iPhone user? The new AirTag could be an effective motorcycle theft recovery tool.

[PrivatePilot]

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I bought 4 of these and received then last Wednesday. I've been testing them since and am genuinely impressed. I have a bad habit of setting my wallet different places in my house and then freaking myself out when I can't find it, so ones in my wallet now. The other on my car keys. The third, on my wife's keys - she somehow manages to misplace them at least once a week. The fourth I think I'm going to put on my escape artist cat, but the jury is still out on that one.

So, many people are already experimenting (with excellent results) for using these for theft recovery of things like bicycles. And there's absolutely no reason they wouldn't work for motorcycles either. They'll work on anything you can stick/hide them on.

The AirTag itself doesn't have any GPS or cellular connectivity, but it relies on crowdsourcing, similar to other devices like Tile or TrackR. The difference? Anyone in the wild with an iPhone (possibly even the thief him/herself) is part of the mesh network. Unlike Tile or TrackR which relies on people who actually own one of those devices and actively running the related app on their phone, the AirTag doesn't need this - every modern iPhone becomes part of the mesh by default (whether they own an AirTag or not), all while remaining completely invisible (and private) to everyone involved.

So, you've hidden the loonie-sized AirTag somewhere invisible - inside a fairing, tucked in a saddlebag, or hell, since it's waterproof, even tucked under the tank or something where nobody is going to see it and remove it. The battery lasts a year so you don't need to bother with wiring anything, either.

Your motorcycle gets stolen. As soon as you realize that you put the tag in lost mode. From that moment forward every iPhone that comes within range of that tag pings your iPhone with the AirTag's location.

Here's a video that explains it and shows how well it works.

Is it arguably as good as a true cellular GPS solution? No. Is it hella simpler with no monthly fees, no wiring, and with good odds that no matter where your motorcycle ends up someone that comes within 50-100 feet of it will have an iPhone thereby pinging you a location? Yep.

For $35, it's a cheap insurance policy.

 

[hdsomeday]

I dont have an IPhone. In my circle its mostly women that have IPhones and they dont care. Great idea but needs to be ported over to android before anyone will bother with it. IMO

 

[PrivatePilot]

It's doubtful you'll ever see something along the lines of this in the Android ecosystem due to how fractured it is. With every manufacturer wanting their own slice of the pie and modifying Android itself to fit their desires, it would be difficult to implement.

 

[iblastoff]

i actually used Tile on my bike (basically airtags but before apple copied them) but that ecosystem wasn't fully reliable since there was no deep OS support from ios. but now that airtags just uses the 'find my' app, which is basically on all iphones, thats super handy.

'Great idea but needs to be ported over to android before anyone will bother with it. IMO" lol what? 53% of canadians who have smartphones, have an iphone. thats more than enough to create a nice mapping network using anyones nearby bluetooth signal, especially in the GTA. and the fact there is no fee (besides buying the airtag) is icing on the cake. and you can replace the battery yourself.

will this be reliable as a dedicated gps tracker? of course not. and it becomes useless if your bike is out in some rural buttfuck nowhere area. accuracy is also lost if you don't have a relatively newer iphone (due to those having bluetooth u1 ultra wide band) but its a pretty cheap solution that should work decently enough in a variety of circumstances.

 

[JTR]

You know thieves find and remove lojack? This probably will go down the same hole

 

[TwistedKestrel]

AirTags have anti-stalking measures built into them, and may give itself away intentionally by beeping. It's not clear to me under what circumstances it does this.

 

[Maniac]

Not only beeping, but a message is displayed on the iPhone of a person traveling next to an AirTag.

 

[Baggsy]

Be interesting to see how this pans out.

iPhones aren't currently known for their outstanding battery life as it is.

Apple wants to co opt some of their customers' battery life to track air tags.

Will people get to opt in or out?

 

[Maniac]

iPhones aren't currently known for their outstanding battery life as it is.

That’s a very interesting statement.

Anyway, the impact of AirTags on battery is zero to none.

 

[Baggsy]

That’s a very interesting statement.

Anyway, the impact of AirTags on battery is zero to none.

Didn't they go through a lawsuit not that long ago, where they were slowing phones to increase battery life?

The impact depends on how the connection is implemented between the airtags and the phones.

 

[PrivatePilot]

You know thieves find and remove lojack? This probably will go down the same hole

It's the size of a loonie and has no wires. Hiding it somewhere virtually invisible is easy. Hell, you could peel back the seat leather a little by removing a staple, slide it in between the pan and the foam, and replace the staple. Or in my case I'd remove the headlight and stick it up under the fairing somewhere where you'd never know it was there until you had the bike in many pieces. Or one of a million other super stealthy options.

AirTags have anti-stalking measures built into them, and may give itself away intentionally by beeping. It's not clear to me under what circumstances it does this.

Not only beeping, but a message is displayed on the iPhone of a person traveling next to an AirTag.

Only after 3 or 4 days of being away from it's owner. That gives you a window of time to recover the bike.

iPhones aren't currently known for their outstanding battery life as it is.

Apple wants to co opt some of their customers' battery life to track air tags.

They use Bluetooth low energy. The amount of power usage is so infinitesimally small that it would probably be nearly unmeasurable.

I'm sure some crybaby will sue over it but people will find reasons to sue over anything anymore. Hell, people are already crying over all the things it does that other tags like Tile and TrackR have done for the last ~8 years, but of course nobody cared because it wasn't Apple.

 

[Baggsy]

It's the size of a loonie and has no wires. Hiding it somewhere virtually invisible is easy. Hell, you could peel back the seat leather a little by removing a staple, slide it in between the pan and the foam, and replace the staple. Or in my case I'd remove the headlight and stick it up under the fairing somewhere where you'd never know it was there until you had the bike in many pieces. Or one of a million other super stealthy options.





Only after 3 or 4 days of being away from it's owner. That gives you a window of time to recover the bike.



They use Bluetooth low energy. The amount of power usage is so infinitesimally small that it would probably be nearly unmeasurable.

I'm sure some crybaby will sue over it but people will find reasons to sue over anything anymore. Hell, people are already crying over all the things it does that other tags like Tile and TrackR have done for the last ~8 years, but of course nobody cared because it wasn't Apple.

Tile and TrackR you opt into by installing the software.

In this case, Apple is using your device to make them profit.

People might not see it as the same, because, of course, it isn't the same.

If it only tracks using devices that have bought an air tag, and installed the tracking software, then it would be as you say.

If it asks you if you want to install the software, then there's no problem.

 

[Maniac]

Didn't they go through a lawsuit not that long ago, where they were slowing phones to increase battery life?

This feature kicks in as a battery degrades (and they all degrade) to extend the life of a device. But people are dumb and greedy, hence lawsuit.

The impact depends on how the connection is implemented between the airtags and the phones.

There’s no connection between an AirTag and iPhone.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Tile and TrackR you opt into by installing the software.

In this case, Apple is using your device to make them profit.

It's a fair argument, so yeah, I expect there to be a lawsuit and an opt out button. As it stands right now if you don't want to participate you can just disable Find My Friends on your phone and it disables the crowdsharing portion of the tracking service as well AFAIK. But it's an all-or-nothing approach.

Personally, I'd like to think that most people would be willing to be part of the mesh network as part of the greater good....anyone who's ever lost their keys or their wallet sure understands how nice it would be to have something that could help them find it.

But of course in the "me me me" mentality of some, I'm sure some will disable it even though it costs them pennies a year to be part of that greater good.

Most won't, and many more yet won't even care, so the power of the crowdsharing mesh remains massive which still makes these drastically more powerful than anything comparable on the market right now.

There’s no connection between an AirTag and iPhone.

Yes there is, that's how the airtag communicates...via any iPhone that comes near it.

 

[GreyGhost]

There’s no connection between an AirTag and iPhone.

Huh? Then how does apple know where the tags are.

 

[JTR]

It's the size of a loonie and has no wires. Hiding it somewhere virtually invisible is easy. Hell, you could peel back the seat leather a little by removing a staple, slide it in between the pan and the foam, and replace the staple. Or in my case I'd remove the headlight and stick it up under the fairing somewhere where you'd never know it was there until you had the bike in many pieces. Or one of a million other super stealthy options.

Lojack isn't found because its bulky and wired in. It's the signal that gives it away to any thief serious enough about their trade to buy a scanner.

 

[Maniac]

Huh? Then how does apple know where the tags are.

“Connection” means two way communication. iPhone acts only as a receiver, just listens to the Tags signals. Receivers consume minimum energy, transmission is what energy impactful. And it does it constantly anyway looking for other Bluetooth devices, like your car or headphones, hence no battery impact specifically for the AirTags.

 

[PrivatePilot]

It's the signal that gives it away to any thief serious enough about their trade to buy a scanner.

The wiring and big giant black boxes doesn't help.



Will pro thief's be able to block something bluetooth and crowdsource based? If they put the stolen bike in a faraday cage, perhaps. Or turn off Bluetooth and such on their own phones during the theft assuming they think that far ahead, but I don't think many would expect their own phones to tattle on them.

That said, all it takes is someone walking past whereever they take the bike with an iPhone...and you get a ping. That's the beauty of crowdsourcing, there's potentially millions of points of failure for their plan.

 

[GreyGhost]

Lojack isn't found because its bulky and wired in. It's the signal that gives it away to any thief serious enough about their trade to buy a scanner.

It would be simple enough to scan for or jam BTLE (or put the bike in a faraday cage) but that adds another level of complexity so you may catch some dumb or opportunistic thieves. When people are considering where to hide a tag, try not to encase it in metal (eg headlight bucket) as that will do nothing good for signal strength.

As for opt-in vs opt-out, that is an interesting discussion with no right answer imo. By making it opt-out, it is vastly more useful as opt-in takes a while to get going and may never gain traction. Now, I don't like apple using my device to do things without my permission and constantly sending my position and the nearby tags to the mothership doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. Yes, it may do that already, but this makes it overtly clear that they are constantly tracking you and everything around you and piling that information into a database.

 

[GreyGhost]

“Connection” means two way communication. iPhone acts only as a receiver, just listens to the Tags signals. Receivers consume minimum energy, transmission is what energy impactful. And it does it constantly anyway looking for other Bluetooth devices, like your car or headphones, hence no battery impact specifically for the AirTags.

A connection does not require two-way communication.

I agree, the impact on phone battery life should be minimal, it is already scanning so finding an additional hit probably uses negligible energy. Hell, the transmitter lasts about a year on a 2032 battery (0.66 watt-hours) and an iphone battery is almost an order of magnitude bigger (and gets charged daily).

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