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Not if it's another person's.

Edit: I think I misread that. When you see an AirTag popup, you can choose to ignore it for the day or forever. That's from my recollection. I haven't seen one in ages.



"iPhone can view the tracker’s identifier, have the tracker play a sound to help locate it, and access instructions to disable it."

I wonder if that last bit requires physical access to the tracker?


  3.13.  Disablement

     The accessory SHALL have a way to be disabled such that its future
     locations cannot be seen by its owner.  Disablement SHALL be done via
     some physical action (e.g., button press, gesture, removal of
     battery, etc.).

  Ledvina, et al.           Expires 22 June 2024                 [Page 26]
  Internet-Draft    Detecting Unwanted Location Trackers     December 2023

  3.13.1.  Disablement instructions

     The accessory manufacturer SHALL provide both a text description of
     how to disable the accessory as well as a visual depiction (e.g.
     image, diagram, animation, etc.) that MUST be available when the
     platform is online and OPTIONALLY when offline.  Disablement
     procedure or instructions CAN change with accessory firmware updates.
     These are provided as part of the onboarding process (Section 7).
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-detecting-unwanted-lo...

Yes. Physical access would likely be needed for most of these devices and would be sufficient for satisfying the RFC, based on the examples in section 3.13.

So you might get a notification of a device "following" you because I have a tracker in my bag but no phone (or my phone is off, perhaps; or maybe it's just malfunctioning and mis-reporting as happens sometimes). You play the sound and find out it's in the bag underneath your seat on the bus, but that's my bag. You could attempt to rifle through it and take my tracker and disable it, but I'd probably stop you.


It does. Their instructions for disabling AirTags shows you how to remove their battery. That's a good thing: you shouldn't be able to remotely disable someone else's tracker.




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