> AirTag abuse alert

Warnings about potential misuse

REVIEWS OF APPLE’S nifty little AirTags have been resoundingly positive. (See Mac|Life’s own definitive test on page 46.) But a handful raise security concerns.

A Washington Post columnist says the device does not have sufficient safeguards against stalking. AirTag does have built–in precautions against “unwanted tracking,” as Apple calls it. Your iPhone will detect if someone else’s AirTag is traveling with you, and alert you. After a while, the AirTag will start playing a sound to let you know it’s there. But the Post columnist says these alerts are ineffective — the sound plays only after three days and is just 15 seconds of “light chirping” measured at 60 decibels from 3ft away. That seems too little and too late for those concerned about privacy and potential domestic abuse situations. It is also possible that AirTag’s speaker can be disabled.

Plus, since AirTag works exclusively using the Apple Find My network, the “alien AirTag” alert won’t appear on Android phones, making AirTag a powerful tool for tracking people who don’t have an iPhone, the columnist claims.

Apple’s VP of iPhone marketing, Kaiann Drance, addressed some of these concerns in an interview, saying: “These are an industry–first, strong set of proactive deterrents. It’s a smart and tunable system, and we can continue improving the logic and timing so that we can improve the set of deterrents.”

Separately, MacDailyNews reports that a German security researcher was able to hack into an AirTag and reflash its microcontroller so tapping the AirTag with an NFC–capable device redirected to the researcher’s own website instead of the Apple site that displays the owner’s contact information when the AirTag is in Lost Mode.

MacDailyNews comments: “Everything can be hacked. Since Apple’s secure Find My network is required for AirTag’s Lost Mode functionality, Apple could employ a server–side defense against modified AirTag units.”

But all this is an early warning that every great idea is potentially open to abuse, and users should be vigilant.