Show HN: Undetectag, track stolen items with AirTag
53 pompidoo 56 5/15/2025, 3:46:26 PM undetectag.com ↗
I developed a device that turns an Airtag on and off at specific intervals.
Current Airtags are detectable right away and cannot be used to track stolen property. That device allows you to hide an Airtag in your car, for example, and someone that steals your car will not be able to use some app to detect it.
The Airtag will also not warn the thief of its presence. After some hours, the Airtag turns on again and you can find out its location. It’s not foolproof, as the timing has to be right, but still useful.
What do you think?
Other impactful variants might be:
* senses whether another 'sibling' AirTag is present, if so, stays off. If not, waits X hours & then turns on.
* has its own motion sensor; only after X minutes of being stationary, it waits Y hours to turn on briefly
* has its own clock & (original-user-known) randomization seed; turns on at pseudorandom intervals the original user can predict
* low-power/low-bandwidth receivers so cheap & tiny now: could wait for national or even global unit-specific 'wake' request - perhaps even with parameters for duration/intervals – before powering-on AirTag portion
There are several much cheaper nock offs that inherently will never update the firmware. Why not support those? And just to be sure, offer a package deal, include such tracker.
Have you experimented with a setup (more complicated to package) where you have two AirTags and alternately power one at a time? Could that bypass apples detection whilst also broadcasting location?
Edit: at sufficiently small time durations to run under apples detection radar, but for long enough to be picked up as a location
I don’t know how Apple detects the tracking; this would easily be solved by them.
My only feedback would be re: the site, specifically this part:
“ Airtag is a trademark registered by apple and we have nothing to do with apple.”
Might want to capitalize Apple; just a nitpick.
your previous response to the stalking concerns was "it's 4 hours off / 1 hour on, the device is not very suitable for stalking someone"; wouldn't this comment - allowing that to change - then make it even easier for stalkers?
For stolen items you don't want to track them. You want to be able to ask them where they are. The advantage is you can make a locator that doesn't reveal itself by transmitting. And it doesn't waste power receiving gps signals. You could literally have a device that runs for years on a AA battery.
The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data.
Through what presently-existing technology, exactly, is this idea supposed to work over distances greater than at best a couple of miles with say LoRA?
> The reason you don't see these on the market is because the people that fund products want to sell location data.
I'm not equipped to analyse their claims in detail, but Apple claims the design of their find-my network is end-to-end encrypted, and presumably it would be a huge scandal if this turned out to be a massive lie.
I fully understand why you would want to do this, but as a consumer I would never buy this product with this clause.
Nobody has a right to a successful business but when consumers can trust their purchases they are more likely to make additional purchases.
> if it stops working.
It doesn't magically stop working though, it would be apple explicitly putting in effort to break this functionality and forcing you to update a device you own, forcing you to use it only how they want you to use it.
Probably worth it for a vehicle, but maybe not for a backpack.
> "(thiefs use apps to locate AirTags around, and AirTags will warn the thief if an unknown AirTag is travelling with them, for example if they steal your car)"
The reason this was introduced is exactly because people used AirTags to stalk others. Advertising that your product turns that off is basically targeting that specific demographic.
No comments yet
There were anti-stalking features from the start. It didn’t stop the media hysteria however.
Not trying to be creepy, I’m just trying to demonstrate how we all need to think like adversaries (eg creeps) when designing products.
imo no level of stalking is appropriate. while this device might not do everything a stalker wants it to, it surely makes it easier for them
I once donated an infant car seat to a coworker but forgot I had put an AirTag on it. After she had taken it home, her iPhone told there was an unknown AirTag and she texted me. I apologized profusely and she wasn't bothered by it. Nonetheless had I been nefarious, I would have been able to get her home address.