I own one of these and wish I would have bought more. It's very handy for luggage and equipment that you don't want people alerted to an airtag. I use Elevation Labs Vault (10 year) and Capsule (5 year) products which are very high quality products. I stash the tag in a location on all of my recreational vehicles / trailers. I would have removed the speaker from the tags anyway, but this makes it a 30 second process. I'm sure someone will 3D scan the unit (it's very simple) and the pin can easily be machined. I think their pin design was bad as it gets jammed in the tag and there's no finger nub to twist and pull it out. Definitely an oversight in their design. Even if they have a patent on it working around it with a better design is trivial.
Feels oddly concerning and complicit that MacRumors would willingly say “yeah we knew it existed but we didn’t want to publicize it” to let them slip it into the market in the first place.
If only journalists wanted to try to do their job instead of regurgitating Bloomberg’s trash rumors.
The standards you walk past are the standards you accept, and MR must accept that stalking is cool.
Did you actually read the article? It’s very critical of the technology. It feels ‘oddly concerning and complicit’ (not to mention disingenuous) that you are totally unaware of the criticisms within it. In absolutely no way does this article promote stalking. If you read the article, your reading skills need a lot of work.
It's not particularly meaningful to criticize something only after the point where the opinion has any actual effect on it. Most people who think something is bad and want to do something about it will describe it as bad right away, not wait until it no longer exists.
"We did not cover the launch of the Elevation Lab Silencer because we didn't want to publicize an accessory that does away with the AirTag 's anti-stalking feature"
So they knew it launched (from Elevation Lab announcing it) and decided not to run a story at that time to criticize it themselves... try again?
Running a story after the product is pulled and the outrage launches is a bad look for the entire tech press out there that let it slide.
Do you think if a stalker found out about the AirTag silencer from an article they would decide not to use it because the article was critical? They made the choice that publicizing it would lead to harm, so didn't.
Streisand effect... why would you write an article about a product you don't want people to know about? What end result would you foresee in doing that, logically?
You expect way too much of journalists. Mostly rightfully so, but -- it's not really possible for journalists to publish everything they know. Going through the editing, investigation, cuts... it's just not tenable.
There are plenty of GPS trackers which can be used for anti-theft purposes. AirTag isn't designed for that, largely because Apple doesn't want the bad PR.
Also, if you have an apple device stolen, they don't help you.
But if it is unlocked, I don't think apple will do anything for you with the device. If it comes in for service they won't confiscate it, I think they'll work on it.
It is all on you. You should lock it, enable find my and do remote erase/etc.
So you could sell your phone and then tell apple it was stolen and pressure the buyer to return it? Why would apple care if the phone is unlocked? And if the phone is locked, you can just use find my, what do you need apple for?
Not really, it is just tracking your bike. Theoretically someone could have thrown the bike in a dumpster, which went in a trash truck and you aren't tracking any body.
You've missed my point entirely by trying to over literally interpret it as a closed form logical definition and proof. Classic HN.
Any sufficiently advanced theft prevention device is indistinguishable from a stalking device.
You're still stalking the movements of the person who stole your bike, until they ditched it. The fact that the device can no longer stalk them if they threw it in a dumpster does not mean you aren't still tracking their movements from where they stole your bike to the dumpster.
In that moment when you see your cut bike locks on the ground where you parked your bike, and you pull out your phone to track it, your first instinct is that someone stole it and you want to follow their movements after they stole it.
I think it's even more classic hn to try to redefine a commonly understood word in an attempt to be pithy, and then get pissy when someone says that's not really right. I probably wouldn't have responded if your post was particularly clever. But it wasn't.
No reasonable person would say trying to get your bike back by seeing it's location and going there is stalking. Stalking has an element of intent and a pattern of behavior which simply isn't present by a property owner attempting to go to the location of their property.
Perhaps you could stalk to get your bike back, but it would be something like "I think Bob stole my bike, I'm going to follow him around and see if I can catch him with my bike".
Perhaps you could stalk your bike thief by NOT retrieving your bike, but instead letting a thief keep your bike, and you continually track and harass them with your knowledge of where they probably are with your bike.
> We have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.
I am not sure I follow the unique technological aspects of this solution. The last time I needed to silence a beeping contraption, I broke out the cordless drill and ran it through the offending PCB element. Air tags seem affordable enough to practice this operation a few times. Not sure what is actually protected here.
It's all from people not understanding the very trivial technology that is the hardware of an AirTag. Most tech is magic to most people. To be fair, fact that we use electric fields to bend a literal crystal, to make sound, is pretty damn magic. :)
Anyone that knows how a speaker works also knows how to silence an AirTag, without instructions required. Anyone that wants to silence an AirTag can just find one of the hundreds of videos on youtube [1], and spend some minutes carrying out the act.
The removal of this product will stop exactly zero people from silencing an AirTag, besides those that are probably doing it for legitimate purposes. For example, I silenced the one in my car, because I was tired of it constantly beeping anytime someone with a iPhone drove with me (including my family).
My memory was incorrect. It uses a voice coils, rather than a piezo. Still, sending electrons through a wire to move something (slightly) distant is even more magic!
I am sure you have heard the infamous Dropbox comment :)
AirTags are expensive at $30, which is about five hours of the legal take-home minimum wage of about $6/hour in the United States, after tax. The cheapest cordless drill you can find is about $20 and you run the risk of damaging the AirTag.
This device was $10 and meant to be foolproof. Instead of spending $20 + $30 for each "practice AirTag", you can spend $10 with certainty.
For those on the side of our economy with more access to resources, they might value their time enough that $10 is a trivial price to pay to silence multiple airtags more easily.
yes, but they would be able to take them down from stores
patent is already out, so that damage is done
it’s also a small damage, the issue is convenience and mass sale to consumers, it’s like disclosing meth recipes, if you want to figure it out it’s possible, but responsible companies try not to reproduce that massively
What's the best thing to track bike thieves these days? I own 6 bikes (yes one for each type of road I ride ..) and I have never found a good solution?
There’s no point in tracking them. Cops won’t help since the dollar amount is too small and there’s no documentation the bike is yours. You could try to steal it back or intimidate the thieves I suppose, but I personally would not take that approach.
Best solution is to buy a high quality bike lock or two, and don’t store it long term where people can’t see it.
I bought my partner a few of those years ago before Google had even announced an intent to get in to the tracker market, and they work great for an individual looking to find their keys in the house, but as far as tracking things in the real world they're significantly less useful because their tracking network is basically only other Tile users who have the app installed and haven't let its permissions expire.
A tag like this is only as strong as its network, and Apple absolutely dominates that with Google a distant second and Samsung still pretending they have a chance in third. Tile isn't even in the competition.
Apple's network has the majority of iOS and iPadOS devices on the planet tracking for it.
Google's network has whatever subset of Android devices are running a new enough version of the OS and have opted in tracking for it.
Tile's network has whatever subset of both iOS and Android devices where the device owner either has/had or is close with someone who has/had a Tile device, installed the app, hasn't uninstalled it, and the app hasn't had its permissions revoked automatically due to lack of use.
It's just not comparable. Tiles are fine around the house or in densely populated areas where you can generally assume someone with the app is going to be nearby pretty regularly, but if you lose your keys on a hiking trail and someone else picks them up so they're not wherever your phone last saw them you're probably not getting any updated info any time soon.
The outrage feels misplaced. The way to stop evil people abusing your global track-anything network is to not have a global track-anything network. Apple PR must be on yellow alert right now feeling glad they’ve dodged a bullet.
Imagine if Meta did this instead. They could network their smart glasses and leverage their ubiquity to help people find lost pets — but strictly only lost pets, not people — but then Something Labs might ship a tool to make a person's face look pet-like enough to turn Find My Pet into Find My Ex.
> The way to stop evil people abusing your global track-anything network is to not have a global track-anything network.
Or, to have a global track-anything network, and recognize this is the wrong level to try and solve the abuse problem.
> Apple PR must be on yellow alert right now feeling glad they’ve dodged a bullet.
Nah, they knew about this from the start - that's why they nerfed the whole design to the point it barely has any use case; otherwise they'd be buried with complaints and horror stories and media criticism, and the device would've never reached the market.
>They could network their smart glasses and leverage their ubiquity to help people find lost pets — but strictly only lost pets, not people — but then Something Labs might ship a tool to make a person's face look pet-like enough to turn Find My Pet into Find My Ex.
FTFA: "The Silencer had a pin located where the AirTag speaker is. The device description instructed users to remove the AirTag battery, apply the Silencer, and hit it with a hammer to cause the pin to pierce the AirTag 's plastic cover and the speaker below."
The device helps you aim the nail and then, presumably, makes a watertight seal around your now-punctured AirTag.
I wonder why no one writes that all UWB devices - airtags, phones, headphones - form the opportunistic P2P network perfect for mass surveillance. Best case scenario, all phones and airtags can be localized on demand by FBI - yes, the current one. Worst case scenario, by FSB.
Yes, within about 30 minutes. They are basically useless for theft prevention as a result. Apple nerfed the functionality after someone used it for stalking. You'll notice there is no mention of theft prevention in the marketing materials anymore.
Apple even provide a handy Android app for locating them.
There never was mention of theft prevention. The release day marketing was about losing your keys in the couch. Day one ios would alert you if a tag was tracking you but it took a while for them to collaborate with Android on it.
The societal harm from allowing cheap silent tracking of people is greater than the benefit of recovering stolen bags.
Apple skirt around the issue now, but what is the one of primary scenarios for "lost luggage, keys, bicycles, bags" if not theft?
They have also done videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJwdhWM9d0Y where they show Find My as a tool for theft prevention, although in that case it's a Macbook not an Airtag.
It's also kinda weird to use it for anti-theft when you think about how AirTags work. They aren't GPS, rather all these Apple devices are seeing it with Bluetooth and snitching on the location.
> Apple even provide a handy Android app for locating them.
Took them half a year and public pressure to develop something. 3 years for a joint standard (DULT) with google after google developed something by themselves.
There is always pressure required for those things...
Many, many people used them for stalking. I personally know somebody whose estranged husband did. I try to keep myself pretty ignorant of Apple products, and it was the first time I got a detailed explanation of how they worked.
You get a notification when an AirTag is following you for some time, but the AirTags owner is not near it. It's meant to detect someone slipping an AirTag on you without the false alarms from, say, taking a walk with a friend who has one in their backpack.
Wait so a thieve an eye with an iPhone who steals my expensive bicycle that I have tagged with an airtag Is receiving a notification that there is an airtag "following" them nearby?
They always talk about lost items in their marketing. They don’t talk about theft prevention or finding pets or anything. Gotta go for a mini GPS tracker or something for protecting $$$$(+) bikes (which should never leave one’s sight anyway).
Right, like “cut your dinner with a knife, the one actual murderers would use.”
They had to balance needs of us owners of things and needs of abused partners and the general public. Other trackers have been available long long before AirTags and haven’t gone away since Apple’s introduction.
As it stands, plenty are still very upset about the existence of AirTags. Especially given the ease of disabling the speaker and the lack of Android notifications at launch.
Meaning: you can't, because the point of it is to help protect your kid (or, more probably, help find their backpack when they absent-mindedly lose sight of it), not to spam teachers with notifications and disrupt everyone with random beeping.
If I just say that you’re the smartest person ever will you stop this? Your point has been made over and over again… just like every single time I read you.
Here's a real world case I've run into a bunch of times. Parents send children to school with Airtags in their backpacks. (The children are young and don't themselves have phones.) Class goes on a field trip. Boom, tons of notifications.
Yes indeed. Not only that, Apple worked with Android to make it work there too. It makes it a lot easier on the thief so they don’t have buy/steal an iPhone, too.
Yeah, I forget the wording but there’s a notification like “so-and-so’s AirTag is near you and they can see where you are.” My spouse put AirTags in our baby stuff and I get them whenever I’m using it.
It's also other devices. I used to get a notification that my wife's AirPods would be following me. It only got silenced when we formed an Apple family.
We have AirTags registered to my wife's account because I use Android. I have one in my work backpack, and every morning I get a notification that an unknown tracker is following me. I wish there was a way to silence the warning for that specific tag.
Something about this rubs me the wrong way. Making a device to modify another device is on the same moral high ground as the right-to-repair people and the farmers hacking their own Deere tractors etc.
Their AirTag Magnetic Mount is arguably just as "dangerous". It can be mounted to the underside of a car in one second and no one inside the car will hear it.
There's a point that comes up often when discussing locks (what's their point if they can easily be opened and/or cut?), namely, that they help keeping honest people honest.
Yes, duct tape exists, but a determined stalker has much better tools anyway. The point is rather the "amateur" stalker, the one who didn't leave the house planning to stalk someone but suddenly decides to attach their backpack tag to someone's car.
Still worth pointing out that the mere existence of the Air tag enabled a level of stalking that didn't exist before.
You'd probably get the notification pretty quickly though, assuming the installer didn't use whatever "silencing" tech this post is apologizing for. My wife usually leaves her purse in the car, and I get the "[Person's] AirTag is moving with you!" notification whenever I leave the house without her. I keep forgetting to trust it or whatever.
I don't want weaponization of patents regardless of how much "Think of the Children!" and "We must defend the public!" is injected.
white knight with a sword made of patent lawsuits doesn't exist in my world.
It was good of them to decide to stay away from producing the product they realized they didn't want to exist, they should have stopped there instead of villainizing themselves by self-deputizing.
You can already stalk
..I mean find lost bikes... easily using the air tag network. Silencing the speaker is a weak way to defeat anti tracking measures, because anyones iphone will still alert them.
A better way requires a small programmable cpu with ble support - have a large number of virtual air tags which a device rotates, and also have a device which never sets the separated status byte.
I've said before, apple should just create a law enforcement mode that one can turn their air tags into. When in law enforcement mode, the tag will not report to your page, but law enforcement can go through legal channels to get the devices location.
To put a device into (or out of) law enforcement mode, can only be done over bluetooth (i.e. in proximity to device)./
Law enforcement usually are interested in recovering stolen goods, when you have evidence of where the goods are via GPS. Or eyewitness or video evidence of who has them.
Where people often get disappointed is when all the evidence they have is "my [object] is gone!" and they expect the PD to send out a full forensic team.
I have a couple of their devices. It's useful since the purpose isn't usually to recover bike through highly ritualized process that activates after community street bicycle repairman has performed eco-friendly recycling operation on bike. It is built for semi-rule-of-law cities like San Francisco where speed of action might yield desirable outcome like retrieval of bike. In such situation, one has short window to re-identify bike location before it is used for ecological protection activities.
I can't really understand how one could have been so naive to not see the obvious misuse of this thing in the first place. AirTags started 2021 and the backlash was spectacular. Did they forget about it?
...or didn't they care, like Apple, and just cashed in before the shitstorm?
I think the idea was to intentionally disable the speaker in an AirTag you own. The use-case that I think they were describing would be to make it more difficult for a thief to find the AirTag and remove it. Thus, you'd be able to track your stolen bike for longer (and have a better change of finding it).
Of course, this would also make it easier for someone to disable a speaker and track a person without their knowledge, making it more difficult for that person to find a stealthy AirTag.
I'm not surprised that someone didn't think this through. I am surprised at how many people this must have gotten by to make it into production. You'd think that with any AirTag related product, privacy would be more central to the planning.
The audible tone can interfere with other stalking-adjacent use cases - for instance use for pet tags, for tracking children's backpacks, and so on.
It actually doesn't help as much for anti-theft, because a thief still might be smart enough at this point to check their phone for AirTag notifications. The audible tone may not even hit in a theft instance.
It says right there in the blog post - bike theft prevention.
AirTags are less useful for that use-case right now since the bike thief will get notified of the existence of the tracker on the bike once they transport it, and are hence prompted to find and remove the tag.
The blog post said bike theft prevention, yes. I'm not familiar with the ways AirTags work, so I had absolutely no idea how "silencing" an AirTag would help with that. I actually came here to the comments in the hopes of finding an explanation (which you thankfully included).
I think half the comments still miss what the "notified" part means. It's not jut an iPhone notification that a tag is following you. The tag literally beeps loudly, to help the thief locate it.
1. This is so dumb. You can be tracked any number of ways. The AigTag with or without sound is the dumbest way to track someone.
2. Physically disabling the AirTag speaker is soooo easy. It took under 3 minutes to do it on the AirTag I hid on my motorcycle.
3. "An Apology" is more like a weird advertisement (I guess it worked, I read the stupid thing. But, in fairness, I've now blocked their site in a custom ublock filter, so hopefully I never stumble on it again).
4. They have expensive bikes... Why? Who cares? That's not relevant to anything!? Why did they put that in there? Was this written by a 4th grader? Fuck me. I wish I had just read more AI slop instead.
I've heard one of the more significant concerns is escape from domestic abuse situations. In that case, people are often told to abandon their technology since it may be used to track them - but they might not know about the tracker tile/airtag hidden within a jacket.
I meant, the point of this AirTag noise disabler was to track stolen bikes and stuff. This doesn't help if the thief has a phone. Combined with what you're saying, sounds like this tool was only useful for domestic violence.
Do I? I don't think so... The thing with most criminals is that we only hear about the stupid ones that get caught.
Side note, AirTags are terrible for tracking someone, as noted everywhere else in this thread, they beep, they alert other phones, and you're giving control to Apple.
Here's one with no beeping or phone alerts for $18, cheaper than an AirTag:
The intelligence of stalkers is an academic subject. Findings are fairly consistent (e.g., their mean IQ is about 10 points below average).
It's absolutely true that there are many ways to stalk somebody, most of them much better than an AirTag. It's just that the people who decide it is a good idea to stalk somebody usually aren't the brightest, so making the lowest-effort way to stalk people a bit harder will likely stop many of them.
1. There are a million ways to die. But that's no execute for companies to make products that could potentially kill people - in dumb ways.
2. "Easy" is subjective - something easy for one may not be so easy for others.
3. This guy blocked their site in a custom ublock filter... Why? Who cares? That's not relevant to anything!? Why did this guy put that in there? Was this written by a 4th grader?
4. Yea, go read more AI slop, good idea.
I think you missed my point on #4; it was sarcasm, which, to be fair, in our current world, sarcasm can't be discerned from truth, so that's my fault. To be clear, on #4: I do not want AI Slop. I do not want "apologies" as hidden advertisements. AI Slop would have been the lesser of two evils. Still evil.
Also, even if it were software, what is virtue signaling about this? If they offer some software at any point, they should continue to offer that software to new users in perpetuity?
> Elevation Lab stops selling its AirTag “silencer.”The tool, which Six Colors recently slammed as “appalling,” pierces the AirTag’s speaker, preventing it from emitting sound. While Elevation Lab says it designed the tool to prevent thieves from detecting the presence of an AirTag, it also disables an anti-stalking feature that audibly alerts people when an unknown tracker is following them.
> Elevation Lab says it has stopped selling the tool and will use its “patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future,” according to MacRumors.
Provide the full context when you apologize, not whitewash what you did. Go on a ride on your more expensive than car bike, maybe that will help you reasses your product ideation.
Photo of the device on MacRumors (who intentionally didn’t publicize its release): https://macrumors.com/2026/10/13/elevation-lab-airtag-silenc...
I own one of these and wish I would have bought more. It's very handy for luggage and equipment that you don't want people alerted to an airtag. I use Elevation Labs Vault (10 year) and Capsule (5 year) products which are very high quality products. I stash the tag in a location on all of my recreational vehicles / trailers. I would have removed the speaker from the tags anyway, but this makes it a 30 second process. I'm sure someone will 3D scan the unit (it's very simple) and the pin can easily be machined. I think their pin design was bad as it gets jammed in the tag and there's no finger nub to twist and pull it out. Definitely an oversight in their design. Even if they have a patent on it working around it with a better design is trivial.
Feels oddly concerning and complicit that MacRumors would willingly say “yeah we knew it existed but we didn’t want to publicize it” to let them slip it into the market in the first place.
If only journalists wanted to try to do their job instead of regurgitating Bloomberg’s trash rumors.
The standards you walk past are the standards you accept, and MR must accept that stalking is cool.
Did you actually read the article? It’s very critical of the technology. It feels ‘oddly concerning and complicit’ (not to mention disingenuous) that you are totally unaware of the criticisms within it. In absolutely no way does this article promote stalking. If you read the article, your reading skills need a lot of work.
If you didn’t read the article, you’re a troll.
It's not particularly meaningful to criticize something only after the point where the opinion has any actual effect on it. Most people who think something is bad and want to do something about it will describe it as bad right away, not wait until it no longer exists.
Yes, I read the article.
"We did not cover the launch of the Elevation Lab Silencer because we didn't want to publicize an accessory that does away with the AirTag 's anti-stalking feature"
So they knew it launched (from Elevation Lab announcing it) and decided not to run a story at that time to criticize it themselves... try again?
Running a story after the product is pulled and the outrage launches is a bad look for the entire tech press out there that let it slide.
Do you think if a stalker found out about the AirTag silencer from an article they would decide not to use it because the article was critical? They made the choice that publicizing it would lead to harm, so didn't.
Streisand effect... why would you write an article about a product you don't want people to know about? What end result would you foresee in doing that, logically?
Possibly they didn't want to publicize it because they were worried that their platform would lead to more people buying and misusing it?
You expect way too much of journalists. Mostly rightfully so, but -- it's not really possible for journalists to publish everything they know. Going through the editing, investigation, cuts... it's just not tenable.
Tracking the person who stole your bike IS stalking, just a socially acceptable form. That's the point.
There are plenty of GPS trackers which can be used for anti-theft purposes. AirTag isn't designed for that, largely because Apple doesn't want the bad PR.
It's too late for that...people have been shot and killed directly because of AirTags.
Also, if you have an apple device stolen, they don't help you.
But if it is unlocked, I don't think apple will do anything for you with the device. If it comes in for service they won't confiscate it, I think they'll work on it.
It is all on you. You should lock it, enable find my and do remote erase/etc.
> But if it is unlocked, I don't think apple will do anything for you with the device.
How is Apple supposed to distinguish an unlocked phone from an unlocked stolen phone?
you tell apple. you give them the serial number.
I called them for this, they point some people to the wireless carrier.
note even if your device is locked, they won't do anything there either.
I'm just putting this information out there - their policy might not be what you expect, so it would be good to know it going in.
So you could sell your phone and then tell apple it was stolen and pressure the buyer to return it? Why would apple care if the phone is unlocked? And if the phone is locked, you can just use find my, what do you need apple for?
Is it stalking if there is no ill intent? (No, trying to get your bike back is not ill intent)
Not really, it is just tracking your bike. Theoretically someone could have thrown the bike in a dumpster, which went in a trash truck and you aren't tracking any body.
You've missed my point entirely by trying to over literally interpret it as a closed form logical definition and proof. Classic HN.
Any sufficiently advanced theft prevention device is indistinguishable from a stalking device.
You're still stalking the movements of the person who stole your bike, until they ditched it. The fact that the device can no longer stalk them if they threw it in a dumpster does not mean you aren't still tracking their movements from where they stole your bike to the dumpster.
In that moment when you see your cut bike locks on the ground where you parked your bike, and you pull out your phone to track it, your first instinct is that someone stole it and you want to follow their movements after they stole it.
I think it's even more classic hn to try to redefine a commonly understood word in an attempt to be pithy, and then get pissy when someone says that's not really right. I probably wouldn't have responded if your post was particularly clever. But it wasn't.
No reasonable person would say trying to get your bike back by seeing it's location and going there is stalking. Stalking has an element of intent and a pattern of behavior which simply isn't present by a property owner attempting to go to the location of their property.
Perhaps you could stalk to get your bike back, but it would be something like "I think Bob stole my bike, I'm going to follow him around and see if I can catch him with my bike".
Perhaps you could stalk your bike thief by NOT retrieving your bike, but instead letting a thief keep your bike, and you continually track and harass them with your knowledge of where they probably are with your bike.
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> We have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.
I am not sure I follow the unique technological aspects of this solution. The last time I needed to silence a beeping contraption, I broke out the cordless drill and ran it through the offending PCB element. Air tags seem affordable enough to practice this operation a few times. Not sure what is actually protected here.
It's all from people not understanding the very trivial technology that is the hardware of an AirTag. Most tech is magic to most people. To be fair, fact that we use electric fields to bend a literal crystal, to make sound, is pretty damn magic. :)
Anyone that knows how a speaker works also knows how to silence an AirTag, without instructions required. Anyone that wants to silence an AirTag can just find one of the hundreds of videos on youtube [1], and spend some minutes carrying out the act.
The removal of this product will stop exactly zero people from silencing an AirTag, besides those that are probably doing it for legitimate purposes. For example, I silenced the one in my car, because I was tired of it constantly beeping anytime someone with a iPhone drove with me (including my family).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to++silence...
My memory was incorrect. It uses a voice coils, rather than a piezo. Still, sending electrons through a wire to move something (slightly) distant is even more magic!
I am sure you have heard the infamous Dropbox comment :)
AirTags are expensive at $30, which is about five hours of the legal take-home minimum wage of about $6/hour in the United States, after tax. The cheapest cordless drill you can find is about $20 and you run the risk of damaging the AirTag.
This device was $10 and meant to be foolproof. Instead of spending $20 + $30 for each "practice AirTag", you can spend $10 with certainty.
For those on the side of our economy with more access to resources, they might value their time enough that $10 is a trivial price to pay to silence multiple airtags more easily.
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It's very well documented how to silence an Airtag, it doesn't take a drill.
We have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.
Doesn't the patent just document how it works so individuals can create and release 3D models of the device so anyone can create their own?
yes, but they would be able to take them down from stores
patent is already out, so that damage is done
it’s also a small damage, the issue is convenience and mass sale to consumers, it’s like disclosing meth recipes, if you want to figure it out it’s possible, but responsible companies try not to reproduce that massively
Or you can even just drive a pin into the speaker yourself given they've described exactly where it is.
Granted, the location of which was known years before they released this product, too. A single ifixit teardown reveals that much.
Who would be uncouth enough to violate a patent?
Even a stalker would draw the line there.
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What's the best thing to track bike thieves these days? I own 6 bikes (yes one for each type of road I ride ..) and I have never found a good solution?
There’s no point in tracking them. Cops won’t help since the dollar amount is too small and there’s no documentation the bike is yours. You could try to steal it back or intimidate the thieves I suppose, but I personally would not take that approach.
Best solution is to buy a high quality bike lock or two, and don’t store it long term where people can’t see it.
Will police even assist to recover a stolen bike if you have managed to track it?
tile tracker, it's airtag, but doesn't do the stalking warnings if you sign an agreement
I bought my partner a few of those years ago before Google had even announced an intent to get in to the tracker market, and they work great for an individual looking to find their keys in the house, but as far as tracking things in the real world they're significantly less useful because their tracking network is basically only other Tile users who have the app installed and haven't let its permissions expire.
A tag like this is only as strong as its network, and Apple absolutely dominates that with Google a distant second and Samsung still pretending they have a chance in third. Tile isn't even in the competition.
The network has been solid last I checked, no problems in my city
"No Problems" isn't exactly a comparison.
Apple's network has the majority of iOS and iPadOS devices on the planet tracking for it.
Google's network has whatever subset of Android devices are running a new enough version of the OS and have opted in tracking for it.
Tile's network has whatever subset of both iOS and Android devices where the device owner either has/had or is close with someone who has/had a Tile device, installed the app, hasn't uninstalled it, and the app hasn't had its permissions revoked automatically due to lack of use.
It's just not comparable. Tiles are fine around the house or in densely populated areas where you can generally assume someone with the app is going to be nearby pretty regularly, but if you lose your keys on a hiking trail and someone else picks them up so they're not wherever your phone last saw them you're probably not getting any updated info any time soon.
Except you have to use the naff Life360 app.
For tile tracker? it's its own Tile app
paint them so they look undesireable
Doesn't really answer the question that was asked, though.
XY problem
[dead]
The article linked to from The Verge is a good one, with quotes from EFF and Elevation Labs themselves.
https://sixcolors.com/post/2026/10/silencing-airtags-enables...
The outrage feels misplaced. The way to stop evil people abusing your global track-anything network is to not have a global track-anything network. Apple PR must be on yellow alert right now feeling glad they’ve dodged a bullet.
Imagine if Meta did this instead. They could network their smart glasses and leverage their ubiquity to help people find lost pets — but strictly only lost pets, not people — but then Something Labs might ship a tool to make a person's face look pet-like enough to turn Find My Pet into Find My Ex.
> The outrage feels misplaced.
Agreed.
> The way to stop evil people abusing your global track-anything network is to not have a global track-anything network.
Or, to have a global track-anything network, and recognize this is the wrong level to try and solve the abuse problem.
> Apple PR must be on yellow alert right now feeling glad they’ve dodged a bullet.
Nah, they knew about this from the start - that's why they nerfed the whole design to the point it barely has any use case; otherwise they'd be buried with complaints and horror stories and media criticism, and the device would've never reached the market.
>They could network their smart glasses and leverage their ubiquity to help people find lost pets — but strictly only lost pets, not people — but then Something Labs might ship a tool to make a person's face look pet-like enough to turn Find My Pet into Find My Ex.
This exists btw, from Ring: https://ring.com/ca/en/search-party
> Apple PR must be on yellow alert right now feeling glad they’ve dodged a bullet
iPhones notify you when someone else's AirTag is following you.
> leverage their ubiquity
We live in different worlds
> and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future
What prevents anyone from selling a device but distributing the software through a separate channel?
What software? It's a pin you strike with a hammer to pierce the piezo speaker within.
They patented the hammer and nail?
FTFA: "The Silencer had a pin located where the AirTag speaker is. The device description instructed users to remove the AirTag battery, apply the Silencer, and hit it with a hammer to cause the pin to pierce the AirTag 's plastic cover and the speaker below."
The device helps you aim the nail and then, presumably, makes a watertight seal around your now-punctured AirTag.
The "read more" link points to the same page. There is no more to read apparently. Why does this seem suspicious?
It's likely a Wordpress page with a "read more" plugin/functionality that is as unworking as it has always been.
I wonder why no one writes that all UWB devices - airtags, phones, headphones - form the opportunistic P2P network perfect for mass surveillance. Best case scenario, all phones and airtags can be localized on demand by FBI - yes, the current one. Worst case scenario, by FSB.
Do Iphone users get notifications everytime an airtag is nearby them??
Yes, within about 30 minutes. They are basically useless for theft prevention as a result. Apple nerfed the functionality after someone used it for stalking. You'll notice there is no mention of theft prevention in the marketing materials anymore.
Apple even provide a handy Android app for locating them.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac...
There never was mention of theft prevention. The release day marketing was about losing your keys in the couch. Day one ios would alert you if a tag was tracking you but it took a while for them to collaborate with Android on it.
The societal harm from allowing cheap silent tracking of people is greater than the benefit of recovering stolen bags.
Apple skirt around the issue now, but what is the one of primary scenarios for "lost luggage, keys, bicycles, bags" if not theft?
They have also done videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJwdhWM9d0Y where they show Find My as a tool for theft prevention, although in that case it's a Macbook not an Airtag.
It's also kinda weird to use it for anti-theft when you think about how AirTags work. They aren't GPS, rather all these Apple devices are seeing it with Bluetooth and snitching on the location.
maybe they could set something up where local pd handles the tracking if/when necessary
That sounds like yet another reason not to use AirTags, since they now give location access to the authorities...
No, I do not want the solution to this problem to be adding AirTags to the government panopticon.
> Apple even provide a handy Android app for locating them.
Took them half a year and public pressure to develop something. 3 years for a joint standard (DULT) with google after google developed something by themselves.
There is always pressure required for those things...
It's hilarious that it didn't notify Android phones for a while
> after someone used it for stalking.
Many, many people used them for stalking. I personally know somebody whose estranged husband did. I try to keep myself pretty ignorant of Apple products, and it was the first time I got a detailed explanation of how they worked.
Android 6 and up has in unbuilt support, per that app
You get a notification when an AirTag is following you for some time, but the AirTags owner is not near it. It's meant to detect someone slipping an AirTag on you without the false alarms from, say, taking a walk with a friend who has one in their backpack.
Wait so a thieve an eye with an iPhone who steals my expensive bicycle that I have tagged with an airtag Is receiving a notification that there is an airtag "following" them nearby?
Yes, the moral of the story is - don't steal expensive bikes if you don't want to get spammed by notifications that the bike is following you.
With the side effect that the thief can easily find and remove the tag.
Depends on the thief, the object, how well the tracking device is hidden, and how much time the thief has to investigate.
Many dumb thieves out there, like the airport workers who steal luggage and take it home.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=airport...
They always talk about lost items in their marketing. They don’t talk about theft prevention or finding pets or anything. Gotta go for a mini GPS tracker or something for protecting $$$$(+) bikes (which should never leave one’s sight anyway).
> They don’t talk about theft prevention or finding pets or anything.
In particular I'm guessing you can't use it to track your kid's backpack either; for that, you should instead buy your 7yo their own iPhone.
> Gotta go for a mini GPS tracker or something for protecting $$$$(+) bikes
The same one actual stalkers would use?
>The same one actual stalkers would use?
Right, like “cut your dinner with a knife, the one actual murderers would use.”
They had to balance needs of us owners of things and needs of abused partners and the general public. Other trackers have been available long long before AirTags and haven’t gone away since Apple’s introduction.
As it stands, plenty are still very upset about the existence of AirTags. Especially given the ease of disabling the speaker and the lack of Android notifications at launch.
They've set the nuisance limits just high enough that they work for tracking your kids, I think it has to be away from the owner for 24 hours
> In particular I'm guessing you can't use it to track your kid's backpack either; for that, you should instead buy your 7yo their own iPhone.
You can - there will be spurious phone notifications and audible notifications.
Meaning: you can't, because the point of it is to help protect your kid (or, more probably, help find their backpack when they absent-mindedly lose sight of it), not to spam teachers with notifications and disrupt everyone with random beeping.
Tons of parents must've already tried putting these in backpacks. Was the result that teachers got notification-spammed?
If I just say that you’re the smartest person ever will you stop this? Your point has been made over and over again… just like every single time I read you.
It's far from the only annoying false positive.
Here's a real world case I've run into a bunch of times. Parents send children to school with Airtags in their backpacks. (The children are young and don't themselves have phones.) Class goes on a field trip. Boom, tons of notifications.
Yes indeed. Not only that, Apple worked with Android to make it work there too. It makes it a lot easier on the thief so they don’t have buy/steal an iPhone, too.
Yes. The alternative is to have stalkers using hidden airtags
So what good is piercing the AirTag's speaker?
It stops the audible notifications for people who aren't looking at a phone screen.
They also ring when a non-associated iphone is moving with them for some time.
Android users
Supposedly Apple opened this up to Android already
They have. I got a warning on my Android phone recently because I was traveling overnight on a train and somebody in a neighboring room had an AirTag.
Yeah, I forget the wording but there’s a notification like “so-and-so’s AirTag is near you and they can see where you are.” My spouse put AirTags in our baby stuff and I get them whenever I’m using it.
It's also other devices. I used to get a notification that my wife's AirPods would be following me. It only got silenced when we formed an Apple family.
We have AirTags registered to my wife's account because I use Android. I have one in my work backpack, and every morning I get a notification that an unknown tracker is following me. I wish there was a way to silence the warning for that specific tag.
My husband's "shared" his with me and now I don't get warnings anymore, but we're both on iOS
Does it also share location ?
this is the perfect use case for a little faraday baggy
If an unrecognized AirTag is following you, you'll get a notice.
I'm not constantly notified that my keys are with me. But if you stuck an AirTag in my backpack, my phone would tell me.
No, only if an airtag that's not theirs follows them for an amount of time
Not sure about on iPhone but Android definitely alerts you if an unknown airtag follows you while moving.
Something about this rubs me the wrong way. Making a device to modify another device is on the same moral high ground as the right-to-repair people and the farmers hacking their own Deere tractors etc.
Their AirTag Magnetic Mount is arguably just as "dangerous". It can be mounted to the underside of a car in one second and no one inside the car will hear it.
Yes. Magnets and duct tape are particularly dangerous combination, too, and even cheaper.
There's a point that comes up often when discussing locks (what's their point if they can easily be opened and/or cut?), namely, that they help keeping honest people honest.
Yes, duct tape exists, but a determined stalker has much better tools anyway. The point is rather the "amateur" stalker, the one who didn't leave the house planning to stalk someone but suddenly decides to attach their backpack tag to someone's car.
Still worth pointing out that the mere existence of the Air tag enabled a level of stalking that didn't exist before.
You'd probably get the notification pretty quickly though, assuming the installer didn't use whatever "silencing" tech this post is apologizing for. My wife usually leaves her purse in the car, and I get the "[Person's] AirTag is moving with you!" notification whenever I leave the house without her. I keep forgetting to trust it or whatever.
I don't want weaponization of patents regardless of how much "Think of the Children!" and "We must defend the public!" is injected.
white knight with a sword made of patent lawsuits doesn't exist in my world.
It was good of them to decide to stay away from producing the product they realized they didn't want to exist, they should have stopped there instead of villainizing themselves by self-deputizing.
So, reading between the lines, somebody pressured them hard but they’re providing instructions to DIY instead?
Looks like pressure. The entire reason for that buzzer was anti-stalking, they knew that.
That’s a pretty good apology post. No corporate bullshit. Kudos
> In retrospect though, this also has the side effect of aiding someone with bad intentions to track someone that wouldn’t get phone notifications.
This is stupid, they knew exactly what they were doing and now they pretend that it has never crossed their minds.
And I'm saying this as someone who has a muted AirTag for theft protection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skl71urqKu0
You can already stalk ..I mean find lost bikes... easily using the air tag network. Silencing the speaker is a weak way to defeat anti tracking measures, because anyones iphone will still alert them.
A better way requires a small programmable cpu with ble support - have a large number of virtual air tags which a device rotates, and also have a device which never sets the separated status byte.
I've said before, apple should just create a law enforcement mode that one can turn their air tags into. When in law enforcement mode, the tag will not report to your page, but law enforcement can go through legal channels to get the devices location.
To put a device into (or out of) law enforcement mode, can only be done over bluetooth (i.e. in proximity to device)./
This would work great if law enforcement was interested in recovering stolen goods.
Law enforcement usually are interested in recovering stolen goods, when you have evidence of where the goods are via GPS. Or eyewitness or video evidence of who has them.
Where people often get disappointed is when all the evidence they have is "my [object] is gone!" and they expect the PD to send out a full forensic team.
I have a couple of their devices. It's useful since the purpose isn't usually to recover bike through highly ritualized process that activates after community street bicycle repairman has performed eco-friendly recycling operation on bike. It is built for semi-rule-of-law cities like San Francisco where speed of action might yield desirable outcome like retrieval of bike. In such situation, one has short window to re-identify bike location before it is used for ecological protection activities.
Based on how many issues we have with police using Flock for their own personal issues, I think this may not be a great solution either.
Yeah because police and cop won't definitely abuse this.
If police want to stalk me, use their damn device, ask their friend at 3-letter departments for cool toys.
I can't really understand how one could have been so naive to not see the obvious misuse of this thing in the first place. AirTags started 2021 and the backlash was spectacular. Did they forget about it?
...or didn't they care, like Apple, and just cashed in before the shitstorm?
Call me dumb I still don’t understand what exact problem these clowns were trying to solve
> these clowns
Can you please edit out swipes from your HN comments and stick to posting thoughtfully? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I think the idea was to intentionally disable the speaker in an AirTag you own. The use-case that I think they were describing would be to make it more difficult for a thief to find the AirTag and remove it. Thus, you'd be able to track your stolen bike for longer (and have a better change of finding it).
Of course, this would also make it easier for someone to disable a speaker and track a person without their knowledge, making it more difficult for that person to find a stealthy AirTag.
I'm not surprised that someone didn't think this through. I am surprised at how many people this must have gotten by to make it into production. You'd think that with any AirTag related product, privacy would be more central to the planning.
The audible tone can interfere with other stalking-adjacent use cases - for instance use for pet tags, for tracking children's backpacks, and so on.
It actually doesn't help as much for anti-theft, because a thief still might be smart enough at this point to check their phone for AirTag notifications. The audible tone may not even hit in a theft instance.
Probably 2-3 people. From a random search online it looks like the company has about a dozen employees.
Ah okay yeah that makes sense
Was missing the “make it more difficult for a thief to find the AirTag and remove it” part.
Cheers!
It says right there in the blog post - bike theft prevention.
AirTags are less useful for that use-case right now since the bike thief will get notified of the existence of the tracker on the bike once they transport it, and are hence prompted to find and remove the tag.
The blog post said bike theft prevention, yes. I'm not familiar with the ways AirTags work, so I had absolutely no idea how "silencing" an AirTag would help with that. I actually came here to the comments in the hopes of finding an explanation (which you thankfully included).
I think half the comments still miss what the "notified" part means. It's not jut an iPhone notification that a tag is following you. The tag literally beeps loudly, to help the thief locate it.
Huh, the more you know!
Theft?
I'm a happy customer of three of their products, but: tell me you don't have any women on your team with influence without telling me.
> use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future
lmao “In lieu of direct sales we will be recouping the cost of our hammer-as-a-stalking-accessory patent through litigation”
Nice apology, though weird flex about their expensive bikes in there
I don’t know, the expensive bikes explained the need for the tool.
The average person doesn't think about bikes of the ring ring variety costing 15k dollars.
How is mentioning their valuable bikes a flex?
1. This is so dumb. You can be tracked any number of ways. The AigTag with or without sound is the dumbest way to track someone.
2. Physically disabling the AirTag speaker is soooo easy. It took under 3 minutes to do it on the AirTag I hid on my motorcycle.
3. "An Apology" is more like a weird advertisement (I guess it worked, I read the stupid thing. But, in fairness, I've now blocked their site in a custom ublock filter, so hopefully I never stumble on it again).
4. They have expensive bikes... Why? Who cares? That's not relevant to anything!? Why did they put that in there? Was this written by a 4th grader? Fuck me. I wish I had just read more AI slop instead.
What would be dumb is to not discontinue an unsafe product because there are more dangerous products out there.
Doesn't your phone still tell you that the AirTag has been following you?
I've heard one of the more significant concerns is escape from domestic abuse situations. In that case, people are often told to abandon their technology since it may be used to track them - but they might not know about the tracker tile/airtag hidden within a jacket.
I meant, the point of this AirTag noise disabler was to track stolen bikes and stuff. This doesn't help if the thief has a phone. Combined with what you're saying, sounds like this tool was only useful for domestic violence.
Yes.
The goal isn't to hide that someone is tracking them after they stole my motorcycle.
The goal was to make it ungodly difficult to actually find the AirTag hidden on the motorcycle.
Thanks, I get it now
My Pixel 7 does, as well. My mother and I use AirTags to keep track of her vehicle and my dad's truck and wallet (he has dementia).
You vastly overestimate the intelligence of most stalkers.
Do I? I don't think so... The thing with most criminals is that we only hear about the stupid ones that get caught.
Side note, AirTags are terrible for tracking someone, as noted everywhere else in this thread, they beep, they alert other phones, and you're giving control to Apple.
Here's one with no beeping or phone alerts for $18, cheaper than an AirTag:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CG2D8FZ5
The intelligence of stalkers is an academic subject. Findings are fairly consistent (e.g., their mean IQ is about 10 points below average).
It's absolutely true that there are many ways to stalk somebody, most of them much better than an AirTag. It's just that the people who decide it is a good idea to stalk somebody usually aren't the brightest, so making the lowest-effort way to stalk people a bit harder will likely stop many of them.
1. There are a million ways to die. But that's no execute for companies to make products that could potentially kill people - in dumb ways. 2. "Easy" is subjective - something easy for one may not be so easy for others. 3. This guy blocked their site in a custom ublock filter... Why? Who cares? That's not relevant to anything!? Why did this guy put that in there? Was this written by a 4th grader? 4. Yea, go read more AI slop, good idea.
Nearly every product could "potentially kill people", including bottled water.
"Easy" is not subjective in this case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vAQNedIa0o
Pry and poke.
I think you missed my point on #4; it was sarcasm, which, to be fair, in our current world, sarcasm can't be discerned from truth, so that's my fault. To be clear, on #4: I do not want AI Slop. I do not want "apologies" as hidden advertisements. AI Slop would have been the lesser of two evils. Still evil.
Vibe-coded clone in 3..2..1..
While I understand the reasoning this is just virtue signaling in a time where software is free.
You're gonna vibe code a clone of hardware?
Also, even if it were software, what is virtue signaling about this? If they offer some software at any point, they should continue to offer that software to new users in perpetuity?
> You're gonna vibe code a clone of hardware?
In this case maybe actually yes; LLM might be able to create a model of this rather simple product for 3d printing.
> Elevation Lab stops selling its AirTag “silencer.”The tool, which Six Colors recently slammed as “appalling,” pierces the AirTag’s speaker, preventing it from emitting sound. While Elevation Lab says it designed the tool to prevent thieves from detecting the presence of an AirTag, it also disables an anti-stalking feature that audibly alerts people when an unknown tracker is following them. > Elevation Lab says it has stopped selling the tool and will use its “patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future,” according to MacRumors.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/1010718/elevation-labs-stops-s...
Provide the full context when you apologize, not whitewash what you did. Go on a ride on your more expensive than car bike, maybe that will help you reasses your product ideation.
> pierces the AirTag’s speaker
> also disables an anti-stalking feature that audibly alerts people
It sounds like piercing the speaker is the thing that disables the audible alert and the intent was not to help stalkers.