Image credit – MacRumors
Apple is rumored to be launching their new AirTags accessory possibly this month. For those who are hearing about this for the first time, the AirTags are a tracking accessory similar to Tile, but instead of regular Bluetooth, it will reportedly use UWB that is meant to be more accurate when it comes to pinpointing the location.
This does raise some questions about privacy, like what’s to stop someone from slipping an AirTags accessory into your bag and track your whereabouts and possibly to your home? Thankfully, Apple seems to have thought of that because according to the latest iOS 14 beta, iOS developer Benjamin Mayo has discovered some evidence to suggest that Apple will include features that will prevent misuse of the accessory.
The setting is on by default which makes sense, but the fact you can turn it off at all probably means that this fires false positive alerts in some circumstances.
— Benjamin Mayo (@bzamayo) March 4, 2021
This was discovered in the Safety settings in the Find My app in which if the feature is enabled, it will alert you to the presence of the accessory. It should be noted that this Safety feature is turned on by default which means that unless you purposely disable it, you should be notified whenever this happens.
It sounds like a pretty useful feature to have, although given that the AirTags have yet to launch, we still have no idea how exactly the accessory will work and what kind of features it could have, but hopefully we’ll have more details this month.