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My Apple AirTags are low on battery. At the bottom of the warning it tells me "When AirTag battery is low, privacy protections are temporarily adjusted and AirTag may be trackable over Bluetooth"

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Specifically what risks is it alerting me to? I assumed it was saying it won't make the privacy noise ("AirTag automatically emits a sound to alert anyone nearby of its presence and is detected moving with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch" and "an AirTag that isn’t with its owner for a period of time will emit a sound when it's moved") if its battery is too low yet it will still continue to be able to be tracked over bluetooth by its owner.. but presumably that's irrelevant to me as I own this AirTag and I'm not stalking myself and notifying a potential attacker that a low battery AirTag provides enhanced stalking seems counter intuitive.

So what risk is the warning actually trying to convey? Does it broadcast a different Bluetooth signal that means others can track my AirTag or turn off some sort of encryption to save power?

Matthew1471
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    Details about the AirTag encryption are available here : https://www.msctek.com/how-apple-airtags-work/ so maybe there is some sort of encryption that shuts down when the battery is low? Anyone sniffed them and worked it out? – Matthew1471 Apr 27 '22 at 21:55

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I believe the warning here is informing you that other users may be able to locate the tag in an emergency to find the Tag and return to the owner before the battery completely depletes. (in an ideal world).

Where your AirTag is at full battery capacity it is only accessible by the owner, when low - it is locatable by others.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to much open-source information providing by Apple on the warning, but this is likely the reason behind the privacy warning.

Sir Muffington
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MrWhitby
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