Apple AirTags have speakers in them, and the speaker is not entirely under the owner’s control. [Shahram] shows how the speaker of an AirTag can be disabled while keeping the device watertight. Because AirTags are not intended to be opened or tampered with, doing so boils down to making a hole in just the right place, as the video demonstrates.
How does putting a hole in the enclosure not compromise water resistance? By ensuring the hole is made in an area that is already “inside” the seal. In an AirTag, that seal is integrated into the battery compartment.
Behind the battery, the enclosure has a small area of thinner plastic that sits right above the PCB, and in particular, right above the soldered wire of the speaker. Since this area is “inside” the watertight seal, a hole can be made here without affecting water resistance.
Disabling the speaker consists of melting through that thin plastic with a soldering iron then desoldering the (tiny) wire and using some solder wick to clean up. It’s not the prettiest operation, but there are no components nor any particularly heat-sensitive bits in that spot. The modification has no effect on water resistance, and isn’t even visible unless the battery is removed.
In the video below, [Shahram] uses a second generation AirTag to demonstrate the mod, then shows that the AirTag still works normally while now being permanently silenced.
Why would one want to permanently silence an AirTag, putting it into so-called “stealth mode”? That’s a good question. If you’re not familiar, one of the circumstances under which AirTags emit sound is if it is separated from its owner and has been moving with someone else for some period of time. Intended as an anti-stalking feature, [Shahram] points out that this behavior can also be a nuisance or straight up undesirable. For example, one may be using the tag on a pet collar, to track one’s luggage, or on a potential theft target like a bike. Modern phones in any case alert their owners if a tag they do not own appears to be moving with them, also as an anti-stalking measure.
In [Shahram]’s case, he has hidden an AirTag on his bike. He figures that if his bike should be stolen, a beeping AirTag would announce its existence to the thief and they would in all likelihood simply locate and discard the tracker. But if the tag is silent, the thief — still notified by their phone that a tracker is with them but unable to locate it on the bike — would be more likely to discard the bike instead, allowing it to be safely recovered.
Regardless, the process shows how a careful understanding of a device’s internals can allow for modifications that don’t require opening the whole thing, and the process is a bit reminiscent of drilling into a Stadia controller to permanently disable the mic.
If you ever find a stealth Air Tag on your belonging (ie your car) that is not yours, you can either let the police deal with it or you can quietly slip it into some random trailer behind Walmart or Target, or better yet, on a stopped train and let the stalker chase their tag.
every speaker can work as mic
Our Airtag silenced itself, the cat managed to ditch the collar it was attached to and now we’re not able to retrieve it.
What a Cat-tastrophe! :-)
But now you know your cat has a soldering iron and is on to you.
How to scan for creepy tags on android OS would have been a good article:
[https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.seemoo.at_tracking_detection/]
How to silence your air tag and sharing this advice is dubious.
Take no offence and leave my comment up. But I plain and simply disapprove!
Better the people know than becoming a victim though.
I bet tons of naïve people think it’s all secure and can’t be silenced.
It’s so very odd you keep replying to all of my recent posts whilst 100% missing the point.
I replied to “How to silence your air tag and sharing this advice is dubious” specifically.
Or more precisely the suggestion that telling how to silence your air tag is dubious.
Maybe I get you wrong, but then you are the one relaying the information, so perhaps you need to be more clear?
I really don’t see how I was wrong in this though, if I combine your link to the warning app and your words.
There is a good reason to silence the tag if you are placing it on an item that’s hard to loose but has a high risk of being stolen like your bike. Event better if you can modify it to rotate its id to not trigger automatic detection.
A speaker can be used as a microphone – at least in the old days.
It does seem to me that another use for this technique is, you know, stalking. Sure, the phone may recognize that a tag is nearby, but not everyone would understand why that’s an issue, right?
cool story bro
Surely they’re actively listening all the time with that tiny battery.
The train people here in reno might have people on the watch for avoiding just that case of additional airtags showing up unannounced. The only ones that might be there are ones that arrive from the east or west once or sometimes twice daily. Most other stuff has seals on the doors for evidence of theft/tampering
I like the entry approach. I modded a BT tag for my dog’s collar and it was quite difficult to open the glued plastic case. The water seal is questionable now. Might be fun to print a new case with a gasket.
Android’s tracking alert is really blatant “tracker travelling with you” with a red warning icon. You can’t miss it. iOS has slightly less scary of an alert but it’s still clearly spelled out with a red icon.
Very anti-hacker of you. Why even come to this site?
Sneaky tags use a microcontroller to switch power to the airtag so it doesnt operate continuously. They can be programmed to “chirp mode” turning on randomly for a short time, or “geolock mode” turning on for a few minutes once still for 5 minutes after having been moved.
The stalking angle is something that’s a lot more uncommon than theft. Also, if someone is stalking you, it is bound to come out sooner rather than later, and stalking with tags is not the best of ways of stalking.
It is one of good example of a boogeyman story to make it sound a lot worse than it is.
“How to silence your air tag and sharing this advice is dubious.” Interesting. Up until now I didn’t have a position on this and now I do. What do you suppose that position is?
This is built into android for years: https://9to5google.com/2023/08/09/android-unknown-tracker-alerts/
Silenced itself?!
You are clearly underestimating your cat !
Meow
ฅ^•⩊•^ฅ
@mods
The reply function seems to be broken
Thanks! We just noticed. We’re putting in a ticket now!
Might encapsulating the AirTag in resin or silicone be a viable, alternative way to silence it? (without requiring “surgical skills”)
Ineffective against the sort of thieves who go around in a van and pick up bikes off the racks. They don’t care if they’re locked or tracked, they go in with bolt cutters and just carry the bike into the back of the van, then drive off. It’s a hit and run operation.
Since the airtags rely on other phones detecting them by bluetooth, it’s not much of a tracker in the first place. All they have to do is drive into the boonies and nobody will find them, and there they have enough time and privacy to dismantle the bikes for parts and destroy the tags.
This information was already being shared by folks who would misuse it. Spreading it widely so that the general public is made aware is better. That’s why security researchers publish the exploits they find.
ANY speaker can become a MICROPHONE with the right electronics behind it.
Yeah someone is going to hack the whole Apple system to use a tag speaker as a very poor microphone.
Instead of using the quality microphone in the phone everybody is carrying around, or sticking an actual bugging device on the target.
I suppose it is possible.
I have two AirTags on my bike, one “hidden” under the seat and one in a much more secure location. Only the more secure one is silenced, because I think it’s very funny to me that a would-be bike thief might find the one under the seat and decide the problem is now solved.
My bike, thankfully, hasn’t yet been successfully stolen (although someone has tried a few times and was caught on video doing it) so thankfully I haven’t had to put this theory to the test.
So how would you hide it so well on a bike but not block the signal.
I mean you can’t put it in anything metal, and in your example the seat is out, so what is left I wonder.
It’s too cumbersome to put it in a tire.
Maybe the head or tail light if it’s plastic then I guess, or the fender; if plastic.
Mine lives in one of the metal supports, fully encased. No doubt the range is reduced but it’s plenty sufficient to register if someone with an iPhone walks by it.
I wouldn’t say its the perfect solution, far from it, but it is a very cheap and convenient solution.
There are plenty of off-the-shelf things that let you hide AirTags in various “hidden in plain sight” ways such as within reflectors, bells, etc.
Yes, we’re all critically aware of why the speaker and detection systems exist.
The problem is that it’s fundamentally impossible to both stop unethical usage and track down stolen items. Preventing one fully enables the other.