Airtags

If this is in the wrong sub forum, please of course move it.

I’ve heard mixed opinions about using AirTags to keep track of your bike. Good arguments have been made pointing out that if you do have your bike stolen, all an AirTag might show you is that it’s in a property, but what are you going to do then?

Also Apple had to address the awful situation where people were using AirTags to stalk people, however this also meant that thieves will be alerted when they are in the presence of your AirTag after a certain period of time.

What does anyone think about using AirTags to help protect their bikes?

Thanks

Here’s one holder from MucOff:
https://muc-off.com/collections/bicycle-protection/products/secure-tag-holder

Surely the muc-off holder shouts AIR TAG and in fact you actually want to conceal the air tag in seat tube / post or bar plug ends etc.

Yes that’s what I’m wondering too

I think the idea behind them is to have a visual deterrent to help prevent theft. If you use anti tamper fixings it’s another inconvenience to the bike thief. Do you take the bike and worry about removing the tag later? Or try to remove it before you take it? Or do you leave it and steal a different bike? Maybe that one has a tag too, but you don’t know. It doesn’t matter really it’s still been stolen.
I personally think a better idea is a sticker that says ‘air tag inside’ and then hide the bastard, but no one ever gets rich out of stickers.

They seem a good idea, but like you say the anti stalker alarm is a bit shit. It’s a good job you only have to remove the tiny speaker to disable it.
A friend did get his car back after it was stolen because the police went where the tracker said it was and well there it was. It was a £60,000 convertible, but I can’t see the police being interested in finding a bike tbh. The best you can hope for is that you are alerted to the bike moving and can get to it and convince the thieves by whatever means to leave the bike.

Yes that’s a good point about the thief needing to decide quickly what to do and potentially giving up.
Yes haha. Or just have the sticker, without any AirTag…

Oh is this how you disable it? I thought even without the speaker it would still send an alert to the thieves phone, but I might be wrong.
Ah that’s good.
I’d be scared to go after my bike alone to be honest.

When a mate had a bag pinched with an air tag in it, the location was inside a block of flats - could have been in any floor so didn't really help with an accurate location

Yes, that’s a good point. Tom on the YouTube channel Shifter discussed AirTags and said if you track your bike to a block of flats, you cannot expect to go knocking on a bunch of doors asking about it.

With an iPhone 11 and above I believe you can trace it more accurately.

I’ve put one on one of my bikes under he saddle and then mounted a saddle bag. It was handy on a recent tour as my wife used it to track me using the apple app.

True

Ah ok yeah

They’re also useful for when flying with a bike. I’ve had a bike ‘go missing’ before. Obviously it’s not missing, the airline has just lost track of it somehow. If you can show them where it is, I expect you’ll be more likely to get it back. Gives you some peace of mind, too, when you can see it’s on the same plane as you.

That’s a good example and clearly an AirTag can really help. In day to day life however I guess bikes only go missing if they’re stolen.

According to this article https://petapixel.com/2021/04/26/apple-airtags-anti-stalker-feature-explained-how-it-can-track-thieves/ an AirTag will only alert a bike thief that they’re being tracked when the thief returns to their home, apparently determined from their address book. This does seem to mean that in the event of a theft you could (in an ideal world) go straight to the police and get them to track the thief down in that initial post-theft window.

I've got no first hand experience of any of these things but phones have had tracking in them for ages now and any time I've read a story online of someone who's been able to use the tracking to locate it down to a house/flat/block and reported that to the police they've been told it's not enough information or accurate enough or something and won't do anything. I doubt that would change for bikes unless a number were being taken to the same place and a number of trackers were pinging from one garden eventually.

Yes very true

How do the alternative compare?eg Tile or smart tag etc
For the drioders

Ordered one, literally just arrived and had the speaker out in 3 mins. Now to get a hiding place!

I found the Galaxy ones, but it says they’re discontinued or something?

Great! Where are you thinking on the bike?

Not exactly sure yet, it is quite big. Maybe on the inner face of a crank arm. I have read you can paint them, so perhaps a light coat of black paint to blend in and some VHB tape.

These are pretty good, I have them on quite a few bikes.