Car tracking using Apple AirTag

All it needs is to come across a user with an iPhone 11 or 12 in its Bluetooth range, and voila, you have your vehicle location.

BHPian sunilg33 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Apple has launched AirTag, a button-sized object with location awareness, for tracking. It has a year's battery life and communicates to any iPhone 11 & 12 which is in its Bluetooth range. With its capabilities along with the ecosystem of billions of iPhones, there are endless possibilities for its usage.

One such use which came to my mind is car tracking. Since the device size itself is so small, it can easily be hidden in a car. So in case of car theft, there are good chances of tracking the same. All it needs is to come across a user with an iPhone 11 or 12 in its Bluetooth range, and voila, you have your vehicle location.

There are definitely major privacy concerns about this as it can be easily used to spy on you. Apple has promised to take care of this and I believe they will have the necessary checks for it.

When the AirTag comes in contact with any iPhone 11, 12 in the vicinity, it just sends its device ID to that phone. Then the phone relays this information along with the current location to Apple cloud. Then the cloud pushes the location information of the AirTag to the owner via the find my phone app. Overall the technology is simple and hence can be very successful.

It could still be patchy in countries like India where there aren't enough iPhones sold. But in countries like the USA where every alternate person owns an iPhone, tracking could be very quick and accurate.

Thanks to sunilg33 again. Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information