There are about 2 million registered cars in the five boroughs, so as many as 1 in 150 are being ripped off. Near the end of 2022, the NYPD said nearly 13,000 cars had been stolen in New York City so far that year-32% more than in 2021. This context is important for why the NYPD is suddenly pushing the AirTag. Hyundai took until February 2023 to release a software fix-one that must be installed at a dealer-that makes those models vastly harder to hijack. It can reportedly take a minute or less to drive off in one of the vulnerable models. Rather, models of Hyundai Motor Group’s Kia and Hyundai-about a decade of the former’s models and six years of the latter’s-have an extraordinarily easy-to-exploit flaw that went viral in mid-2022. It’s not that criminal masterminds suddenly decided stealing cars was in. While many statements made by politicians, retail stores, and police departments about rises in crime are overstated or simply inaccurate, it’s true that car theft is way, way up in most American cities-in some cases, two to four times higher in 2022 compared with the immediately preceding years! Any device that simplifies finding your own stuff will always have the effect of reducing other people’s privacy and increasing their risk limiting tracking capabilities to reduce stalking also lessens the utility for item recovery. On the other hand, they’re the easiest method in human history to track someone’s whereabouts surreptitiously down to the minute. On the one hand, they’re a powerful tool to enable the recovery of stolen items (or find lost objects, which is Apple’s primary goal for the AirTag). These two stories represent the tension inherent in ubiquitous, hard-to-detect tracking devices. The standard would require compatible alerts, movement sensors, and identification across ecosystems, making it far easier for someone to detect unwanted tracking. This would include freestanding trackers like the AirTag, Samsung’s SmartTag, and a reported upcoming Google competitor, not to mention devices with less-comprehensive tracking coverage from Cube, Chipolo, and Tile. On the flip side of that news was a press release from Apple and Google about an industry standard the two companies jointly drafted to provide consistent presence-alerting behavior for tracking devices made by any company. Adams even held up a boxed AirTag, effectively giving Apple an endorsement and free advertising. In conjunction with the NYPD’s announcement, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said a nonprofit had donated 500 AirTags to give away to NYC residents. The New York Police Department produced a video to accompany a recent announcement: stick an AirTag in your car to help with recovery in the event of theft. 1654: Urgent OS security updates, upgrading to macOS 13 Ventura, using smart speakers while temporarily blindĪirTag in the News: NYPD Recommends, Apple and Google Propose Industry Tracking Standard.#1655: 33 years of TidBITS, Twitter train wreck, tvOS 16.4.1, Apple Card Savings, Steve Jobs ebook.#1656: Passcode thieves lock iCloud accounts, the apps Adam uses, iPhoto and Aperture library conversion in Ventura.#1657: A deep dive into the innovative Arc Web browser.#1658: Rapid Security Responses, NYPD and industry standard AirTag news, Apple's Q2 2023 financials.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |