As long as you have a solid password on your apple account, I wouldn’t worry about sharing your location with your own apple account. I guess you’ll need to decide which issue you see as a bigger risk.
I have an Android, and found a free app, Air Tag Tracker Detect Pro. If you do a scan, it shows what it detects, including our smart tv. You can uncheck the categories for Apple Devices and for Other, so it shows only Air Tags. I will let you know how well this works for me!
Apple makes an app specifically for this (Tracker Detect) for Android. The only downside on the Android side is that you would need to run it manually.
Theres a huge BS component to this story though - the family claims that they could see the air tag on their phones still in the parking lot of the park after they left, so they thought that they must have lost it from wherever it was hiding when they were shaking out bags and pockets. Thats not how airtags work. Once you leave the direct vicinity of the airtag (if its not one that belongs to you and is linked to your account) you can no longer track it. Theres so much fishy about this story that i feel like they are just embellishing or outright making it up in hopes of compensation. The words “We were terrified, we were confused, hurt, and scared” are straight out of the legal playbook for mental anguish claims. Call me jaded, but i’m not buying this at all.
What’s also interesting is that when I read a handful of news articles about AirTag crimes, they were pretty vague on details/stats of actual crimes.
Mostly things like “According to Local Police Dept X, law enforcement across the country is reporting an increase in auto thefts using AirTags” but not much in the way of actual data.
And most of the interviews were people alarmed by the notifications but they weren’t victims of theft or attacks. Not “I got an alert, didn’t know what it was so I ignored it, and my car was stolen that night.”
I suppose it could be that they suspect this method in certain situations, but not sure they really have a handle on frequency.
There’s definitely an “urban legend” feel to it. I haven’t come across a single corroboration either. And I’m gonna be “that person” but there’s definitely a demographic to all these reports and it kind of overlaps with the same one that frequently posts, “I was with my kids in Target and someone was following us - they are traffickers!!”
This is so my wife. I don’t think it’s demographic though, as in her age, race, politics, religion, but just her personality type and experience. She’s just ultra protective in certain ways about the kids, privacy, etc. and imagines worst case scenarios in some situations based on gut feeling. We are very different in that way. Oh well.
Recently read a tweet thread. Woman was shopping at a store. Noticed 2 dodgy men following a woman. Went up to the woman being followed and alerted her. Then staff escorted her into the break room and chewed her out for interfering with their shoplifting prevention team! Of note, she told them she would absolutely do it again.
My 2 takeaways.
Things aren’t always what they seem.
Even knowing this was a possibility, I would alert the woman 100% of the time.