> 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.
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?
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.
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 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
> 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Apple even provide a handy Android app for locating them.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apple.trac...
The societal harm from allowing cheap silent tracking of people is greater than the benefit of recovering stolen bags.
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...
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?
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.
You can - there will be spurious phone notifications and audible notifications.
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.
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.
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.
We live in different worlds
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.
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.
Was missing the “make it more difficult for a thief to find the AirTag and remove it” part.
Cheers!
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.
While I understand the reasoning this is just virtue signaling in a time where software is free.
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?
...or didn't they care, like Apple, and just cashed in before the shitstorm?
lmao “In lieu of direct sales we will be recouping the cost of our hammer-as-a-stalking-accessory patent through litigation”
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.
> 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.
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.