A Southern California woman fed up with her packages getting stolen out of her post office box sent an Apple AirTag to the address and cleverly tracked down the suspected thief, police said.
The woman had had several items stolen from her mailbox at the Los Alamos Post Office already when she thought of the idea, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday. Apple’s $29 AirTags have become popular items since their 2021 release, helping users keep tabs on the location of anything from their lost keys to wallets and luggage.
On Monday morning, sheriff’s deputies were called to the post office where the woman told officials her mail had been stolen again — including the package with the AirTag.
We had a possible breakin on my street, and police noticed my doorbell camera. They politely asked if I could check whether it picked something up, and I showed him a picture possibility (complainants said oh yeah that was us).
I was ok with it because it was a request, the cam only shows public areas, and it never left my control. I don’t know what would have happened if it went anywhere, but I could have said no, and I could have said nothing was picked up. This was all reasonable cooperation with no overreach or privacy invasion
For what it’s worth, Ring and Nest both got some bad press, because it was discovered that police were issuing warrants for footage directly from the companies. Many of the people never even knew their footage had been pulled and used by police. If you’re self-hosting a video server, then cool. But if you’re using one of the big companies, they didn’t even need to ask you first. And even if you’re self-hosting, they could technically compel you to turn over the footage if they can convince a judge it will help their case.
Yeah, I did give that some thought but decided I was ok with it since it can only see public areas.
I do have a cam inside, facing by the door, for another chance to see if someone is coming in, and do NOT use cloud storage for that. I only have a USB stick for that until I do set up a video server