this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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I have a prediction: Airlines won't ackowlege that personal trackers as an effective means to track luggage becuase they're trying to figure out how to force you to buy their own trackers.
I don't know how air tags even work. So they have a cellular connection or something? How are they able to be tracked?
Crowd sourcing. AirTags and other similar trackers emit weak, short range Bluetooth beacons that any iPhone can quietly detect and report along with where they were when the beacon was seen. There are privacy implications for sure, but it works.
AirTags actually use an encryption scheme. The AirTag will broadcast a public key. The private key is stored in your iPhone and iCloud keyring. Once your phone fetches the location reports from apple's online service it can decrypt the actual location of the AirTag.