Comment on Thieves caught stealing political yard signs

Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• kevindqc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  They have to be near any iPhone, which will then tell apple where they airtag is

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  • Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Does it only have to be phones or can it triangulate from wifi, like a ton of other tracking things do?

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    • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      All the tracker does (to my knowledge) is sending out a Bluetooth signal every Bluetooth-capable device that has been backdoored the appropriate software running and Bluetooth enabled, which is at least all IPhones, as well as many Android smartphones, will pick up those Bluetooth signals, calculate the rough distance based on the delay, and then send the rough location to the Apple servers. The Airtag itself does not calculate anything.

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      • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        My understanding is that most modern iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops will respond to Air Tags and forward their pings to Apple.

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  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    How far is “close”? Unless these people left their phone in their car, it eould have to be more than 30 feet like bluetooth, right?

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    • CaptDust@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      10-30 meters to the random apple device, pending environment conditions.

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    • fishpen0@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      They don’t need to leave their phone in their car or even have a phone themselves. If any iPhone sees the device from ~30 feet away it reports back to Apple where it saw it. So even passing traffic was likely to report where the tracker was. Unless the tracker is moved while no phones are near it, Apple knows where it is

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• officermike@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Air Tags have a battery and have short-range low-energy communication with phones. What makes them work out-of-range of your phone is that their signal can be picked up by any phone that participates in Apple’s tracking network. Say your luggage has an Air Tag in it, and it ended up flying to a different city than you. Your phone obviously can’t find the Air Tag because it’s out of range, but someone in that other city is bound to have an iPhone. Their phone sees the signal from your Air Tag and reports that location back to Apple’s servers. Apple updates the last known location of that tag. You check your phone to see where your luggage is and your phone requests that info from Apple’s servers. Apple sends your phone that data, and now you can see your luggage ended up in Timbuktu while you’re in Seattle or wherever.

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• vladmech@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  They anonymously piggyback across any nearby iOS device so you can get to the general region and then Bluetooth takes over for the fine pinpointing

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