Apple Air Tags New Anti-Stalking Features

Posted by mctracy On February 28, 2022

The new Apple Air Tags have a feature to prevent stalking. IOS 15.4 beta includes a multitude of safety aspects to combat the trend of using Air Tags to track people without their consent.

“Apple announced a collection of new safety features for its AirTags earlier this month, after a spate of news reports found they’d been used to track individuals without their consent. At the time, Apple didn’t provide an exact release date for the new safety features, noting only that they’d arrive “later this year.” (The Verge).

There are two main new features. One is a new alarm feature on Air Tags.

“AirTags that haven’t been in direct connection with their owners’ devices recently start emitting an irritating noise through their small internal speaker. This not only helps genuinely lost AirTags get noticed, but also draws attention to AirTags in your vicinity (e.g.in your handbag/purse or rucksack/backpack) that shouldn’t be there.” (Naked Security).

The other is a warning feature.

"AirTags that remain in your vicinity for some time but don’t belong to you lead to a warning on your device. While you’re walking around you’d expect to come across a random bunch of AirTags, but if a specific tag that isn’t yours sticks with you when there aren’t lots of other tags coming and going, you’ll be warned.” (Naked Security).

Apple also has other safety initiatives in the works.

“Other anti-stalking AirTag features announced by Apple earlier this month include alerting users sooner when an unknown AirTag is detected in their presence, and allowing them to use the precise ultrawideband tracking in newer iPhones to find an AirTag that’s not their own (previously, this was only available to an AirTags’ owner). Tracking notifications shown on an iPhone will also be synced with the alert noise made by an AirTag, to make them more noticeable, Apple said.” (The Verge).

Sources:

Naked Security. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2022/02/23/apple-airtag-anti-stalking-protection-bypassed-by-researchers/

The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/23/22947063/airtags-anti-stalking-ios-15-4-beta-4-privacy-notice