Apple's Airtags are an ingenious technology: they fuse every Ios device into a sensor grid that logs the location of each tag, using clever cryptography to prevent anyone but the tag's owner from pulling that information out of the system. But there are significant problems with Airtags' privacy model. Some of these are unique to Apple, others are shared by all Bluetooth location systems, including Covid exposure-notification apps and Airtag rivals like Tile.

Apple's Airtags are an ingenious technology: they fuse every Ios device into a sensor grid that logs the location of each tag, using clever cryptography to prevent anyone but the tag's owner from pulling that information out of the system. But there are significant problems with Airtags' privacy model. Some of these are unique to Apple, others are shared by all Bluetooth location systems, including Covid exposure-notification apps and Airtag rivals like Tile.