Apple AirTags could be a useful accessory for tracking lost items, but what's to stop that feature from being used against you, Apple's built-in anti-stalking feature?

The iOS 14.5 beta has a new description of AirTags, but iOS developer Benjamin Mayo has discovered a hidden feature that prevents people from abusing AirTags' tracking feature to spy on you.

AirTags are not expected to feature GPS tracking, but everything we've heard says they can use an ultra-wideband signal to ping a passing iPhone. This gives owners a rough idea of where a particular AirTag is located, and they can locate it themselves.

Obviously, this can be abused. If someone were to sneak an AirTag onto your person, the AirTag would continually ping passing iPhones (perhaps even your own), allowing them to spy on your whereabouts whenever they wanted to. Fortunately. Apple already anticipates this with safety features.

iOS 14.5 will be able to notice and alert you to unknown AirTags hanging around. These safety features seem to be on by default, but there seems to be an option to turn them off. Why would they do that? Only you can answer that. But as Mayo points out, the fact that this feature can be turned off suggests that Apple may be experiencing false positive issues.

For example, say you go for a walk with a friend who has an AirTag in his wallet. Your iPhone picks it up and might look suspicious. You might be suspicious because your friend just happens to be using AirTag to keep track of his or her belongings.

Of course, since AirTag is not yet actually on the market, we are only speculating about the ins and outs of the system; things may change by the time iOS 14.5 is released, and we may find that the AirTag system is robust enough that false positives are very rare. We may find out that the AirTag system is robust enough that false positives are very rare.

We will have to wait and see what happens when Apple finally introduces AirTag to the world. The company is rumored to be holding an Apple Spring 2021 event later this month, and we expect that will be when AirTags will shine.