theory, AirTag is a useful and relatively inexpensive (2990 rubles each or 9990 rubles for a set of four) accessory for everyday tracking of easily lost items, which will help find hidden keys or a forgotten bag. One example of a useful application of the technology, which has been discussed quite often over the past year, is the ability to attach AirTag to a suitcase before a flight. Travelers have repeatedly managed to locate lost baggage faster than airline employees.In practice, immediately after the devices went on sale, reports began to appear about their not entirely legal use or even about outright crime. Here are the most important examples:
- An activist from Germany has revealed the location of a secret government agency by sending them an envelope with an AirTag in the mail. Many people engage in similar activities – more or less legal depending on the laws of a particular country – tracking, for example, the actual routes of mail delivery. But another possible use case, like the one used by the German activist, is that if someone uses a post office box to receive parcels so as not to reveal their postal address, a parcel with an AirTag inside will reveal their real place of residence.
- Now, seriously: last December, police in Canada investigated several cases of AirTag being used to steal cars. The criminals would stick a tag on a car in a public parking lot, determine the owner's home address, and steal the car at night while it was parked in a suburban lot, away from any potential witnesses.
- Finally, there are many testimonies of women being spied on using AirTag. The tag is attached to a car, placed in a bag, thus determining both their place of residence and their daily routes around the city. AirTag has protection against such surveillance - if the tag is constantly moving, and the phone to which it is attached is not nearby, it starts making a sound using the same speaker. However, folk craftsmen quickly figured out what could be done to counter this: some time ago, modified AirTags with the beeper turned off began to be sold online.
And you know, this is not the worst scenario. Theoretically, AirTag can be hacked and the behavior of the tag can be modified programmatically. Certain steps have already been taken to this end: in particular, in May of last year, a researcher managed to gain access to the secure firmware of the device. And this will be the most dangerous for both Apple and users - a situation where someone can use a network of hundreds of millions of iPhones for illegal surveillance without the knowledge of the manufacturer, the owners of the smartphones participating in the search operation, and the victims themselves.
How dangerous are AirTags?
The worst thing hasn't happened yet, and it's unlikely to happen — Apple is still concerned about the security of its own infrastructure. It's also important to understand that AirTag is far from the only device of this kind. Various kinds of legal and illegal surveillance devices have existed for decades.Moreover, even consumer key fobs with similar functionality have been on sale for a long time. Tile tags have been produced since 2013, and they also have means of finding lost items at long distances using the same principle. Of course, this company is unlikely to achieve “coverage” of hundreds of millions of iPhones - this requires the power of the Apple ecosystem. Plus, such devices cost money, sometimes a lot, and are relatively easy to find.
In the case of AirTags, tags must be linked to an Apple account, which is difficult to create anonymously, without indicating a real name and (most often) a credit card number. If the police contact Apple about illegal surveillance, the company will provide this data (however, it remains to convince the police to request such data, which, according to victims in different countries, is not always possible).
In the end, it's business as usual: AirTag is a useful technology that can also be used for harm. Apple didn't invent cyberstalking, but it did come up with a convenient technology that just so happens to allow illegal surveillance. So the company has a responsibility to make unwanted use more difficult.
Here, criticism of the closed ecosystem of Apple programs and devices has become relevant again. If you own an iPhone and someone has planted an AirTag in your bag, your phone will notify you. But what if you don’t have an iPhone? For now, the manufacturer has solved this problem by releasing an app for Android smartphones. Which still needs to be installed to detect surveillance. It turns out that Apple has created a problem for everyone, and only offered a simple solution for its own customers. Everyone else has to somehow adapt.
In February 2022, Apple tried to respond to the mass of criticism with one big statement. In it, it acknowledged that not all AirTag use cases (both legal and illegal) were envisaged before the device was released. It promised to more clearly inform AirTag buyers that they cannot be used for surveillance. It plans to make the sound signal louder by which you can find “someone else’s” AirTag. This is commendable, but it does not solve all the problems yet. Let's hope that over time, Apple will be able to clearly distinguish between legal and illegal uses of AirTag.
Software-based cyber surveillance
In conclusion, it should be noted that software tools for surveillance are much more dangerous and are used much more often in real life than AirTag. Apple tags cost a lot of money, require linking to a real account of the organizer of surveillance, and the manufacturer still tries to make the tags harder to hide.Developers of spyware and stalkerware apps, on the contrary, try their best to make them as invisible as possible. In addition, stalkerware and spyware, in addition to tracking location, give the tracker a bunch of other opportunities. In particular, they open access to documents, photos and correspondence of the victim, which can be even more dangerous than geolocation. Therefore, if you are afraid of surveillance, then first of all you need to take care of the security of your smartphone - this is the most obvious goal.
And then you can look for unidentified AirTags around you. If you use an iPhone, you will be notified of the presence of a bug fairly quickly. If you have an Android and want to protect yourself from surveillance using AirTag, install the Apple Tracker Detect app.
Source
