The AirPods location as shown on the map is not the actual location, it is the location of the phone that last reported “hearing” the signal from the AirPods.
When you are close to them and connected to them, the map will show your own location not the AirPods.
This explains why the AirPods tracked the authors own location at times. Possibly also why the map showed the boys location. He was using Bluetooth so his phone was actively listening, and actively connected to the internet and due to this, the boys iPhone was quick to post it’s location when it heard the authors AirPods. Where as other people in the museum was not using their iPhones so their phones would not be actively listening or if they where would not upload the position in real-time.
Yes! Some may feel the author was excessively cautious but in this case it actually compensated for the author also not understanding exactly how Find My Device works, and the two cancelled out and resulted in the correct decisions being made!
In trying to troubleshoot annoying “lost AirPods” notifications without turning off Find My Device, I ended up learning a bit about how the system seems to work.
The way Find My Device works is that there’s a broad class of “child” devices like AirPods that basically only have the ability to say “hello, I’m <Apple ID/serial>” and perhaps the ability to say “help, I’m lost, my name is <Apple ID/serial>” - but crucially they do not have any kind of location data themselves. Then there’s a narrower class of “adult” devices (iPads, iPhones, and Mac) that have location data (GPS on iPads/iPhones, geolocated IP on Macs) and network connectivity. They have the ability to hear any child devices and report “I’m at this location, and I heard a [lost] child with this ID” to the central service, which can then report that information to the parent of that ID. (Incidentally, this let me figure out how to fix my spurious “lost device” notifications - I leave my old MacBook Air on, at my house, connected to wifi, to act as a “stay at home parent” device that can report on child devices, no issues since then.)
If someone trusts the location dot too much and uses it to “find the thief”, there is a possibility they will end up instead accosting the iPhone-bearer who happens to be closest to their device. In the “lost child / responsible adult” analogy, this is sort of an adult reporting they saw a lost child in the museum and being accused of kidnapping the child themselves. (Seeing the same person associated with the device in multiple locations is a much stronger signal, of course.)
It's a bit more interesting than that, as it's E2E encrypted, to avoid leaking the location of any device on the network.
Find My enabled devices are actually sending "my current public key is …" messages. The finder ("adult", in your terminology) device encrypts their location with that public key, and sends that, and only that, to Apple's servers.
The finder device isn't identified in that message, so you can't track a finder device by listening to "encountered a device" transmissions to Apple.
That public key is also rotated every 15 minutes, so an attacker can't track a device by tracking broadcast messages of a specific public key.
When you connect to Find My, you download that encrypted location, and use your private key to decrypt that location.
> I leave my old MacBook Air on, at my house, connected to wifi, to act as a “stay at home parent” device that can report on child devices, no issues since then.
A solution that does not involve leaving a computer on all the time is to configure Find My to not report devices at certain locations.
This is true and also speaks to confusion around AirPods: second generation AirPod Pros are "adult devices" (or at least their case is) while all other generations are child devices.
> Possibly also why the map showed the boys location.
If it means even a slight chance of attracting unfounded vigilantism, mandatory participation in a poorly understood surveillance network seems like a pretty big downside associated with using an iphone.
It’s not mandatory. You have to explicitly enable participation. But most people probably do, as you yourself can’t use the location tracking, unless you opt in yourself.
Our son had his iPhone stolen from him at school. He was in 6th grade and put his bag down to play ball when someone must have walked up and rummaged through his backpack. Once he realized it was stolen he called me from his friend's phone. I jumped on Find My and had it down to a house. They turned it off as soon as I pinged and sent a message to it. So, I called the principal and told her, "Could you ask the student who lives at 555 Friendly Lane in North Beach to return my iPhone or I'm going to call the police." The reaction she gave kind of let me know she knew who they were. Kiddo had the phone back in the morning and got a scolding from me and the principal about guarding his things.
If the other kid didn't return it I don't know what we could have done. But I think mentioning the police were involved made him, probably 10-12yo, feel he was over his head. An adult would probably tell us to fuck off.
I had a guy break into my car and write bad checks to himself with my checkbook that he found in the glove compartment. He had a very unique name, so I was able to pinpoint where he lived, and see that he'd been in trouble with the law for similar stuff in the past. The cops did nothing of course.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you 100% found the right guy. Now, consider how the incentives work.
Depending on where you live, the police might already have more than they can handle just dealing with violent criminals. Even if they’re just sitting around with nothing to do, what do they gain by helping you out with this? It’s not the 1940s anymore, the average policeman works it as a job, not a calling, so even though you’re totally in the right and that person is a criminal.. if they do nothing, nothing bad happens to them, and if they go after the guy, they could get hurt or sued.
On the other hand, did you ask a lawyer? That is a person who stands to potentially gain from helping you out.
I feel kind of gross typing this out, but I’ve been trying lately to more often “say the quiet part loud”.
As someone who has lost three pairs of AirPods (including the newer pros) I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.
Once my girlfriend saw my AirPod maxs lying around and wanted to try them. She put them on her head, tapped “continue” or whatever it said under “not your AirPods” and was listening to music in 15 seconds. Obviously they weren’t stolen in this case but I was shocked at how easily someone could use AirPods they just found.
I feel like Apple could “just” give you the option to disable pairing and discourage people from stealing them, but I don’t know why they haven’t
This feature actually appears to have been implemented at some point. It's called Pairing Lock. The only problem is I'm not sure if it has been silently removed, since on my phone and AirPods the same location in the screenshot no longer says Pairing Lock.
> As someone who has lost three pairs of AirPods (including the newer pros) I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.
Seems kind of user hostile to me. I lose my Apple account I lose my headphones too.
I don't think it's user hostile to give users the option to do this. Also, realistically, you're more likely to have your headphones lost/stolen than your apple account and for most(?) apple users, I imagine being locked out of their apple account would be worse than losing access to their headphones considering they would also lose their files, photos, messages, subscriptions etc.
One thing that strikes me about the story- I guess not everyone is queasy about putting things in their ears that have spent a lot of time in another person’s ears? (I wouldn’t think they would be attractive theft targets, because of hygiene/stigma)
You answered your own question. They allow this because often members of a group want to share their headphones without fully setting up a "Family Sharing" account.
You can only make changes to your "Family Sharing" account once a year due to demands from the music industry. They were worried about the revenue loss from friend groups registering as families and required that it be difficult to form a family group.
Everything about sharing Apple devices between family members is awkward because the RIAA dictated the structure of Apple IDs when they were first being designed.
Let alone my Apple watch that can only pair with one of my phones at a time...
> I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account.
Because then you can't use your personal AirPods with your work computer. Plus, AirPods work with non-Apple devices anyway. How does Apple know what iCloud account belongs to my car's stereo?
> I feel like Apple could “just” give you the option to disable pairing and discourage people from stealing them, but I don’t know why they haven’t
Something like that would be neat, provided that 1) it's optional; and 2) the user can authorize a small number of "guest" iCloud accounts.
There are lots of good product reasons why you don't want to do this, but there's also a good chance that they're just not allowed to.
Airpods are Bluetooth. Their is a load of IP behind Bluetooth, and they will happily licence that IP for free to qualified Bluetooth devices. So you can't just pick and choose which bits of Bluetooth you like, you have to implement enough of it to meet the standards (you can do stuff on top though if you want).
It is possible that a device that refuses to pair/connect under some circumstances to a certified Bluetooth device (e.g. my Android phone, or an iPhone) would fail to meet the specification. There may be a spec lawyer way around it, or there might not be. If there isn't then they just can't do that.
I'd need "find my" to be perfect before I trust it at all again.
I set up a MacBook Pro with Find My, I changed the email on my Apple ID and no longer had access to the old email... time passes... I discover Find My does not recognise the Apple ID (same one, but changed email) and that I've effectively now lost ownership in Find My.
This took weeks to resolve with Apple involved and multiple wipes of the laptop and proof of purchase and ownership.
I'm burned, I now run my MacBook with location services disabled, Find My disabled. It's encrypted and insured, if I lose it or it gets stolen then I'll get another. This is less stress than Find My.
I lost some new model Pros and learned a lot of the same lessons. It’s weird that anyone would be able to use them? This is the case with the iPhone I believe, where the iPhone is completely useless (except for parts) if it’s connected to someone else’s account.
In my case at least my AirPods ended up in lost and found. I was able to go back to where I lost them with find my, then assist the person working there in finding them by continually playing the sound with a button on my phone.
> I’ve never understood why Apple allows another device to pair with headphones that are already paired to an iCloud account
I want the ability to work cross account smoothly because I keep my work MBP signed into a work-only account but during the day I want to quickly switch to using them on my iPhone signed into my personal account.
Imagine this same comment but with your car. People can’t just walk up to your car and drive it away specifically because there is a key that allows the key holder to verify they are authorized to drive (yes obviously someone can steal your keys but that’s the idea anyway)
No one accuses car manufacturers of monetizing human clumsiness and generally speaking the system works pretty well.
I'm totally guessing, but could it be actual corporate strategy? If they are easy to steal, AppleCare+ becomes more appealing and/or having to replace them increases sales. It's certainly an easy problem to solve. Can anyone think of any other legitimate reason not to?
When AirTags were first released, a friend and I entertained the idea of integrating them into high-value car anti-theft systems.
Our reasoning was simple: even if the stolen car was parked in an underground garage, devoid of mobile network, satellite, or even GPS access, an occasional passerby with an iPhone might be sufficient to log the device's ID and subsequently relay it to Apple's central system.
However, in our practical tests, the positioning and tracking proved to be somewhat unreliable and riddled with glitches — a sentiment that resonates with the author's experience with her misplaced AirPods.
Despite this, I firmly believe the Find My network is a technological marvel teeming with potential. I hope Apple continues to refine it and finds more seamless ways to incorporate it into CarPlay and other products
I recently had my iPhone stolen while on a trip in Latin America. It seems that it was an organised group with a vast distribution network. I could follow their entire supply chain which spanned through entire Brazil, from south all the way to Salinopolis which is a beach city in the north of the country. Most probably they travelled through the airport with an entire bag of phones stolen during the carnival.
Putting my phone into a lost mode resulted in them getting my primary phone number which then later was used in a feeble attempt to scam me over WhatsApp. Pretending to be Apple's support, they sent me a phishing link trying to extract the PIN number of the phone. Every number they used (from DNS registration one to the ones they used on WhatsApp) was stolen from someone else before and reused. Funnily, given the domain registration dates they have been preparing for carnival for quite some time. Police wouldn't move a finger (I had a similar experience in UK when I had a Macbook stolen in a central London restaurant).
While Find My might be a useful tool if you forgot something at your friend's place, I doubt the probability of successful retrieval of a stolen phone is high. It's fun to track on a map but unfortunately Find My doesn't even provide a history of locations (!) where the device appeared - it's only the last approximate address where the device has been seen. The return to risk ratio of dressing up as a batman and trying to retrieve the device yourself is not the best, especially if it has been stolen by a "professional".
I have retrieved my wife's phone two times and my own once using Lost Mode. We are in NYC. Maybe I just got lucky or the universe is just smiling on me. I did give each of the do gooders some money and each of them initially tried to refuse it. There are kind, helpful people in the world.
> While Find My might be a useful tool if you forgot something at your friend's place, I doubt the probability of successful retrieval of a stolen phone is high.
What I hope is that some day most parts will have some form of authenticity verification built-in. Putting in stolen parts in another iPhone would just brick it and tell the holder to surrender it at the nearest Apple Store.
> Police wouldn't move a finger (I had a similar experience in UK when I had a Macbook stolen in a central London restaurant).
What I've been told by Brits living here in California is that certain crimes are simply not recorded by the police because it would make statistics look bad.
According to him this was, in part, because politicians were pushing for it due to Brexit.
> The return to risk ratio of dressing up as a batman and trying to retrieve the device yourself is not the best
In some places, the government will even charge you with a crime for doing so (after the police refused to investigate of course).
Apple really needs to do more to lock down parts on registered iPhones. The OS should completely refuse to function if you have a screen or battery from a stolen phone.
I appreciate the story, although bit overstretched.
I do have a question whether it’s just my ADHD, but was the writing horribly hard to follow for anyone else? I could not keep my focus while reading each of the paragraphs.
I think it's sort of mode of reading thing: while on HN you expect either a technical piece of information, or news where you can quickly jump directly to conclusion. But this one is a rare bird here, a story-telling. I wouldn't call it a literary achievement, but it's written well for its genre. It can frustrate if you try to read it as news, of course
You did better than me. I get half the page covered in a registration wall and I haven't got the patience to get rid of it.
Considering all the replies here, I'm guessing not everyone is getting this demand to register or everyone is being particularly generous with their email address.
Depends on what you're looking for. If you want a rambling biographical story then the article is great. If you want to receive the message that "find my" is broken for airpods then it's got a whole lot of unnecessary words.
> I imagined the teen casually picking up the AirPods in the co-ed locker room where I had dropped them only moments before, putting them in his pocket, and later breaking them out to play some tunes in front of his parents. I pictured them nodding serenely, approving of their clever son who had somehow produced AirPods out of nowhere.
1980s... my brother had a friend who'd come over our house now and then. My mom's walkman went missing, and the next day the kid comes over with... a walkman. My mom's walkman. He said "look what I got for confirmation!"
Couple of thoughts jumped in to my head:
A) Why would anyone gift you a walkman with a broken battery cover held on with tape?
B) You're not Catholic.
My mom had a really awkward conversation with the kid's mom. I don't even think that went all that smoothly. "Don't call my kid a liar!" "So... you're Catholic and Timmy just went through confirmation?" "None of your business!"
WTF? She did get it back, but it was more broken and then unusable than before because... of course. He was all of about 10? 11? Moderately curious how he turned out and where he is now, but... not enough to bother digging. :)
I also stole an old walkman as a kid. My eastern european mom gave me a good beating, and ordered me to return it and apologize. I was too embarrassed to do that, so I jumped the owner's fence, put it on their backyard table, and ran away.
Today I pay even for my free Linux, so lesson learned, I suppose.
Its common to most of Christianity (excluding the Baptist, Anabaptist and other “believer’s baptism” denominations) but has different cultural attachments; its quite plausible that, in a local area in parts of the US, the Catholic community would be the only one where it is both practiced and the kind of event for which gift-giving would be associated.
Sometimes ago I found a pair of airpods on a pavement in my city. I started searching for the owner nearby, but nobody showed up, after I keept them in a drawer for a while hoping that the owner would enable lost mode, but they didn't. After 10 days without news I disabled location and started to use them. They are still thetered to the original account. I would be happy to return them, but the owner probably don't know or don't care..
Readit News
When you are close to them and connected to them, the map will show your own location not the AirPods.
This explains why the AirPods tracked the authors own location at times. Possibly also why the map showed the boys location. He was using Bluetooth so his phone was actively listening, and actively connected to the internet and due to this, the boys iPhone was quick to post it’s location when it heard the authors AirPods. Where as other people in the museum was not using their iPhones so their phones would not be actively listening or if they where would not upload the position in real-time.
In trying to troubleshoot annoying “lost AirPods” notifications without turning off Find My Device, I ended up learning a bit about how the system seems to work.
The way Find My Device works is that there’s a broad class of “child” devices like AirPods that basically only have the ability to say “hello, I’m <Apple ID/serial>” and perhaps the ability to say “help, I’m lost, my name is <Apple ID/serial>” - but crucially they do not have any kind of location data themselves. Then there’s a narrower class of “adult” devices (iPads, iPhones, and Mac) that have location data (GPS on iPads/iPhones, geolocated IP on Macs) and network connectivity. They have the ability to hear any child devices and report “I’m at this location, and I heard a [lost] child with this ID” to the central service, which can then report that information to the parent of that ID. (Incidentally, this let me figure out how to fix my spurious “lost device” notifications - I leave my old MacBook Air on, at my house, connected to wifi, to act as a “stay at home parent” device that can report on child devices, no issues since then.)
If someone trusts the location dot too much and uses it to “find the thief”, there is a possibility they will end up instead accosting the iPhone-bearer who happens to be closest to their device. In the “lost child / responsible adult” analogy, this is sort of an adult reporting they saw a lost child in the museum and being accused of kidnapping the child themselves. (Seeing the same person associated with the device in multiple locations is a much stronger signal, of course.)
Find My enabled devices are actually sending "my current public key is …" messages. The finder ("adult", in your terminology) device encrypts their location with that public key, and sends that, and only that, to Apple's servers.
The finder device isn't identified in that message, so you can't track a finder device by listening to "encountered a device" transmissions to Apple.
That public key is also rotated every 15 minutes, so an attacker can't track a device by tracking broadcast messages of a specific public key.
When you connect to Find My, you download that encrypted location, and use your private key to decrypt that location.
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-se...
A solution that does not involve leaving a computer on all the time is to configure Find My to not report devices at certain locations.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212765
If it means even a slight chance of attracting unfounded vigilantism, mandatory participation in a poorly understood surveillance network seems like a pretty big downside associated with using an iphone.
Our son had his iPhone stolen from him at school. He was in 6th grade and put his bag down to play ball when someone must have walked up and rummaged through his backpack. Once he realized it was stolen he called me from his friend's phone. I jumped on Find My and had it down to a house. They turned it off as soon as I pinged and sent a message to it. So, I called the principal and told her, "Could you ask the student who lives at 555 Friendly Lane in North Beach to return my iPhone or I'm going to call the police." The reaction she gave kind of let me know she knew who they were. Kiddo had the phone back in the morning and got a scolding from me and the principal about guarding his things.
If the other kid didn't return it I don't know what we could have done. But I think mentioning the police were involved made him, probably 10-12yo, feel he was over his head. An adult would probably tell us to fuck off.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that you 100% found the right guy. Now, consider how the incentives work.
Depending on where you live, the police might already have more than they can handle just dealing with violent criminals. Even if they’re just sitting around with nothing to do, what do they gain by helping you out with this? It’s not the 1940s anymore, the average policeman works it as a job, not a calling, so even though you’re totally in the right and that person is a criminal.. if they do nothing, nothing bad happens to them, and if they go after the guy, they could get hurt or sued.
On the other hand, did you ask a lawyer? That is a person who stands to potentially gain from helping you out.
I feel kind of gross typing this out, but I’ve been trying lately to more often “say the quiet part loud”.
Once my girlfriend saw my AirPod maxs lying around and wanted to try them. She put them on her head, tapped “continue” or whatever it said under “not your AirPods” and was listening to music in 15 seconds. Obviously they weren’t stolen in this case but I was shocked at how easily someone could use AirPods they just found.
I feel like Apple could “just” give you the option to disable pairing and discourage people from stealing them, but I don’t know why they haven’t
https://old.reddit.com/r/airpods/comments/q29h40/we_can_fina...
Seems kind of user hostile to me. I lose my Apple account I lose my headphones too.
You can only make changes to your "Family Sharing" account once a year due to demands from the music industry. They were worried about the revenue loss from friend groups registering as families and required that it be difficult to form a family group.
Everything about sharing Apple devices between family members is awkward because the RIAA dictated the structure of Apple IDs when they were first being designed.
Let alone my Apple watch that can only pair with one of my phones at a time...
Because then you can't use your personal AirPods with your work computer. Plus, AirPods work with non-Apple devices anyway. How does Apple know what iCloud account belongs to my car's stereo?
> I feel like Apple could “just” give you the option to disable pairing and discourage people from stealing them, but I don’t know why they haven’t
Something like that would be neat, provided that 1) it's optional; and 2) the user can authorize a small number of "guest" iCloud accounts.
Airpods are Bluetooth. Their is a load of IP behind Bluetooth, and they will happily licence that IP for free to qualified Bluetooth devices. So you can't just pick and choose which bits of Bluetooth you like, you have to implement enough of it to meet the standards (you can do stuff on top though if you want).
It is possible that a device that refuses to pair/connect under some circumstances to a certified Bluetooth device (e.g. my Android phone, or an iPhone) would fail to meet the specification. There may be a spec lawyer way around it, or there might not be. If there isn't then they just can't do that.
I set up a MacBook Pro with Find My, I changed the email on my Apple ID and no longer had access to the old email... time passes... I discover Find My does not recognise the Apple ID (same one, but changed email) and that I've effectively now lost ownership in Find My.
This took weeks to resolve with Apple involved and multiple wipes of the laptop and proof of purchase and ownership.
I'm burned, I now run my MacBook with location services disabled, Find My disabled. It's encrypted and insured, if I lose it or it gets stolen then I'll get another. This is less stress than Find My.
even folks who spend >$5k on headphones would find this suggestion obscene.
In my case at least my AirPods ended up in lost and found. I was able to go back to where I lost them with find my, then assist the person working there in finding them by continually playing the sound with a button on my phone.
I want the ability to work cross account smoothly because I keep my work MBP signed into a work-only account but during the day I want to quickly switch to using them on my iPhone signed into my personal account.
Since the dawn of time people have stolen and misplaced things. Please don't give Apple any bright ideas about monetizing human clumsiness.
No one accuses car manufacturers of monetizing human clumsiness and generally speaking the system works pretty well.
Most headphones don’t have a lockout feature.
Our reasoning was simple: even if the stolen car was parked in an underground garage, devoid of mobile network, satellite, or even GPS access, an occasional passerby with an iPhone might be sufficient to log the device's ID and subsequently relay it to Apple's central system.
However, in our practical tests, the positioning and tracking proved to be somewhat unreliable and riddled with glitches — a sentiment that resonates with the author's experience with her misplaced AirPods.
Despite this, I firmly believe the Find My network is a technological marvel teeming with potential. I hope Apple continues to refine it and finds more seamless ways to incorporate it into CarPlay and other products
Putting my phone into a lost mode resulted in them getting my primary phone number which then later was used in a feeble attempt to scam me over WhatsApp. Pretending to be Apple's support, they sent me a phishing link trying to extract the PIN number of the phone. Every number they used (from DNS registration one to the ones they used on WhatsApp) was stolen from someone else before and reused. Funnily, given the domain registration dates they have been preparing for carnival for quite some time. Police wouldn't move a finger (I had a similar experience in UK when I had a Macbook stolen in a central London restaurant).
While Find My might be a useful tool if you forgot something at your friend's place, I doubt the probability of successful retrieval of a stolen phone is high. It's fun to track on a map but unfortunately Find My doesn't even provide a history of locations (!) where the device appeared - it's only the last approximate address where the device has been seen. The return to risk ratio of dressing up as a batman and trying to retrieve the device yourself is not the best, especially if it has been stolen by a "professional".
I got my iPhone back at a giant music festival the old fashioned way- calling it and the do gooder answered.
What I hope is that some day most parts will have some form of authenticity verification built-in. Putting in stolen parts in another iPhone would just brick it and tell the holder to surrender it at the nearest Apple Store.
> Police wouldn't move a finger (I had a similar experience in UK when I had a Macbook stolen in a central London restaurant).
What I've been told by Brits living here in California is that certain crimes are simply not recorded by the police because it would make statistics look bad.
According to him this was, in part, because politicians were pushing for it due to Brexit.
> The return to risk ratio of dressing up as a batman and trying to retrieve the device yourself is not the best
In some places, the government will even charge you with a crime for doing so (after the police refused to investigate of course).
An hour later a grandfather called saying his grandkid would be returning the phone in the morning. Kid claimed he found it in the street.
I do have a question whether it’s just my ADHD, but was the writing horribly hard to follow for anyone else? I could not keep my focus while reading each of the paragraphs.
Considering all the replies here, I'm guessing not everyone is getting this demand to register or everyone is being particularly generous with their email address.
Deleted Comment
1980s... my brother had a friend who'd come over our house now and then. My mom's walkman went missing, and the next day the kid comes over with... a walkman. My mom's walkman. He said "look what I got for confirmation!"
Couple of thoughts jumped in to my head:
A) Why would anyone gift you a walkman with a broken battery cover held on with tape?
B) You're not Catholic.
My mom had a really awkward conversation with the kid's mom. I don't even think that went all that smoothly. "Don't call my kid a liar!" "So... you're Catholic and Timmy just went through confirmation?" "None of your business!"
WTF? She did get it back, but it was more broken and then unusable than before because... of course. He was all of about 10? 11? Moderately curious how he turned out and where he is now, but... not enough to bother digging. :)
Today I pay even for my free Linux, so lesson learned, I suppose.
Probably not well with parents like that.