They have to be near any iPhone, which will then tell apple where the airtag (which is using Bluetooth) is. It has a CR2032 button cell battery. More recent iPhones can use ultra wideband to more accurately track the airtag position.
Does it only have to be phones (and specifically iPhones) or can it triangulate from wifi, like a ton of other tracking things do? Even if you don’t connect to the wifi, the polling for available Wi-Fi connections can still be used to triangulate position.
All the tracker does (to my knowledge) is sending out a Bluetooth signal every Bluetooth-capable device that has been backdoored the appropriate software running and Bluetooth enabled, which is at least all IPhones, as well as many Android smartphones, will pick up. Those devices will calculate the rough distance based on the delay, and then send the rough location to the Apple servers. The Airtag itself does not calculate anything.
Reminds me a bit about how the German covid app worked. Obviously not for location tracking, but to track whether you got in contact with someone who’s potentially infected.
They don’t need to leave their phone in their car or even have a phone themselves. If any iPhone sees the device from ~30 feet away it reports back to Apple where it saw it. So even passing traffic was likely to report where the tracker was. Unless the tracker is moved while no phones are near it, Apple knows where it is
They have to be near any iPhone, which will then tell apple where the airtag (which is using Bluetooth) is. It has a CR2032 button cell battery. More recent iPhones can use ultra wideband to more accurately track the airtag position.
Does it only have to be phones (and specifically iPhones) or can it triangulate from wifi, like a ton of other tracking things do? Even if you don’t connect to the wifi, the polling for available Wi-Fi connections can still be used to triangulate position.
All the tracker does (to my knowledge) is sending out a Bluetooth signal every Bluetooth-capable device that has
been backdooredthe appropriate software running and Bluetooth enabled, which is at least all IPhones, as well as many Android smartphones, will pick up. Those devices will calculate the rough distance based on the delay, and then send the rough location to the Apple servers. The Airtag itself does not calculate anything.My understanding is that most modern iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops will respond to Air Tags and forward their pings to Apple.
Reminds me a bit about how the German covid app worked. Obviously not for location tracking, but to track whether you got in contact with someone who’s potentially infected.
How far is “close”? Unless these people left their phone in their car, it eould have to be more than 30 feet like bluetooth, right?
They don’t need to leave their phone in their car or even have a phone themselves. If any iPhone sees the device from ~30 feet away it reports back to Apple where it saw it. So even passing traffic was likely to report where the tracker was. Unless the tracker is moved while no phones are near it, Apple knows where it is
10-30 meters from airtag to the random apple device, pending environment conditions.