Apple To Address 'AirTag Stalking' With New Alerts

screenrant.com:

Apple’s AirTags have become quite popular, but not just among regular folks who genuinely need the location trackers. They're also prized in the circle of bad actors for crimes like stalking. Soon after the release, numerous concerns were raised following reports of hidden AirTags planted to covertly follow an unsuspecting victim. Apple has been addressing some of those concerns but at a rather slow pace.

For example, the company recently released an AirTag companion app for Android phones that will let users precisely scan for an unknown tracker in their vicinity. But more than just stalking, thieves are now using Apple’s coin-sized tracking gizmo for stealing cars. All that, on top of some hardware and functional loopholes that Apple is yet to address. But it looks like Apple is now trying to fix a lot of those issues very soon.

Related: AirTag Android App Only Solves Half Of The Privacy Problem

Apple has announced a series of changes, some of which are going to arrive with an upcoming update, while the rest will show up later this year. Starting with the most notable tweaks, Apple will switch to using the loudest sequence of tones from an AirTags’ speaker so that users can easily find them once they get a notification about an unidentified tracker. One of the earliest concerns about the abusive usage of AirTags was that the alert beep was not loud enough, especially if it was hidden deep inside a car or buried between noisy parts.

However, AirTags with intentionally disabled speakers are already up for grabs on online marketplaces, ready to be misused by bad actors. Apple has a solution for that situation as well, sort of. That solution is called Precision Finding. It relies on input from a phone’s camera, ARKit, and