DIL Received IPhone Alert That Airtag Is Tracking You In Rental Car!

[davidhr]

l believe that this is what you agree to in the recent Apple agreements that most people never read--because they are very long. So if you have an IPhone, you're tracking all kinds of airtags and devices that are not yours.

That’s how the Find My network works. Your apple devices are constantly looking for other apple devices around you and report their location to the Apple servers. It’s anonymized, so apple can’t link your device to the location, but can send the specific location of the device to their owner.

It’s actually a fantastic piece of technology.

 

[gottalovepluto]

I hang out with people who (used to) Do Crimes. This would not be in their Top Ten (or even 100) things to try.

The further information that car traveled TX to NYC pretty much cements in the mule theory

 

[Lewisc]

Renting a car requires a drivers license. Major agencies run the license against database which checks FOR DWI, multiple speeding...infractions.

Do people running drugs rent cars in their own name?

I guess it's possible, I'm surprised

 

[irlandaise]

So if there is an AirTag nearby and you have an iPhone it lets you know?

There isn’t anything like an AirTag app or anything I would have to have loaded?

As I said, I don’t have them and no idea how they work.

l believe that this is what you agree to in the recent Apple agreements that most people never read--because they are very long. So if you have an IPhone, you're tracking all kinds of airtags and devices that are not yours.

Just to clarify, the iPhone does not usually alert you to the presence of a nearby AirTag. The way AirTags work is that nearby iPhones sense them and send their location information to Apple so it can update the location on the owners' phones. If you got an alert every time that happened, you'd be getting alerts all the time if you were at work or running errands or somewhere else where a lot of other people have iPhones!

The only time the iPhone "lets you know" that there's an AirTag nearby is if you've been near that AirTag for a certain length of time and it isn't yours. (I've seen various reports on what that time is, but couldn't find authoritative information from Apple.)

 

[pzw90]

Just to clarify, the iPhone does not usually alert you to the presence of a nearby AirTag. The way AirTags work is that nearby iPhones sense them and send their location information to Apple so it can update the location on the owners' phones. If you got an alert every time that happened, you'd be getting alerts all the time if you were at work or running errands or somewhere else where a lot of other people have iPhones!

The only time the iPhone "lets you know" that there's an AirTag nearby is if you've been near that AirTag for a certain length of time and it isn't yours. (I've seen various reports on what that time is, but couldn't find authoritative information from Apple.)

AND the owner of the AirTag is also not near. Or the AirTag is not at its home location.

For example, we have an AirTag on our dog, when my in-law takes him for a walk, she gets an alert because the AirTag is following her for a while without the owner. If I go along on the walk, the alert doesn’t pop up for them because the owner is there.
Also, our neighbors aren’t bombarded with alerts because the AirTag is in it’s “home” location

 

[Brian Noble]

Thought about this some more, and talked it over with some other folks who used to Do Crimes. We also came up with the mule theory as the best possible explanation. To wit:

A previous renter was using it to move a substantial pile of contraband---probably drugs. The person who owns the drugs is not the person doing the driving, because the driver is taking pretty much all the risk. Instead you have a "mule" do the driving for you, and you pay them just enough that they don't disappear with the product. But you also want to make sure the product does not go missing, so you drop a tracker in the car, just in case.

Why doesn't the mule's phone alert them? Good question. The answer is that the mule probably does not own a smart phone (that's why they are moving multi-decade-felonies worth of drugs for small change), but even if they do, they are told not to bring it because law enforcement can subpoena the cell tower records and coordinate movements. After the product is safely moved, the tracker is left behind, as a cost of doing business. (No one who knows what the car was used for is going to back to get it, because that's a really good way to be tied to a multi-decade-felony.)

The OP's daughter just happened to be the next person to rent the car. No one cared where she was, or what she was doing.

I'm not sure why I didn't think of this earlier. One of my former PhD students did something similar in a project we built to detect smuggling/product theft in Ethiopia.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2160601.2160615

 

[J-Dog]

It should notify you automatically. I have had other peoples bikes in my vehicle and got a notice that freaked me out until I realized it was just their bike.

*if you have an iPhone*

Yeah. We have one that we pin to our DD6, Morgan, at places like WDW. The AirTag is linked to my phone, not my wife's. So when we get separated and DD goes with her, she will get notifications that say "Morgan is following you". A little creepy, but it's generally a good thing that DD is following her...

 

[pzw90]

Yeah. We have one that we pin to our DD6, Morgan, at places like WDW. The AirTag is linked to my phone, not my wife's. So when we get separated and DD goes with her, she will get notifications that say "Morgan is following you". A little creepy, but it's generally a good thing that DD is following her...

You can share the tag with other people, in Find My, select the item and there should be the option “Share This AirTag”. This way the tag doesn’t go off when it’s around them, and they can also see where the tag is, not just you.

 

[DVCanadian]

How is this thread related to purchasing DVC?

 

[Chuck S]

Mousecellaneous would probably have been a better place, but the thread seems to have run it's course anyway, so no real need to move it now.

You know the mods aren't online 24/7, we're all volunteers, moderating in our spare time, and I'm sure we were busy doing Holiday related thingts this week like everyone else. I'm going to go ahead and close the thread.