Glenn Fleishman, Six Colors:
ElevationLab has released an AirTag product I find appalling, and I strongly urge they immediately withdraw it from sale and recall all inventory. The AirTag Silencer is a simple device: remove the back panel and battery from an AirTag, position the Silencer’s highly engineered pin over the speaker, tap the pin with a hammer, and the AirTag’s speaker is destroyed. This prevents it from emitting an alert in three circumstances, only one of which is triggered by an owner. The other two scenarios aid stalkers and perpetrators of domestic violence, among others. I will not link to it.
Disabling an AirTag speaker is a way for an unwanted party to more easily track someone without their knowledge and consent. Apple designed the AirTag to alert people when an unknown tracker was moving with them (via software), or when a tracker moved or was bumped (via a sound) after remaining in a location for a period of time. The latter case is critical, as Find My items have been found in purses, luggage, vehicles, and other things that move, left there either provably or putatively by a party attempting to track someone otherwise unaware they’re under remote observation.
Selling a product that deliberately breaks a safety feature designed to alert you to unwanted tracking is incredibly, unbelievably myopic. (Not just sell it, they give one away when you buy a 4-pack of their AirTag cases.) They spent untold hours iterating on this product, refining it over “many prototypes and hundreds of destroyed AirTags,” and not once did someone stop and ask, “Can this be used by bad people to do bad things?”
It’s the type of product a company creates when there’s no one in the room advocating for victims of stalking and abuse—or those people are silenced by management who decide to put products over people.
By releasing this product, ElevationLab is legitimizing a back-alley practice, a tacit endorsement that it’s okay to surreptitiously silence AirTags. If ElevationLab is selling a hassle-free solution, it must be acceptable. It’s not.
To say I’m disappointed in ElevationLab is woefully inadequate. I’m appalled.
I have long respected the company’s product design, and own and have recommended several of their products (including the 10-Year Battery AirTag case). I won’t be doing that unless and until they pull this product and apologize for releasing it.