I know this is useful (for something), but I'm stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story...
Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained?
How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway?
If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, but that's going to take more time, during which the thief is even more likely to ditch the AirTag.
Anyway, you're really swimming upstream trying to think of aigtags as an antitheft device. They're really for something lost, not stolen. Generally, they are specifically designed to not work well in adversarial situations.
I've retrieved stolen bikes, one because of an airtag. Showed up with a couple friends standing by but not trying to be intimidating. It's mostly about staying calm and telling the person this is mine, I'm taking it. They always say "no it's my friend's, you're gonna piss him off" or "I just bought this" or something. Maybe you offer some fraction of a "reward" to smooth it along and cut your losses. Don't try to start a fight and it generally goes OK. Also, try not to accuse them of stealing, they'll just get defensive. "It's someone else who is screwing us both, but this is mine sorry."
If it’s left anywhere in the open at anytime, you can repossess it legally as well. This happens with auto repossessions all the time. You don’t owe anyone an explanation as it’s yours - just take it if you can do so safely.
Just be careful! In SOME jurisdictions, you can get in trouble for 'stealing' if you take back something that was stolen. Possession vs Ownership are 2 different things. For instance, the thief may have stolen something, sold it to someone who bought it in good-faith, and you take it back from that person, it's technically theft!
File a police report, go through the right channels. If you know its yours, call the police department non-emergency and explain the situation
In my jurisdiction in the US it doesn’t matter if someone purchased the stolen goods or not, the goods still belong to the owner. This is sometimes called the "nemo dat" rule:
The person buying the stolen goods would need to file a claim against the thief to recover their money, but the goods still belong to the original owner. And this is how it should be, since it’s added reason not to buy goods you suspect are stolen.
And yes, you should always try and work with the police first and foremost.
This happened to me. I bought a pair of headphones (Nuraphones) on ebay, only to have them bricked by the company remotely.
IIRC, they had a security hole on their payment page: they forgot to implement SCA (strong customer authentification, aka 2FA for payments). Had they done this, the liability would have shifted onto the bank/card issuer. For some reason they decided to go after the customers in vain resentment, were acquired and their product was discontinued.
That is probably mostly a common law thing, and as the article notes
> however, in many cases, more than one innocent party is involved, making judgment difficult for courts and leading to numerous exceptions to the general rule that aim to give a degree of protection to bona fide purchasers and original owners
> The person buying the stolen goods would need to file a claim against the thief to recover their money
Generally as long as the purchase is made in good faith, you are wrong. It is the original owner that needs to file a claim against the thief.
Obviously, what constitutes a sale in "good faith" is a rather imprecise science, although one steady element is the sales price: it needs to have been appropriate for the item. So for example a mint bicycle or antique coin should sell near sticker price.
> in many cases, more than one innocent party is involved, making judgment difficult for courts and leading to numerous exceptions to the general rule that aim to give a degree of protection to bona fide purchasers and original owners
The next sentence is:
> The possession of the good of title will be with the original owner.
So you seem to be wrong there. The innocent buyer needs to file a claim against the thief, the original owner retails their title. It is explained in more detail later on.
No, I know our legal system quite well. You are wrong.
The reason for this is so that if you buy a bicycle at, say, a bicycle fair and for a reasonable price, you shouldn’t have to worry about it being yoinked from under you later on.
Lawmakers have clarified this is choosing between two evils, there is no winning proposition here.
So, in conclusion: the original owner needs to file the claim, not the third party.
To the degree lawmakers have weighed in, as you say, can you point me to a citation protecting the subsequent purchaser? I don't practice in this area, but that is definitely not my understanding of the law.
This guy is wrong, which is why he isn't citing any legal authority.
As anyone who has gone to law school will tell you, you can only acquire the title that the seller has. If seller stole the goods, he doesn't have any title, so he can't transfer title to a subsequent buyer. See, e.g. UCC § 2-403
There are exceptions when it comes to those who have voidable title (thieves do not have voidable title).
There are also cases where courts have more or less created exceptions close to those OP has described. For example, if Best Buy receives some stolen merchandise and sells it to good faith purchasers, courts have held that the victim needs to pursue the thief/Best Buy, not the end purchaser.
But generally, OP is wrong: if you buy a stolen bike at a flea market, you don't get title and the owner can get the bike back. Think of the policy implications if the rule was as OP claims. All thieves would have to do is immediately sell stolen goods and the owners could never get them back. That would be absurd.
OP is just claiming that there exists juristrictions where his claim holds. IANALE (I am not a lawyer EVERYWHERE), so I can't really say that he's wrong. But you seem quite certain. Why?
The key element for a bona fide sale at common law is the buyer’s absence of knowledge of the defective title of the seller.
Not sure how US courts have interpreted this requirement but that’s the onus and I believe it rests on the third party buyer (to show absence of knowledge through evidence).
How would they even prove that if it's in the open? "Stolen? No idea, I've always had that bike, I just forgot where I left it last time. Went and got it back. By the way, here's the receipt."
Another jurisdiction example would be Romania. Even if the thief themselves are in possession of the property you own, you can be charged with theft if you steal it back. The law clearly delimits possession from ownership.
i hope that isn't true. A buyer of stolen goods needs to accept that a consequence of it is that they could lose possession of said good. This is why for expensive goods, you should ensure you're not buying stolen goods.
I know it’s false in the UK and I’d imagine it is false in any country where the law is based on UK law.
Failing to retrieve it at the time is going to mean losing it forever. If you find a crackhead with your phone and wait for someone else to retrieve it, that phone is long gone.
IDK where you live but where I am, unless it's an actively life threatening emergency, the Police will say they're busy. I watched a drunk driver try to drive away after smashing into a parked car, ripping a wheel off the parked car. The drunk driver kept trying to start his car to get away. People called the police but they said they're busy. Fortunately his car was totaled and wouldn't start either. Over an hour later someone picked him up. If they can't even bother to deal with an active drunk driver, they aren't gonna help retrieve a bike.
Not saying confronting thieves is for everyone. But it's not necessarily as physical as you think.
> IDK where you live but where I am, unless it's an actively life threatening emergency, the Police will say they're busy.
Where I live the basic law/constitution establishes a protection duty of its citizens by the state (this includes their property). The police is one of the ways the state takes care of this duty. If the state is grossly negligent in this or even does nothing at all, the state may very well be on the hook to make the injured party whole. This responsibility is passed down and carried by individual police officers, and there have been cases of police officers being personally convicted of causing bodily harm for not dispatching a unit after a request for aid (despite them not personally swinging any punches)[1].
Generally you'll have police show up for near anything if they can.
In the US, it’s been established by the Supreme Court that the police have no duty to protect anyone. They can it they want to, and individual departments can make it a policy and fire officers who fail at it, but it’s not a fundamental requirement.
I live in Arlington, VA where I once saw a purse snatcher being chased by 5 cops. Only to have 3 more show up after the guy was on the ground. They all had their own cars too.
During COVID, I called the non emergency line police for a break in on my car parked on the street and the police showed up in minutes then searched the area frantically to see if the guy was still around.
I don’t know if they are over funded or just bored.
Didn’t happen in the small North Carolina town that my parents live in, with a very similar situation as the parent. So truly, YMMV. Not all places can be generalized.
Someone I know's phone was stolen. He tracked it using the track my phone feature to a house, and contacted the police asking the police to help get it back. The police said no, it's too dangerous, not worth it.
I’m also imagining the police telling you that you can do something that is actually illegal, and then you get prosecuted for it. “The cops said it was ok” may not be an adequate defense.
So all Jessie Pinkman's got to do is ask the under cover police if it's okay to sell them meth and then they can't be arrested for it?
Entrapment is reserved for the police going above and beyond, eg "sell me meth or I'll kill your dog" where it can be argued that the entrapped normally would not do the crime.
Apparently there is “entrapment by estoppel” in which a government official tells you an act is legal when it isn’t. They have to be acting as a representative of the government, though; undercover cops wouldn’t count.
I still wouldn’t be very excited to try this defense in court.
That's a reasonable suspicion (though I think a lot of the contrarian comments are just people who want to complain about the police).
Working with that suspicion, especially given that this is HN, police saying "don't go steal it back" might still be very good advice, regardless of legal right.
For example (referring back to a scenario earlier in thread), I'm imagining a techbro crew, all jumping into one of their Teslas, and rolling up on misguided urban youth turf.
There's already a lot of misunderstanding and animosity, both ways, between stereotypes. And someone's attempt at "show of force" just escalated it. So, who will escalate the stupid further, and stab or draw a gun first.
No. The police will offer you the option to come to the police station and fill out a report so you can get a police report number for your insurance claim. Nothing else will happen.
> How do you think the police will give bad advice
the police will give you any advice, good or bad. They're not legally responsible for anything they said to you, as long as they're not telling you to commit a crime (in which case, if they did they will deny it).
You can still call 'em up of course - but don't 100% just trust their words blindly.
It's probably a bad sign if you need permission from a desk clerk to get your property back.
It's great that you think _someone will handle that for you_ but it is probably a fantasy. Unfortunately you will probably need to self resolve. If you think it is going to escalate to violence, bring overwhelming force.
we can't all live in Bedford Falls, and the police aren't there for the benefit of the every-person no matter where you live.
it's a nice bit of propaganda that they're there for us, but I urge anyone with that idea to seek out and research the history and origins of the modern police.
hint : in the US they first emerged as 'slave patrols', and then later modernized into 'industrial labor controls', and things weren't all that much better across the ocean in London with Sir Robert Peel and his version of the 'police service'.
> Sir Robert Peel and his version of the 'police service'
I assume that prior to the "modern" police, policing was still necessary, since there were lawbreakers and troublemakers since time immemorial. What do you regard as the substantive difference between the pre-modern police force and the modern? Did the former somehow serve "all of us" better than the latter?
Typically law enforcement was DIY, done by a mob, or done at the behest/in the interest of a local strongman (king or lord).
That led to extremely selective enforcement at the best of times.
The idea of a professional, independent force that served the public and preferred formal laws was the innovation.
Previously you’d need to either deal with it yourself, or track down a local patron and hope they cared enough to assign some muscle to deal with it on your behalf - and didn’t favor the perp more. Think ‘Godfather’. In those cases, written law was rarely a priority either.
Different local politicians won’t change the legal fact that the police have no obligation whatsoever to investigate or prevent crime. It’s simply not in the job description.
Err… what is their job, then, if not investigating and preventing crime? That pet theory with the slave patrols of yours, by the way, isn’t it; that’s a hoax. The modern police in the USA and other countries stems from the British police, which did exactly what they are supposed to do, since ages.
They will at best waste your time, and at worst they will cause you and your family harm for involving them. In Toronto even a stolen car is not enough to get their attention if you are not a high-profile business owner.
its not bait. for my demographics the number 1 way I die by stranger is cops. not random gangbanger, not bar fight, not mistaken identity.
never ever call the police, avoid them whenever possible. the probability of death by stranger is low compared to most other causes but cops managed to beat out the competition and it just ain't worth it.
As a group, as a single uniform indicator of "this group is a problem" cops win. And realize death isn't even my biggest fear. Cops kill dogs, they plant drugs, they fuck up your car registration, they harass your family. And there's generally not a damn thing you can do about it. You cross the biggest gang in America they will make your life miserable.
Nah, I avoid cops. You go be skeptical, I don't see any benefit in interacting with them.
In the Netherlands buying stolen goods is a crime. If you knew or could reasonably have known it was stolen (e.g. a bike with a broken lock, no keys and a low price) you risk a serious fine. If you didn't know it was stolen you just loose the goods. Technically you then have a claim on the seller, but of course you're not going to get anything.
So stealing your own thing back without the police involved may technically be illegal, but practically if the airtag tells you where your stolen bike is and you have the keys, skip the police and take it. Nothing will happen. The thief or their client is not going to call the police since that gets them arrested or fined.
Of course you can't go into the thief's house to retrieve your things. Then you do need to call the police first. But the one case I know about someone doing that for a stolen iPhone based on Find My app location, the police showed up quickly and arrested the thief + found lots of other stolen things in their possession.
I don't know somewhere else but, in Italy, buying / getting stolen stuff from somebody else is a specific kind of crime as well. You need to give a solid explanation why you have a stolen good.
It makes sense to me... mostly. The person currently in possession might have purchased it from the thief so taking it from them leaves them in a hole, not the thief.
More broadly I think it does make a certain sort of sense that a theft should be resolved by the police. Find your item and want it back? Get the police involved. It's just that these days we're all so used the police being completely ineffectual that taking matters into your own hands is the only "sensible" solution.
Wait until you hear about Canada. The crown will ruin your life by dragging you through the courts for years for something like that, then drop the charges when it’s obvious they’re going to lose as to not set any precedent to be used against them in the future.
The logic is that the current possessor might have acquired the product bona fide and is not necessarily the thief. In order to assess this, you cannot repurpose the product yourself, but need the cops and court involved. It's the oppossite of anarcho-tyranny, it's a law favoring orderly and non-violent solutions of real world capitalist conundrums. Private repossession of stolen property in a 'bear arms' society... are accidents waiting to happen.
In reality things are not so stiff. My dads bag was stolen from the train. The thief was apprehended on the station. He got his bag back from the cops because it had identifiable information in it. Perhaps a bit light on evidence that the thief was not the owner, but it's not always overly complicated. I think the thief got the right nudge.
> the current possessor might have acquired the product bona fide and is not necessarily the thief. In order to assess this, you cannot repurpose the product yourself, but need the cops and court involved.
A fun thought experiment is that in the time you might have left your car parked in the street, it might be stolen, sold bona fide, then (by happenstance) parked in the same area, so one day you just go back to it and drive it away.
I guess in a more practical sense, you could claim that's (more or less) what happened after recovering your possessions after having them stolen... what would happen in that edge case?
This is my experience as well. Most people don't want confrontation. I found my stolen bike when somebody was out riding it. I told them it was stolen from me, they said "OK" and handed it over. It was either them who stole it or they bought it suspiciously cheap and knew it was stolen.
Yeah no, that's not how any of this works. Just because someone else is holding your bike in their hands does not make it theirs. You're within your rights to take back what's yours.
No, it does not get complicated fast, in fact it's very simple. Selling stolen goods does not take ownership away from the original owner. There's a good write up about this on the Law Stack Exchange site [0].
There exists a small percentage of men who will go absolutely savage on somebody for stealing from them, and the existence of those people is probably a bigger crime deterrent than the police.
So I say, shine on you crazy air tag tracking vigilante diamonds.
I don't want someone to put razor wire on their catalytic converters so that it slices thieves' fingers off. I do, however, wish to leave the impression with thieves that perhaps my catalytic converter is protected by insanity armor.
When I lived in California I wrapped a bunch of chain around the cat on my truck. Wasn't actually that secure but thieves see a ton of chain and padlocks and go "ehhhh keep moving."
Off topic, but I was very pleased with how easy a catalytic converter shield was to install on my car. It’s normally sold and installed by a dealer, but if you have any semblance of DIY skill it’s straightforward.
You'd think so, but America is the most armed country in the world and most of us have had something stolen. I think the overall sentiment is "I'm like 99% going to get away with this and pawn it for money" and they're right.
The US has a monopoly on people getting unnecessarily violent? That seems like a trope - projecting the stats of a few zip codes onto a very large and diverse nation.
Given the average lifespan is ~80yrs then the average chance you've had something stolen over over say 40 years is much higher than 2%. It's 2% per year so ~45% for 30yrs and 55% for 40yrs?
My point isn't that those number are exact. My point is 2% chance per year expands to a larger number over many years. So saying "most people have experienced theft" many not be that far off. 2% is 1 in 50 but 55% is more than 1 in 2. My personal experience is would be 10 or 11 in 55yrs depending on whether an attempt counts
bike, bike, bike, car radio, car radio, car radio, car, car radio, bike, camera/dashcam/kindle, attempt (broke window to check for loot but didn't find anything). Still cost $$$ to replace window so you could say my window was stolen.
Also I didn't just multiply by the number of years. The probably for 100yrs is 86% (not 100% and not 200%).
For most people, the chance they are a victim of theft (VOT) in year 1 is correlated to the chance they are a VOT in year 2. So the probability that they are a VOT at least once in those two years is NOT simply (1 - (1 - 2%)^2). That formula only works when the two events are independent, like two coin flips.
As an obviously extreme example, imagine a world where 98% the people live in zero-crime areas, and the rest live in places where they are robbed annually.
In such a world, the percentage of people who were a VOT in a single year would be 2%, and it would not rise as you broadened to multiple years. (The same 2% of people would be targeted over and over.)
This is all just a roundabout way of stating the unfortunate fact that some people live in bad areas.
The events are not independent. Maybe the first time you leave your bike outside you learn that it will be stolen, and then you don't do that anymore, reducing your future risk.
yes, and that 2% per year average figure takes that into account. The percent for your life is higher. You got robbed, do something to make it go down, it gets lower. Over the course of the average life, it ends up at 2% per year. It's probably highest around 15 to 25yrs old (have possessions, get robbed, learn to do differently) and lower at the end (except for getting robbed by scams which often target the elderly)
I've had multiple belongings stolen while a grad student on an Ivy League campus, presumably that is not a shit hole but one of the wealthiest areas of America.
A lot of those thiefs are not hardened criminals, because the payoff for this kind of crime is usually a small fraction of the actual value of the things stolen. Most of time it is the average wimpy addict and the reason he resort to this kind of criminal activity is preciselly because he is not ready for the violent potential of more profitable criminal activities.
If you relativelly fit, and have some experience with actual fights or training in martial arts, it is not that stupid to try to recover your stuff.
If you don't feel confortable with the prospect of any kind of violent confrontation or don't have the street smarts to evaluate the risk potential of saidconfrontation, you'd still have the hope that the police would do something anyway if you have the location of your goods.
Really, at some time we need to stop glorifying cowardice and reclaim a little bit of dignity.
I mostly agree. I don't think its cowardice most of the time though. Its that laws now favor criminals if you attempt to do anything yourself. Its become public policy that "rich" people buying things can simply absorb the loss and the police don't even have to do anything because no one bothers to report it. The police win because crime stats go down, thiefs win because they get the goods, the victim absorbs all the cost and if they try to do anything the victim goes to jail for whatever charges that made the police have to get up and work.
Tbf, I am generally anti-police in the sense that they’re pretty institutionally bad at preventing or deterring crime in the current model, but I don’t really understand the argument you’re making here
Just google property crime + [any largeish US city] + reddit and youll find dozens of anecdotal stories from citizens.
Property crime seems to have essentially become a problem dealt with exclusively by citizens. Hell, SPD wouldnt even do anything to help when my car was stolen a few years ago. I got a call from the bar where it was abandoned and had to have it towed myself.
I think the argument GP was making was that of incentives. Police department have essentially zero incentive to devote time+manpower to petty theft or property crime, so the easiest solution is to simply encourage citizens to not 'resist' so to speak. If you get mugged, its a lot easier to deal with as a police officer if you simply hand them your wallet, vs starting a fist/knife/gun fight in the streets.
But I do know if you're a homeless drug addict and you commit a crime that makes the cops throw you in jail - that's three meals a day, somewhere warm to sleep, and no lost income because you didn't have any income.
Whereas if you're a member of the middle class and you commit the same crime and get thrown in the same jail? Mucho lost income, you can't pay your mortgage, you get fired for not showing up at work, and as a convict your employment prospects become much, much worse.
So a "rational" member of the middle class might opt not to fight a homeless drug addict over $500 simply because they've got a lot more to lose.
>that's three meals a day, somewhere warm to sleep
I don't know why people always parrot this like a fact. Plenty of prisons serve only two woefully inadequate meals a day (like, Fyre festival sandwich levels of inadequate) and prisons generally have atrocious climate control. In the southern states, they don't have air conditioning and it gets genuinely dangerous for the prisoners.
Some jurisdictions give the Warden a budget for feeding the prisoners, and any dollar they don't spend, they get to KEEP. This predictably results in malnourished prisoners, but Americans do not have the empathy to care most of the time.
> Really, at some time we need to stop glorifying cowardice and reclaim a little bit of dignity.
And getting into a physical fight with real injury potential because of an item?
If it is a cheap thing it is not worth it. If it is more expensive usually the law is on your side. Either way, there's no need for physical confrontation.
> the reason he resort to this kind of criminal activity is preciselly because he is not ready for the violent potential of more profitable criminal activities.
That's a gamble. What if the reason is that, although the thief _could_ be violent, they were smart enough to realize that they can get more results with less personal risk? In which case, your 'martial arts' training is meaningless when you have a knife or a bullet going through you.
> Either way, there's no need for physical confrontation.
Nahh, you just outsource your physical confrontation to a cop. You still belief in confrontation for resolving the issues, you’re just being a coward and not doing it yourself.
Which physical confrontations you handle yourself and which ones you outsource to police is a difficult question. The problem is not so much how you answer the question, but how many people in a large society will choose the "wrong" one.
And I think it's better not to refer to strangers on the internet as cowards. How would you feel if somebody responded to your opinion by calling you a name?
"If you relativelly fit, and have some experience with actual fights or training in martial arts, it is not that stupid to try to recover your stuff."
Anyone with actual experience will tell you that no amount of training will save you from the lucky stab/shot/unknown. Sure, you might win 9/10 times, but is that worth it? Sometimes maybe, other times no. Usually it's better to notify police and let the system handle it. If you handle it yourself, the system in many jurisdictions will fuck you just as bad as the real criminal unless you actively witnessed it or were attacked first.
Eh. Recognition that the state having a monopoly on violence is a better system than individuals exercising it isnt cowardice. This is one area where cops actually can and will do what you want them to, might as well let them if possible.
And yeah maybe any reasonable human can beat up most tweakers, but one could have a knife or gun. Even if that’s a 5% shot, my life is worth more than 20x my bike.
Being fit doesn’t do anything against a knife or a fire-gun, is not being a coward, it’a just the logical conclusion. The people who want to stay fit in order to potentially fight burglars/thieves are doing it wrong, they should train in either gun use or how to better handle a knife. And, of course, have an expensive lawyer at the ready in case something goes wrong and you actually get to physically hurt said thief/burglar.
> have some experience with actual fights or training in martial arts
And significant amounts of people also have neither of these things. At the very least “martial arts” training is particularly unlikely.
I’m the only one I know in my circle with practical fight experience and it’s because I grew up in shitty places. That probably says more about the privileged area I now live, and the kinds of people it attract though to be fair.
Really, at some time we need to stop glorifying cowardice and reclaim a little bit of dignity.
As a society, yes, but do you want to be the one to sacrifice your life or livelihood, for the slim chance of having an impact on society?
A lot of those thiefs are not hardened criminals
Right, but I wonder how long a stolen bike is in the original thief's possession, before it's sold to a fence? And perhaps the fence is in better shape or has buddies for protection against retheft?
What does dignity and cowardice have to do with manhood? That's a weird projection of toxic masculinity. Not wanting to get your stuff stolen helplessly isn't about manhood at all, it's more about dignity, which is a basic human right.
You made up a fake quote to respond to. What's the point of that?
> There is nothing mutually exclusive about analysis and violence.
Of course not. That's just the hypothetical presented here, though. The post I replied to argued that it is better to be both stupid and violent rather than smart when it comes to protecting dignity. Of course there are cases where it's smart to be violent (and stupid to use analysis, for that matter).
I've been wanting exactly this for so long. I want to bury an AirTag in my luggage, backpack, etc. and never think about it again. In those scenarios, it doesn't _need_ to be tiny. I'd rather trade compactness for longevity.
However, an AirTag attached to my keys _should_ be small and it's easily accessible so I don't mind swapping the battery as needed.
I fully expect Apple to release the airTag in different form factors. They can then also sell a whole bunch of new accessories. A 'pen' form factor with replaceable AAAA battery might be perfect for myself.
This is really a non-issue. Your phone literally tells you when the tag's battery is low. I'd rather do that once every 365 days than having to carry 2 AA batteries for 365 days/year.
In all seriousness, if I put an Airtag on my $6k bike and it was stolen and it showed where it was. I'd be getting that bike back and not worrying too much about a confrontation.
Worst case scenario I report it to police directly and it tells them exactly where it is.
If something is stolen, if I don't know where it is that makes the problem 10x worse. At the very least the airtag shows where that item is (unless it has been found and thrown away).
My experience of an airtag on my stolen $300 bike was that the tag showed up in a location the cops told me was about a block away from a notorious chop shop in the city. I just sighed and bought a new bike.
Welp, perhaps demand better from your elected officials.
I live in a town. A few years ago, I had my car broken into with my bag and laptop stolen. Cops took fingerprints and forensics, found a match in a database, visited the suspect, arrested him (as he couldn't explain why his fingerprints was in my car), searched, found, and reclaimed my property.
So last week my keys AirTag was dead, and I checked my notifications and I only received one notification in October that it had a low battery, but to be fair, I don't know exactly when it died between October and last week.
Maybe my batteries die completely before the second notification triggers.
Dear god please no. The kind of people who don't notice empty batteries also don't notice the annoying beeps. But I do.
Apartment living can be hell when there are neighbours who don't replace their smoke detector batteries. I can't fathom how people can sleep through this loud annoying chirp every thirty seconds. I certainly find it hard and my apartment is far enough away that it's hard to determine where exactly the chirp is coming from.
The thought of smoke-detector like beeping of airtags all over the place gives me the worst kind of creeps. Please don't give them ideas! Please!
That's easy to fix. Just carry a pocket full of 2032s, and offer to swap out the beeping tags near you. For a small nominal fee, of course. Or just for free for the sake of humanity or just your own sanity.
I take ownership of the fact that I didn't change the battery when prompted. I only stated that in my experience it's a single notification vs the other folks saying they get notified multiple times.
In my experience with different kinds of batteries, from the cheapest to the more expensive ones, the AirTag holds between 3 and 9 months until it starts warning about battery, so what you’ve read does not line up with my experience.
- To change a battery, you need to not only see the notification but also be physically proximal to the device and have a fresh battery available. It can take some time to meet all these conditions and sometimes you simply forget.
- A single air tag only needs the battery replaced roughly every six months. However, the rate of replacements increases as you are managing more air tags. It's easy to be replacing a battery every few weeks.
- Replacement fatigue is a thing. At some point, we just get lazy.
I keep my BBQ on my front patio, directly in front of my battery-powered Ring camera. The battery on that camera needs to be recharged and replaced every two months. I try to get to it as quickly as I can - ideally during the low-battery state and before the battery dies completely. One time, however, I got lazy/forgot. Two days after the battery died, my BBQ was stolen.
Re: antitheft device
You're right. Apple markets AirTags for recovering lost items, not stolen ones. Nevertheless, they can be very effective for recovering stolen items. My local police department will aid in recovering stolen property. If the item has an AirTag that pings a location, an officer will investigate. In the case of my BBQ, the officer was willing to look for it same-day but, alas, I did not have an AirTag on it.
This product actually helps as it effectively hides the air tag. This makes it less likely that a thief would find and discard the airtag. They'd only be looking for it if their iPhone notifies them and, even then, they may not be able to discriminate which item contains the tag. Best case scenario: they discard the entire stolen unit, keeping the air tag with it.
> physically proximal to the device and have a fresh battery available
I think it's also worth saying, these batteries aren't the standard AA batteries most people on hand, they're 2032 (I believe? or 2025) "quarter batteries" which isn't something a lot of people just keep around. So in addition to being physically proximal, once they've figured out how to open it up and being surprised by the "weird battery," they've also got to remember which it was when presented with a wall of similar looking "quarter batteries" at the store (see: my lack of assurity even having previously replaced these).
> which isn't something a lot of people just keep around
Surely it's something that airtag owners keep around in bulk? I don't have any airtags/tiles/etc, but I can't imagine owning just one. As soon as I have one, I might as well have 6 or 12. If I'm replacing 2*n batteries per year, even if n is just 2 or 3, I'm buying these things in bulk!
> hey're 2032 (I believe? or 2025) "quarter batteries" which isn't something a lot of people just keep around.
This might be slightly tangent but I used to think that. Except now I have a kid. Do you have any idea how many crazy weird battery sizes some of these new toys take? I think I now have like 4 or 5 different sized button batteries in my inventory.
"Back in my day" everything was either AA, C or D. These days, that isn't the case anymore. Only "big things" take "big batteries" like AA->D or they have a few built-in 18650's and a generic charger onboard.
>stuck on the plot holes in the motivating story... How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway?
you discover something has been stolen (or lost), and not knowing exactly when it happened but curious about that too, you immediately try to look up where it was last seen and if it's still tracking. What's the problem with that scenario, sounds perfectly reasonable.
he wants the long battery not because the thief is going to carry it around for 10 years, but simply so that it will more likely to be charged and location tracking at the time it is stolen from the owner.
i don't like changing the batteries in my smoke detectors. it's too frequent. they remind me, it doesn't go unnoticed, it's not that they are inadvertently running out, i don't like doing it, every time is too frequently
in the story the guy told, his batteries were dead; he wishes they weren't. People are allowed to have different preferences, it's not a plot hole in the story.
Come to latam and you'll see some intense confrontation when something gets stolen. I was in a hostel when someone broke into lockers and they tracked him to the a bus station and got all their stuff back + dude in handcuffs to police station.
We put AirTags in road cases/Pelican flight cases packed with AV/IT equipment. Pelican makes a stick-on AirTag holder that works well.
We’ve found the AirTags work just as well as LTE/4G GPS trackers —- with no-ongoing costs, better battery life (we get 6-9 months on the AirTags, 4-6 weeks on the GPS trackers), and AirTags are 1/5 the cost of an LTE tracker.
> They're really for something lost, not stolen. Generally, they are specifically designed to not work well in adversarial situations.
In practice, AirTags tell you where it is, which is useful for lost or stolen items.
What you do with that information is a whole other topic outside this scope.
I've recovered or helped recover several stolen items located with an AirTag and I'll keep on buying them as long as they're good for both.
So far in the cases I've been involved, the thief wasn't aware of the AirTag. In some cases, they had iPhones on them. I'm not sure why they did not get an "AirTag is following you" notification, or why they ignored it.
I don't use the Apple ecosystem as my primary, but I do have a bunch of tags I use in different cases for different items. Some of my items are things like motorsports vehicles or trailers and other things that are around but often out of sight.
If something were to go missing I may not notice immediately. It also seems the batteries in AirTags die faster in areas where climate control isn't the norm. Changing these out every year is a pain because some are hidden in areas that aren't easy to get to.
I hope these work well. And I was pleasantly surprised by the price point. Already ordered!
Also... I already own ElevationLabs Surface Mounts that I use and they are well made products. I love finding brands like this because it's not the norm on outlets like Amazon anymore. So when I find a good product I'm more than happy to keep buying their products, the premium is worth it.
I've had AirTags in my luggage that seemed ok, but the batteries died mid-trip which was somewhat suboptimal. Longer battery life seems like a good selling point vs. replacing those annoying CR2032 before every trip.
I have an AirTag, and no iphone. I used my wife's tablet to set it up. I don't think I will get timely battery alerts from it because I'm not bought in to the apple ecosystem fully.
> If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what?
We recently recovered a laptop simply because it was tracked. Took the location to the police and they did the rest. It’s most definitely an anti-theft device in my case
In fact IIRC the first thing that happened when AirTags were announced were a bunch of concerns that surreptitious AirTags were usable as stalking devices and this seems to bring that concern up again.
without commenting on the rest of it, i can share anecdotally that i currently have 3 dead airtags that i have been procrastinating updating the batteries on
It's good for society, and (in the evolutionary equilibrium) results in massively reduced defection, if people are willing to take on high risk to aggressively punish defectors.
You could try to get the police to do it, but that's going to take more time, during which the thief is even more likely to ditch the AirTag.
During the most recent American election I saw at least three news stories on television about campaign sign thieves being tracked down through the use of AirTags put in one of the signs. To my surprise, in each case the police were right there, and in two of the cases, the signs were still loaded in the thieves' cars. So it does seem to work.
Anyway, you're really swimming upstream trying to think of aigtags as an antitheft device.
They aren't anti-theft devices as in padlocks. But the more often that thieves start wondering if the thing they're taking might have an AirTag in it, they might start reconsidering some of the petty thefts.
It's like a surveillance camera. A camera, itself, can't stop a crime. But the possibility that someone's watching can act as a mild deterrent.
Aren't the news stories subject to survivorship bias though? They wouldn't be as likely to report a boring "sign stolen, thief unknown" story.
Not really. "Survivorship bias" is just the HN cliché of the quarter, and doesn't apply in nearly as many situations as posters on this forum would like.
There were plenty of other stories of campaign signs being stolen, both in the most recent election, and in previous ones. I'd call it more "perception bias." You only know about the AirTag campaign signs stories because you're viewing it through the lens of HN, and not a broader view of media coverage of the issue.
The cars are objectively too easy to steal. Kia made several outright stupid design choices and decided not to spend $100 on BoM to use a tried and tested immobilizer that genuinely helps prevent car theft. They also put the key barrel switches in a location very easy to access, rather than deep in the guts of the steering wheel shaft like most manufacturers.
Kia tried to save itself a few bucks by drastically reducing their product's security. The fact that other cars aren't being stolen at nearly the same rate is itself good evidence that the thieves are just opportunists.
That concept encompasses a ton of gray area. For example, did the ancestors of the person you are stealing from enslave your ancestors? Or more simply, are you or your children going to go hungry?
At the limit, the rule is always might makes right. Until then, the question is how much are you willing to give up to re-order the status quo? (A reordering that may or may not end up in your favor)
Almost everyone can be put into a situation where they rationalize a “negative” into a not negative, most easily visible in cases in which the item being disputed is a scarce resource essential to survival.
> the concept of that's not yours and is actually someone else's isn't the most compelling reason?
At its core, this concept is more of a truce where multiple parties agree that the costs of physical violence are not worth it, because the alternative is more acceptable. Hence the saying that “society is only 3 or 6 or 9 meals away from revolution”.
More plot holes! You think there are people looking to confront thieves in-person but are dissuaded by internet "shame"? Does no one have a sense of coherent narrative?
Of course, I can see you just wrote that as an indirect way to call me chicken (a bit timid yourself, no?), but can't you work out a better narrative considering the context?
I don't know you but I can only speak to your position. In the DAP Model established by Team America, it is a P position. The Ps are in no position to criticize the Ds
Assuming you're an adult, aren't you a little embarrassed to be calling people pussies on the internet? I mean, come on. You can surely be better than that.
> A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment.
Maybe. I agree it's a risk I'd ask myself more than a few times if I'm willing to take these days, but in my youth and when I was less economically secure I never had a problem taking matters like these into my own hands.
Every time I've tracked down a stolen item (phones were the most common with early tracking apps, but before that I've gone after stolen bikes, Discmans, etc.) the thief simply gave up the item without so much as a verbal altercation. The surprise that someone was crazy enough to call them on their bullshit was enough to shock them into just complying. Perhaps some shame as well, I'm not certain.
This has been true since my early teen days when I worked for a small retail store where the owner was way crazier than I ever have been. He took me along on some "repo" trips where folks had written bad checks against expensive items. These were generally in bad neighborhoods and I was certain he was going to get shot - but he never did. Some yelling was the most I witnessed and every time we got the items in question back safe and sound - usually with the person in question helping to load them into the truck.
I'd probably still track an item down and knock on someone's door if I was confident it was the correct location. These days it's basically your only recourse, and despite the relatively minor economic loss vs. my income at this point in my life I think it's important for societal reasons. When everyone simply gives up and lets the criminals and petty thieves "win" without so much as challenging on them, society rapidly crumbles. Relying on law enforcement is a last resort, even though the modern day take is they are the front line response. We see how well that is going. Poorly.
If I owned a retail shop I'd also confront any shoplifters and back up any of my staff who decided to do the same themselves. I understand this might end up costing me more money and make insurance difficult. Punishing such behavior for "liability" reasons is utterly asinine. It should be rewarded, but not encouraged or forced on employees by ownership. When I stopped shoplifters in the 90's at the shops I worked at, it wasn't because I thought my low pay was worth the personal risk. I did it because it was the right thing to do and I knew the owners had my back if anything bad happened. Firing clerks for giving a damn about society is one of my huge pet peeves of modern life. And yes, I am well aware of the risk and horrible outcomes that rarely happen in such situations.
So tldr; I see it as a duty to society to make an attempt at challenging these things for myself and friends that ask for help. Yes, that does incur some personal risk to my safety that cannot be squared with the economic reward. It's a tradeoff I, and others, have calculated for ourselves.
It's utterly corrosive to actual hard working folks doing the right thing to be forced to watch some asshole professional thief push out a cart full of power tools from Home Depot. Knowing full well that they would be fired if they so much got in the way of the cart. It's ridiculous we've normalized such things and justified it with the liability fairy. The executive class has entirely failed society on this point. If someone wants to take on the personal risk, the response should be high praise - not punishment. You get more of what you incentivize.
I have some sympathy for your argument, but I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the power dynamic between citizens and criminals.
Some of the petty thieves will think twice if they hear about other thieves getting beat up. Many of them will simply respond with violence.
Look at Latin American countries where thieves will shoot you dead for an iPhone.
The bicycle thieves are going to steal no matter what. They have to score their next hit. Better that they can do that armed only with an angle grinder rather than a pistol, too.
And if someone decides to turn a bicycle theft into a murder, well, the bicycle thief can usually "live off the land" much easier than you can. When you are used to living on the street and all you need is your next hit, it's much harder to catch you for murder, even if you can be identified.
In a fight where you have more to lose, are an order of magnitude more likely to be held accountable, and your opponent is irrational, effectively anonymous, and probably more practiced in violence than you, escalation seems unfavorable even if it leaves you with a shitty feeling.
Why didn't they replace the battery when the app complained?
How long would a thief really keep the AirTag anyway?
If the thief did keep the AirTag and you tracked them down, then what? A confrontation has a fairly high chance to have a worse result than losing some equipment. You could try to get the police to do it, but that's going to take more time, during which the thief is even more likely to ditch the AirTag.
Anyway, you're really swimming upstream trying to think of aigtags as an antitheft device. They're really for something lost, not stolen. Generally, they are specifically designed to not work well in adversarial situations.