'Tragically, in multiple instances, AirTag tracking led directly to a murder,' according to a class-action lawsuit against Apple, which was updated to add more than three dozen new plaintiffs.
Specifically, what should be done? I’m not talking about posturing with “they should do more”, but what concrete actions should Apple do with Airtags that they aren’t doing already?
What should have been done to start with. They shouldn’t have launched a product (neither should tile or the others) that had the potential to be used this way without significant protections in place. They didn’t even protect their own users at launch.
I’m not really sure what you’re arguing here. That they’ve done enough? That they shouldn’t be liable for the damage their products have done? That they aren’t violating people’s privacy and potentially their safety by continuing to sell these items? If this were a car manufacturer and someone had died because of a feature of the car there would be a whole recall.
What I’m hearing is a lot of whataboutism in this whole thread. Nobody should be allowed to just track you without your permission. Privacy laws should be enforced and should be strengthened to prevent this type of thing.
It doesn’t matter that the auto industry poisoned people for 100 years while lying about the dangers. It matters that leaded fuel isn’t used anymore because people and their governments did something about it (leaded fuel is only used in aircraft, racing cars, farm equipment, and marine engines but not in consumer vehicles since 1975 in the US).
It doesn’t matter that drug companies in the past haven’t given people a complete list of the dangers of drugs. They do now.
It doesn’t sound like you’re actually looking for an answer to what could be improved. It sounds like you use the product or one like it so because it’s convenient for you you don’t care about the inconvenience or danger to anyone else. That’s pretty callous.
It doesn’t sound like you’re actually looking for an answer to what could be improved. It sounds like you use the product or one like it so because it’s convenient for you you don’t care about the inconvenience or danger to anyone else. That’s pretty callous.
I’m absolutely curious what could be done but you still haven’t suggested anything and have spent this entire thread repeating the same FUD in circles.
I’ll put on the devil’s advocate hat here to offer you some ideas of things that a hypothetical person who wants to see more done to protect people could put forward in the sake of meaningful and productive discussion. I would take issue with some of these so I wouldn’t personally advocate for all of them, but:
Make them far more difficult to open to remove the speaker making noise, as it’s really easy right now.
Require the user to “check in” with the tag every few weeks by making them tap it with their phone, to prevent tags from being attached to people for extended periods of time w/o interaction.
Disable the tag if it leaves a geofence indicating the owner’s home for longer than a period of time (say 2 weeks)
Attach the tag owner’s name and picture on the notification about a tag following them
Affix a louder speaker and bright LEDs to make detection easier
For example, if you had said “the speakers have been easy to remove such that there are hundreds of YouTube videos on the matter, and even if they aren’t removed they are fairly quiet and hard to detect”, I would be fully in support of the criticism. But this level of criticism or discussion was not put forward.
Tor is used by a few entities with nefarious reasons. Should we ban Tor?
Did I say anything about banning the product?
Specifically, what should be done? I’m not talking about posturing with “they should do more”, but what concrete actions should Apple do with Airtags that they aren’t doing already?
What should have been done to start with. They shouldn’t have launched a product (neither should tile or the others) that had the potential to be used this way without significant protections in place. They didn’t even protect their own users at launch.
I’m not really sure what you’re arguing here. That they’ve done enough? That they shouldn’t be liable for the damage their products have done? That they aren’t violating people’s privacy and potentially their safety by continuing to sell these items? If this were a car manufacturer and someone had died because of a feature of the car there would be a whole recall.
What I’m hearing is a lot of whataboutism in this whole thread. Nobody should be allowed to just track you without your permission. Privacy laws should be enforced and should be strengthened to prevent this type of thing.
It doesn’t matter that the auto industry poisoned people for 100 years while lying about the dangers. It matters that leaded fuel isn’t used anymore because people and their governments did something about it (leaded fuel is only used in aircraft, racing cars, farm equipment, and marine engines but not in consumer vehicles since 1975 in the US).
It doesn’t matter that drug companies in the past haven’t given people a complete list of the dangers of drugs. They do now.
It doesn’t sound like you’re actually looking for an answer to what could be improved. It sounds like you use the product or one like it so because it’s convenient for you you don’t care about the inconvenience or danger to anyone else. That’s pretty callous.
I’m absolutely curious what could be done but you still haven’t suggested anything and have spent this entire thread repeating the same FUD in circles.
I’ll put on the devil’s advocate hat here to offer you some ideas of things that a hypothetical person who wants to see more done to protect people could put forward in the sake of meaningful and productive discussion. I would take issue with some of these so I wouldn’t personally advocate for all of them, but:
For example, if you had said “the speakers have been easy to remove such that there are hundreds of YouTube videos on the matter, and even if they aren’t removed they are fairly quiet and hard to detect”, I would be fully in support of the criticism. But this level of criticism or discussion was not put forward.