Everyone who shares location with me does so over Find My, and my family insists on using AirTags. As a 100% desktop Linux and mobile Android user, it is one of the few things that I always need to remote in to my Mac Mini to access because there are no x-platform FindMy apps and the FindMy iCloud web app does not have feature parity to the macOS and iOS apps. One of a long list of offenses where Apple refuses to make things easy for x-platform friend groups and families. Very annoying.
(... yep, it looks like one of their example programs is about accessing AirTag info via API: https://github.com/malmeloo/FindMy.py/blob/main/examples/rea... ...)
A truly x-platform app is one that works well on all 5 of these platforms, e.g. Signal. A moderately x-platform app is one that works well on the two mobile operating systems and on web as an alternative to desktop, e.g. WhatsApp. A single-platform app, like Apple FindMy, only works properly on e.g. Mac + iPhone. Apple tends to be the only major industry player that produces these sorts of apps, e.g. iMessage, FaceTime, Final Cut Pro, Keynote. Although with Keynote you can often get by with the iCloud web version, which has a useful 80%-or-so of the desktop app's features. Even apps like Meet, Zoom, and Teams -- run by rival companies -- are more x-platform than major Apple apps.
Xtian Xmas xfer tx/rx xor...
For example, “When I come home, fetch the latest electricity prices and notify me if I should plug in my Tesla”.
I tried that using Shortcuts, but they won’t run location based without confirmation. (There are some workarounds, but they, too, don’t work reliably in my experience.)
Does anyone knows if their approach is "sustainable", or if Apple can easily "block out" such hacks from their network?
Also, “when there’s a will…” doesn’t really apply to cruptography
Sounds awesome & makes airtags more appealing, but if apple is just going to shut it down next week then less so
OpenHaystack has been doing this for a few years now and Apple has made no efforts to restrict it.
[0] https://github.com/dakhnod/FakeTag
[1] https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack
[2] https://hackaday.com/2022/05/30/check-your-mailbox-using-the...
So what you're saying is that a decent firewall could still inspect the traffic, or the patterns thereof.
Also, this doesn't make any sense, as if Apple doesn't know which AirTag belongs to who, Find My would be very useless; and law enforcement would be furious.
Here is Apple’s docs on how they prevent themselves from inspecting traffic on Fmi: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-se...
They must have a way to decrypt payloads or otherwise get into the system they built and control. The fact that they let law enforcement know when someone is stalking someone with an AirTag shows that the data is available to them. It’s silly to think otherwise, paper or not.
Not technically correct. Apple devices (and Android phones with the appropriate app) detect if an unknown AirTag is moving with them and makes it home, possibly signalling a stalking attempt.
The heuristics for this happen locally; Apple isn't "aware" of this happening. That said, when you first set-up an AirTag, the serial is tied to your account. Therefore, when you physically find an unknown AirTag and report it to law enforcement, they can then subpoena (or get a warrant?) Apple for information on the AirTag owner's identity.
The serial itself, and any personal identifiers, are not used in the locating process, however.
This is well documented in the paper above, in articles, as well as in reverse engineering efforts.
I would like a tag that just records its own GPS coordinates locally on-device, every so often, and then when my dog comes home, I can check where she's been.
Does this exist?
I have used them before on various bikes and they work just fine. Battery life is about 25 hours, it is weather resistant, and then you can sync them after you record an activity. And at less than $30, if it gets lost, it isn't the worst thing in the world.
> Find My is an asset tracking service made by Apple Inc. that enables users to track the location of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, tvOS devices, AirPods, AirTags, and a number of supported third-party accessories through a connected iCloud account. Users can also show their primary device's geographic location to others, and can view the location of others who choose to share their location. Find My was released alongside iOS 13 on September 19, 2019, merging the functions of the former Find My iPhone (known on Mac computers as Find My Mac) and Find My Friends into a single app. On watchOS, Find My is separated into three different applications: Find Devices, Find People and Find Items.
You have quite a few granular choices.
> You can share your current location once, temporarily share your location while you're on the way to an expected destination, or share your ongoing Live Location... for an hour, until the end of the day, or indefinitely.
In Messages, you can use Check In to share your location... Your location is shared only if there's an unexpected delay during your trip or activity and you're unresponsive.
(Obviously you can find friends who don’t care for it and you can live a normal life and be just fine. I’m privacy conscious but I still share my location with a handful of friends for the above reasons.)
So AirTags, MacBooks, and turned-off iPhones are findable via passing-by turned-on iPhones.
Maybe it's just me, but if I own an internet-connected device and I turn it off, I expect it to be off. That an iPhone's definition of "off" means "you can't use it but other random people's iPhones in the vicinity can still connect to and ping it" rubs me the wrong way.
The engineering and thought that went into the whole thing to be useful but also privacy protecting is actually pretty impressive, and exactly the kind of thing we should be encouraging companies to do if we care about privacy. Especially since as you point out, you can still easily turn it off at any point if you want.
- Find your Apple Watch, AirPods, laptop etc
- Find family member devices if they've granted you access to do that
- Find AirTags
- Show you the location of friends who have granted you access
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