Apple recently held their Spring loaded event on April 20, 2021 and as usual they lunched some jaw dropping products. Among all of them, one specific that caught attention on mine and all of the tech world was — The AirTag!
If you aren’t aware of it or still thinking what it is (me being naïve), please let me help you. These little coin like things are new trackers from Apple named as AirTags! Primary purpose of it is to attach them on a keyring or put it in a backpack to prevent them from getting lost or theft. As normal AirPods or iWatch you can pair them with you iPhone and track your items precisely where they are. Here is the link to detailed video by tech YouTuber Dave2D explaining in detail.
According to Apple, AirTags are meant to help you in case you have lost your item or someone stole it.
But what if someone wants to track you using an AirTag!
If you are using an iPhone then there is nothing to worry about. You are safe, Apple took care of you. On iPhones you will see notifications like below
Android users may I have your attention please!
If you are using an Android phone and someone put a tracker on you then the only indication you will get is a audio warning from tiny speakers of AirTag. This is where things gets interesting.
- This speaker is not very loud. Lets assume a case where someone puts it under you car. You will barely hear the alert from it while driving.
- Lets assume you happen to have a superhuman hearing, then comes the easy way to disable the speaker. Check this video.
Who even uses an Android Phone?!
A lot of us! Lets look at some stats.
This is the smartphone penetration in world. China, India and USA is the top countries consisting a big part of smartphone uses in word. [Source]
According to statCounter, share of Android phones worldwide is 76.92% compared to only 21.86% of iPhone users. Got the picture yet?
Countries like India & China should be concerned about AirTag, raising big privacy concerns
In India, there is a huge gap in percentage of Android and iPhone users.
Among more than 345 million smartphone users 95.77% are Android users and only 2.97% iPhones users.
So, Apple wants a country of more than 330 million Android user to rely on just an audible alert which can be easily be disabled with a simple prying tool. I know that intention here is to find the lost items but hey not everyone in this world got their heart in right place.
If you made it this far reading my first article than Thank you! Here is some bonus material for iPhone users who are sitting relaxed and smirking 😬.
AirTag hacked and reprogrammed by security researcher | AppleInsider
