Good news about AirTag stalking: It’s apparently not nearly as dangerous as some other products out there. Apple Insider highlights a report from the New York Times. While Apple has announced plans to make stalking by AirTag harder, the protections already built-in seem to serve potential victims better than trackers from other companies.
According to Apple Insider, a privacy reporter for the New York Times tracked her husband with three different location tracking devices and - importantly - also with his permission. The three devices tried were a Tile, a LandAirSea GPS tracker, and an AirTag.
From a personal safety standpoint, indications are that the LandAirSea GPS tracker was the worst. That’s thanks to a combination of its accuracy and its stealth. The device uses “GPS and satellite” and updates “its location every three minutes.” Originally designed for tracking airplanes, it does nothing to warn potential stalking victims of the potential stalking.
As for Tile, the piece says, “The Tile tracker rarely, if ever, updated its location since it relied heavily on its dedicated network.” While that might not make it the best device for stalking, it also might make it not great for actually keeping track of things you would want to be able to track.
Sitting, it seems, in the Goldilocks spot is Apple’s AirTag. While not wonderful out in the boondocks, take it someplace like New York City and its’ got “creepy accuracy.” That’s thanks to “the density of Apple products wandering around in people's pockets.” The piece says the reporter “was able to tell a hired photographer where her husband was at any moment,” when in the Big Apple.
At the same time, AirTag was doing its best to let the guy know he was being tracked. The down sides were that he had trouble using his iPhone’s precision tracking to find the thing and that he couldn’t tell where exactly the AirTag’s alert noise was coming from. But, he did know that something was up. According to the reporter’s husband:
For all the bad press the AirTags have gotten, and as flaky as the detection mechanisms were, at least I was consistently getting notifications they were following me… The privacy dangers of the other trackers were way worse.
