Epic Games CEO Criticized For Calling Apple's 'Find My' Feature 'Super Creepy' (macrumors.com) 176
Slashdot reader Applehu Akbar shared this report from MacRumors:
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney commented on Apple's 'Find My' service, referring to it as "super creepy surveillance tech" that "shouldn't exist." Sweeney went on to explain that several years ago, "a kid" stole a Mac laptop out of his car. Years later, Sweeney was checking Find My, and as the Mac was still connected to his Apple ID account, it showed him the location where the thief lived.
When someone asked Sweeney if he'd at least gotten his laptop back, Sweeney answered "No. I was creeped the hell out by having unexpectedly received the kid's address, and turned off Find My iPhone on all of my devices."
Slashdot reader crmarvin42 quipped "Tell me you are stupidly rich, without telling me you are stupidly rich... Next someone will be saying that it is 'Creepy' to have security footage of someone taking your Amazon packages off of your porch." And they also questioned Sweeney's sincerity, suggesting that he's "just saying that to try and make Apple look bad because of all the lawsuits going on."
MacRumors followed the ensuing discussion: Sweeney said that the location of a device in someone's possession can't be tracked without tracking the person, and "people have a right to privacy." ["This right applies to second hand device buyers and even to thieves."] He claims that detection and recovery of a lost or stolen device should be "mediated by due process of law" and not exposed to the device owner "in vigilante fashion."
Some responded to Sweeney's comments by sharing the headline of a Vox news story about Epic's own privacy polices. ("Fortnite maker Epic Games has to pay $520 million for tricking kids and violating their privacy.")
MacRumors cited a 2014 report that thefts of iPhones dropped after the introduction of Apple's "Activation Lock" feature (which prevents the disabling of 'Find My' without a password).
But when the blog AppleInsider accused Sweeney of "an incredibly bad leap of logic" — Sweeney responded. "You're idealizing this issue as good guys tracking criminals to their lairs, but when Find My or Google's similar tech points a device owner to a device possessor's home, one must anticipate the presence of families and kids and innocent used device buyers, and ask whether it's really appropriate for a platform to use GPS and shadowy mesh network tech to set up physical confrontations among individuals."
Sweeney also posted a quote from Steve Jobs about how at Apple, "we worry that some 14-year-old is going to get stalked and something terrible is going to happen because of our phone."
When someone asked Sweeney if he'd at least gotten his laptop back, Sweeney answered "No. I was creeped the hell out by having unexpectedly received the kid's address, and turned off Find My iPhone on all of my devices."
Slashdot reader crmarvin42 quipped "Tell me you are stupidly rich, without telling me you are stupidly rich... Next someone will be saying that it is 'Creepy' to have security footage of someone taking your Amazon packages off of your porch." And they also questioned Sweeney's sincerity, suggesting that he's "just saying that to try and make Apple look bad because of all the lawsuits going on."
MacRumors followed the ensuing discussion: Sweeney said that the location of a device in someone's possession can't be tracked without tracking the person, and "people have a right to privacy." ["This right applies to second hand device buyers and even to thieves."] He claims that detection and recovery of a lost or stolen device should be "mediated by due process of law" and not exposed to the device owner "in vigilante fashion."
Some responded to Sweeney's comments by sharing the headline of a Vox news story about Epic's own privacy polices. ("Fortnite maker Epic Games has to pay $520 million for tricking kids and violating their privacy.")
MacRumors cited a 2014 report that thefts of iPhones dropped after the introduction of Apple's "Activation Lock" feature (which prevents the disabling of 'Find My' without a password).
But when the blog AppleInsider accused Sweeney of "an incredibly bad leap of logic" — Sweeney responded. "You're idealizing this issue as good guys tracking criminals to their lairs, but when Find My or Google's similar tech points a device owner to a device possessor's home, one must anticipate the presence of families and kids and innocent used device buyers, and ask whether it's really appropriate for a platform to use GPS and shadowy mesh network tech to set up physical confrontations among individuals."
Sweeney also posted a quote from Steve Jobs about how at Apple, "we worry that some 14-year-old is going to get stalked and something terrible is going to happen because of our phone."
What bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Find My is a feature for figuring out where you left your thing. Usually it tracks my phone to my car.
If some asshole stole it and they get tracked that's a side benefit.
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Well, sure. But people have been abusing that capability from day one -- e.g. creepers who drop airtags or even AirPods in women's bags to track their movements and figure out where they live.
I think most of us would agree that a thief doesn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to the location of the goods he has stolen. But there's really nothing inherent in the technology that restricts it to reasonable uses. If you deploy it widely, you inevitably enable abuses, and it's perfectly
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creepers who drop airtags or even AirPods in women's bags to track their movements
I may have missed the details on how Apples "Find my ..." system works. But I was under the impression that you could only find stuff tied to your own account. So, good for finding your own stuff. But if you drop a tag linked to your account in someone else's bag and they find it, you've got some serious explaining to do.
And although the system is encrypted/anonymous to third parties, it is possible to sniff for the presence of a tracker. And then turn the stalking case over to law enforcement.
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Don't Apple devices (iPhones, iPads, etc.) notify you if a device not associated with your account is following you around?
Yes, it does.
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You have to be a special kind of idiot to track someone using a device belonging and registered to yourself. If you want to do that you buy a properly anonymous one that are widely available, with none of the protections the big tech companies implement.
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No shortage of them, apparently.
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Remember this is the CEO of Epic Games complaining. His wealth puts him in a rarefied air of "I can lose stuff and not care".
He can lose a laptop a day and it won't have any fiscal impact on his standard of living.
So yeah, he can turn it off, he loses a laptop, no big deal, he just goes and buys another one. Its no big deal.
Misplacing stuff and having to suffer because someone stole your phone or laptop is a prole question that doesn't concern him.
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Remember this is the CEO of Epic Games complaining. His wealth puts him in a rarefied air of "I can lose stuff and not care".
He can lose a laptop a day and it won't have any fiscal impact on his standard of living.
So yeah, he can turn it off, he loses a laptop, no big deal, he just goes and buys another one. Its no big deal.
Misplacing stuff and having to suffer because someone stole your phone or laptop is a prole question that doesn't concern him.
Precisely.
He's not a "FindMy" target customer, especially when concerning Stolen Property.
He is, however, a potential "Remote Wipe" Customer; but he doesn't talk about that.
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Unless when, as in this story, the asshole is a kid and you find yourself involuntarily stalking underage kids.
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The social contract stipulates that we must act according to the laws of society, or risk losing our rights. If someone steals a thing, they have broken the law, and thus should not have full ownership of all their previous rights. Losing your privacy because someone is tracking the items you stole simply seems like fair play. But it's not as if a billionaire asshole would care about the social contract, as the extreme greed demonstrated by hoarding such wealth is an example of someone who simply hates the
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Find My is a feature for figuring out where you left your thing. Usually it tracks my phone to my car.
If some asshole stole it and they get tracked that's a side benefit.
Ummm, it is still creepy... YOU are not the only one who has access to that information. That is why it is creepy.
Come over to the dark side. (Score:2)
Apple cannot track you this way (Score:5, Informative)
A) Apple cannot track you this way. A cryptographic signature that is generated on your device is used. Apple has no access to the signature.
B) When a device is factory reset, cryptographic keys are regenerated, and it becomes impossible to track the device via "find my". Used devices are not a "find my" privacy issue for this among many other reasons.
C) If you don't like it, turn it off, and it is really off. This is in contrast to Goole who continued to track Android phone locations even when opt out. https://www.tomsguide.com/news... [tomsguide.com].
One company makes money by invading your privacy, and it isn't Apple.
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Re:Apple cannot track you this way (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, a separate study conducted by Leith this past spring found that the core Android and iOS operating systems themselves (regardless of system apps) transmitted roughly the same amount of user data.
Meanwhile, a new Oxford study released last week found that iPhone apps were just as snoopy as Android apps, with 60% of iOS apps sharing data with Google.
The advantage with Android phones over iPhones is that not all of them are locked down, so you can address this by installing a custom ROM. Granted, as the article points out this is more than the average user is going to be willing to do, but that's kind of the point with "opt out for privacy." Both of these companies rely on the fact that most people, through ignorance or disregard, will not opt out.
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> with 60% of iOS apps sharing data with Google
with Google
WITH GOOGLE
So you're trying to claim this is an Apple problem when it's in fact a Google problem
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So you're trying to claim this is an Apple problem when it's in fact a Google problem
You're trying to claim it's not a problem on iDevices when it is in fact a problem on iDevices. The devices leak data to Google not because Google made them do that, but because the authors made them do that because they use Google's tracking services. They do that because they are cheap and easy because Google wants the data; if Google didn't exist they would use someone else's tracking services (and there are many to choose from.)
There are no heroes in this story, but stop trying to make the GP out to be
Re: Apple cannot track you this way (Score:2)
Apple has literally given themselves the power to track ...
You're trying to claim it's not a problem on iDevices when it is in fact a problem on iDevices. The devices leak data to Google not because Google made them do that, but because the authors made them do that because they use Google's tracking services. ...
There are no heroes in this story, but stop trying to make the GP out to be a villain when you don't even understand the argument.
I'm having trouble following this argument too, we've established that Apple isn't the problem, so I think you're agreeing with the person you're arguing with.
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we've established that Apple isn't the problem
No we haven't. The person who replied to me just ignored the first paragraph that I quoted and focused on the second.
Re: Apple cannot track you this way (Score:2)
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This is in contrast to Goole who continued to track Android phone locations even when opt out.
Please tell me you didn't just conflate a find-my feature used by a private party to track a specific device and a generic location tracking feature? Look your post is on point and strong, but you completely weaken your entire argument when you end with such a boneheadded comparison.
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None of which protects you from creepy arseholes using AirTags to track you.
Apple should have done what Google did and wait until both major mobile operating systems had support for detecting stalkers. Instead they unleashed a privacy nightmare on the world, for profit.
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A) Apple cannot track you this way. A cryptographic signature that is generated on your device is used. Apple has no access to the signature.
Which doesn't address the concern. Apple, at some level, knows that three tags are correlated and they're all associated with your Apple account. Even if that gets anonymized, we've seen plenty of examples of people associating anonymized data back to individuals.
B) When a device is factory reset, cryptographic keys are regenerated, and it becomes impossible to track the device via "find my". Used devices are not a "find my" privacy issue for this among many other reasons.
Which is great but also not the main concern. Yes, it gives me a way to opt out of future tracking or to safely buy a device and not be tracked by the previous owner. That doesn't seem like a terribly common situation. I assume most devices have ex
Re: Apple cannot track you this way (Score:4, Informative)
What kind of guarantee are you looking for? They state right here what data they do or don't collect. They explicitly state that they do not and cannot collect location data on Find My endpoints (like phones, tablets, airtags, etc.).
https://www.apple.com/privacy/... [apple.com]
There are some technical deep dives on how Find My works, but this is a good overview that gets into some details without getting too technical: https://www.wired.com/story/ap... [wired.com]
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[...]
If your device is capable of collecting location, and it is capable of communication with (or in this case, merely to) the manufacturer, a promise is the best you can possibly get. Any other safeguard the manufacturer could be lying about.
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Apple? (Score:2)
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows when you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
I thought this was about Santa Claus.
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Sure, Apple did that.
Apple gives you the ability to track your Apple stuff. Maybe they store the information, maybe they don't. They didn't make the first phone with a GPS in it though, and they don't even make a third of them.
It's also easy to avoid if you want to. Don't carry a device with a GPS and a transmitter with you.
Re: What bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
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Texas.
Fuck thieves and those that enable them.
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Yes, and I'm tired of pretending that it's not.
And if you have ANY semblance of a rule of law in your jurisdiction, then your state, too, will value property - including money, down to even ridiculously small amounts - higher than a person's life. If you want to know what I mean by that, get a parking citation for 30 bucks and then consistently not pay it and anything related to that and then do not comply with anything the state commands you to do as a consequence. What will eventually happen? Eventually,
Re: What bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
And the police won't help.
Therein lies your problem. You should work to solve it, and the earlier you start, the sooner it will get solved.
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However valuable the stolen goods are, they are not worth a human life.
The one with the gun has the overhand and there is absolutely no reason to take a life, one can shoot the asshole without killing him.
Or can't you handle a gun?
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Getting shot in the face is usually deadly.
Unless your name is Harry Whittington [wikipedia.org] and you're hunting with a certain Dick [wikipedia.org]...
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I don't know exactly where you draw the line, but its well before taking someones life.
You report it to the police, they should recover it. If they can't knowing the location of the item, the problem lies with the police. You are also putting your life on the line as well who's to say the thief doesn't have a gun and won't shoot you in the face.
If the loss of a computer is so life destroying then we need better solutions to help people with those problems, what if you just lost that computer, or dropped, or
Re: What bullshit (Score:3)
Re: What bullshit (Score:2)
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The only exception is when it's a choice between his or your life.
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Ya, that Jesus guy, what a shmuck for treating thieves like real people and hanging out with the undesirables. Turn the other cheek, let him have your cloak also? What a bunch of socialist nonsense, no true Christian would go along with it.
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Unless you fingered the wrong person, fired shots at his face killing him, and the missing shots just kept going and hit a little girl at her lemonade stand.
Re: What bullshit (Score:2)
Only I can turn âoeFind myâ on or off. And only on my phone. If I can track the iPhone in your pocket through âoeFind myâ then the only possible explanations are that I sold you my phone and didnâ(TM)t turn âoefind myâ off in which case you wouldnâ(TM)t have bought it from me for anything near its value, or much more likely because that phone was stolen from me, so
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Sweeney was trying to score PR points against a company his company is suing by insinuating something about strangers and children. A cheap bit of stupid bullshit designed to trigger paranoid American moral handwringing.
As for Apple shills... yeah, because Android doesn't have a find my device feature .
That is a bizarre take (Score:4, Insightful)
Thieves have a right to privacy with regards to stolen stuff? He seriously believes that?
This is the sort of garbage "thinking" that leads to those crap "defund the police" movements that caused so many issues (and, shortly after, led to many successful "retire the clueless politicians" movements).
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It's the people targeting you and the people you care about that should concern you. AirTags are a stalker's dream.
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"This is the sort of garbage "thinking" that leads to those crap "defund the police" " You mean like those MagaDolts in Congress wanting to defund the FBI and the Justice Department. I agree, it caused many issues but unfortunately is not leading to "retire the clueless politicians". They are like cockroaches and will be here long after the Earth passes away, whining to the aether about their latest umbrage.
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Defunding the police is a terrible slogan, but then there's not really a good one that's catchy. Police reform doesn't really say anything, although it is what is badly needed.
Some police departments clearly do have too much money, as they are spending it on military equipment designed to be used in warzones, not neighborhoods.
The idea is not to take the money away from police and spend it on nothing; the money diverted from police departments failing their mandate to protect and serve is ideally spent redu
The cowards validate my ideas again and again (Score:2)
They have no arguments against what I'm saying, so they downmod my political statements.
The so-called free speech absolutist conservatives never have believed in free speech and never will. They will always try to silence anyone with superior ideas, because they know their ideas are inbred and malformed, just like they are.
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Thieves have a right to privacy with regards to stolen stuff? He seriously believes that?
This is the sort of garbage "thinking" that leads to those crap "defund the police" movements that caused so many issues (and, shortly after, led to many successful "retire the clueless politicians" movements).
Yes, of course it's bizarre.
It's perfectly consistent with all the "respectable" positions though. "Migrants" have a right to live in your country. Home invaders have a right not to be shot. The "unhoused" have a right to crap on your sidewalk. The people burning down your neighborhood have a right to beat the crap out of you if you try to stop them.. Etc.
There's nothing illogical in this position of the Epic guy, compared to all the others.
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All it would take for the buyer to not be trackable would be to clear out the device and register it to their own Apple ID.
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And you're one of those sociopaths who fantasizes about the "justice" done every time some innocent family gets terrorized. But where do you draw the line? What if it's a poor family and that computer is the only way they can find places to live, jobs, and their kid's lifeline for schoolwork? What if they're not that desperately poor but they still can't afford to replace it, especially over and over again? What if it's the car they need to get to work or medical care? What if it's their medicine?
Completely
Re: That is a bizarre take (Score:2)
Sweeney is assuming the device is at the home of the thief. You are assuming the thief sold the device at it is at the home of an innocent person who unknowingly bought hot merchandise. Neither of these are confirmed, and they are to an extent mutually exclusive. We canâ(TM)t even be sure that the devise was stollen. Sweeney could simply have misplaced it, and some Good Samaritan found it, brought it home, and is trying to reconnect
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You just need to turn off the find my feature (or not opt in at first set up) before wiping the device you are planning to sell.
Before you wipe it? This is the first that I've heard of this "feature" and I've bought used Apple devices before. I always wipe those devices but, of course, I've never turned this off. Does this mean that I'm being tracked?
Are you sure that it's necessary to do that before you wipe the
Re: That is a bizarre take (Score:2)
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Garbage thinking? You're one of those pro-vigilante mall ninjas? Do you have fantasies about "justifiably" killing people?
I don't think I can make a better argument than the summary does, Sweeney says it pretty well. Perhaps you could expand on your position a little more: why is it "garbage thinking" to feel that it may not be really appropriate for a platform to use GPS and shadowy mesh network tech to set up physical confrontations among individuals?
Or, setting aside the potentially violent consequences of all of this tracking, maybe you could justify the tracking in the first place. That person who had Sweeney's laptop was almost certainly not the thief, several years after the crime. The thief would have sold it as quickly as possible. And so all of this years of tracking, and the potentially violent consequences, was done to a person who likely knew nothing about the crime. And prior to that, it was tracking Sweeney. The person who bought the thing legally and who was appalled by all this tracking which had been done to him, without his knowledge or consent.
BZZT! WRONG! Thanks for Playing. ..
Bought it Legally?!? Are you Daft?!?!?
Receiving Stolen Goods is a Crime, and the onus is on the Purchaser to not purchase Stolen stuff.
Pretty much if a rando approaches you at a gas station, offering to sell you an M3 MacBook Pro for $200, no one will believe your later Protestations that you "Didn't know it was stolen!".
So I can commit crimes (Score:3, Interesting)
On the one hand, yay for calling-out the USA's I'm-the-hero-so-I-can-commit-crimes mentality. OTOH, it's not the fault of the victim, a stolen device identifies the thief.
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I note that your quote cuts off three words which expose the flaw in your claim: "used device buyers". The person currently in possession of the stolen device doesn't necessarily know it's stolen. A single narrative can have multiple victims, and vigilante justice without due process is a good way to bring that about.
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Maybe it's different in America, but here in the UK I'm finding it hard to think of a situation where someone could buy a stolen laptop or phone or suchlike, and not know it is stolen. "Can you factory reset it for me?" "Sorry, no." "Oh, so it's stolen then?!"
If you knowingly buy a stolen device, you're in the same scummy camp as the thief themself. I'm not saying thieving scum should be shot in the face, but most of them don't just steal once. It's a way of life. Sure, they don't deserve death... but they
Where's the news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say I don't give a shit about the CEO of Epic Games. Why would I read this article?
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Let's say I don't give a shit about the CEO of Epic Games. Why would I read this article?
And even more importantly, why would you comment?
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To get people to ask the question to themselves instead of being caught up in sensationalist furvor of media outrage.
Stay in school and keep asking questions!
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Let's say I don't give a shit about the CEO of Epic Games. Why would I read this article?
Clearly you do. People who don't give a shit tend to not comment on something. You give a lot of shits about this, so many it appears to make you angry enough to write a letter on Slashdot, Keren.
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Let's say I don't give a shit about the CEO of Epic Games. Why would I read this article?
It's a tech CEO saying that surveillance in all things is kinda creepy. It's the opposite message we've gotten from literally every other tech CEO over the last couple decades, who all seem to want more and more and more data about every little thing you do. Who cares if it's coming from an out of touch tech CEO. We should be surprised one of them managed such a narrative shirking statement at all.
The pot has a point (Score:2, Insightful)
I disabled the tracking feature on my new phone because I value my privacy from especially corporate entities.
On the other hand, I wouldn't mind the tracking if it only activated after a number of days not tapping a protected reset timer on the phone.
Re:The pot has a point (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. Find My has been designed to be completely anonymous and uses a rotating key scheme to make it impossible to correlate location data to a single device over time.
https://www.wired.com/story/ap... [wired.com]
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Everything sounds like B.S. to people not interested in understanding something. You can learn or you can telegraph your ignorance to the world.
Why aren't you rich? (Score:5, Insightful)
Tools (Score:2)
Wasn't Epic vs. Apple a thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wasn't Epic vs. Apple a thing? And now CEO of Epic hurling stones at Apple for Find My?
I smell an attempt to drum up points, somehow.. or maybe too much sauce. IDK man, this sounds more like an unhinged rant.
I use Find My and airtags. Some of it is for recovery or clues to where it is, should something wander way. And they will do that -- i've had bikes stolen, jackets taken, etc. Way back in the day, mind you. But why wait for it to happen again? Airtag what you want to find and has a good chance of walking away.
Some of it was unexpected. Say you have an airtag in your car (I do.) Park car, go into the place you're going, come out of a different door than you came in. You don't know the layout. Pop up Maps, and your car -- because of the airtag -- will show up as "Parked Car." I wasn't expecting that. The first time it happened I was quite pleased.
I am an epic scatterbrain. I'll leave my umbrella in a sandwich shop. I'll leave my keys on my desk on my way to get the car for lunch. I'll leave an iPad behind at my teacher's. I have an alert set up to ping me if I leave such a thing behind.
Airtag in luggage is a great idea. My backpack has one, so does any luggage I fly or drive with. It forces the airlines / hotels / trains / whatever to be a bit more truthful about baggage.
Tool for good or evil, depends on the wielder. Always has, always will. That part will never change.
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Small FYI, "Parked Car" showing up on Apple Maps is not related to an airtag (the cars have their own, non-Apple GPS tracking system). I don't have air tags in my car, yet Parked Car shows up in Apple Maps.
This sounds like the iDevice was attached to the car via Bluetooth. Some cars are auto-id'd as "vehicles" while others have to be configured in Settings -> Bluetooth. In any case, my to my delight, my paired iPhone marks my parking spot whenever I take the key out of the ignition.
It is only creepy (Score:2)
Darl McBride v2 (Score:3)
This guys war on Apple is starting to remind me of SCO.
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No they are nothing alike. Darl McBride stuck to commenting stupidly about the case at hand rather than rambling about irrelevant side tangents while doing his best to appear as out of touch with normal people as possible.
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I am pretty sure he wants exactly that, for Apple or Google to buy him out. I don't think either one wants to give TenCent a dime.
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We should celebrate when the rich / powerful fight others of a similar capability.
There is a decent chance that the average joe benefits from it.
He didn't think it was creepy until . . . (Score:2)
Due process of law (Score:2)
He claims that detection and recovery of a lost or stolen device should be "mediated by due process of law"
Officer. I misplaced my car keys again.
remember when (Score:3)
...we used to punish criminals and care about the victims?
Want an example of why some people believe the western world is fundamentally fucked up, there you go.
Epic wealth (Score:2)
This doesnâ(TM)t makes sense - is he lying? (Score:2)
If you stole a laptop and couldnâ(TM)t get in to it, youâ(TM)d wipe it and start again so you could use it. You certainly wouldnâ(TM)t power it up periodically over *several years* to see if you could get in to it now. So the alternative is that the thief has full access including access to the Apple ID and all the passwords. What kind of t
Why was the laptop unlocked and still linked... (Score:2)
... to his account?
This is a better question, for some CEO from a highly technical company. How come the thief could just start using the laptop without having to reset it (and presumably had access to all the personal and corporate information from it) and why it was still linked to his account for "years" ? Could the kid for all these years go through his emails, cloud pictures, see HIS location and so on? That would be way more worrying than the fact that the thief had no privacy when using the stolen go
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Because he made the whole story up for publicity.
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How many CEOs you think are buying their own laptops? It's not like they get pestered by IT if they visit whatever the "CEO equivalent" of Slashdot is.
Other than that even (or maybe especially) if it was a strictly personal laptop it's still irresponsible to leave it without the most basic security, and don't kick it from his account (for years!) after it was stolen.
Sweeney, put your money where your mouth is (Score:2)
Until then, I'm keeping FindMy enabled on my
Sweeney is an Apple Hater (Score:2)
Compel the police to act (Score:2)
"but when Find My or Google's similar tech points a device owner to a device possessor's home, one must anticipate the presence of families and kids and innocent used device buyers, and ask whether it's really appropriate for a platform to use GPS and shadowy mesh network tech to set up physical confrontations among individuals."
You can use that argument against OnStar too. But no one complains because car theft is treated a lot more seriously by the police.
If there are concerns about FindMy* services setting up showdowns between civilians and police, pass laws that compel (and fund) police and courts to recover a small, randomly selected , subset of stolen devices. No matter how small the theft. Even if it's a cheap $50 Android, but it is on the randomly-selected 'recovery list', the police try to get it back using FindMy data.
Af
Pearls of wisdom (Score:2)
Sweeney said that the location of a device in someone's possession can't be tracked without tracking the person
Wow this guy is a fucking genius. What other pearls of wisdom will he drop?
.
and "people have a right to privacy."
And there is it. This kind of deeply nuanced insight means his IQ must be over a million!!
You should use low-tech then (Score:2)
Just put a label on all the devices with your address, phone-number, Social Security number and Bank-accounts, in case the thief want to transfer some money for the theft or help the police find the owner.
Not hypothetical. Already happened. (Score:2)
Tim Sweeney may come off as a bit of an asshole in this article, but he's got a point.
The intent of the "Find My" app may be good but the results have already been super creepy, not just hypothetically but in real life
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
There's probably a counter argument there: that example is shoddy police work, not the fault of the app.
But there's a counter counter, which is that the "Find My" feature contributes to a surveillance culture which has some obvious and demonstrable downsides.
I call BS (Score:2)
His stolen laptop is still being used by someone else, and still registered to his Apple account, several years after being stolen?
Is someone tried to use their own account on this laptop, it wouldn't allow the same device to be registered to multiple find my accounts.
Why didn't he tell Apple it was stolen? You can mark it as lost or stolen and remotely lock it.
Now that's an EPIC take (Score:2)
It's almost like someone is afraid of being prosecuted.
Re: Kinda With Tim on This One (Score:2)
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