New privacy security updates by Apple released for AirTags

Apple as a tech giant is known to bring innovative products and solutions that make the life of its users different. One such product is the Airtags which was released in 2021 by the company as a way for users to recover what they forget or lose precious items from time to time.

The product became quite revolutionary when it came to using it on items a user may forget like their phone or wallet. Since its inception, AirTags have offered a “Precision Finding” feature that uses Ultra-wideband to precisely find the tag. With it, your iPhone can use augmented reality to take you to the tracker while displaying on-screen arrows that point in the appropriate direction. It is a lot more effective than the Bluetooth-only technology seen in certain low-cost tracking fobs.

However, it has come under scrutiny due to threat actors using it for potential stalking purposes. Although Apple has received harsh criticism for not foreseeing this, there have been several updates intended to reduce the risk from stalkers, and the most recent one could be of great assistance.

Since November, Apple has published two different AirTag firmware updates, but at the time it didn’t say what changes were being made. All the information is now available in a new support document, which also includes the long-promised functionality that would enable iPhone owners to locate any rogue AirTags nearby.

The updates now allow iPhone to alert users of unknown Airtags nearby that are separated by their owners and also emit a sound to indicate it has moved. Even though AirTags can still be used as stalking devices, Apple’s upgrade makes it much simpler to identify and locate them. According to Apple, Precision Finding will be especially useful if the AirTag sound is difficult to hear or if the speaker has been modified.

This does have some disadvantages like users who have older devices than iPhone 11 or have android are not protected by these new updates.