Following intense criticism over the obvious fact that its AirTag Silencer could facilitate stalking and other forms of misuse of Apple’s AirTag, ElevationLab has now pulled the accessory. Here are the details.
A couple of weeks ago, Glenn Fleishman wrote a lengthy post over at Six Colors criticizing ElevationLab’s AirTag Silencer, which does pretty much what it says on the label.
Equipped with a piercing mechanism intended to neutralize the AirTag’s speaker without damaging the rest of the hardware, the accessory was announced on September 30 for $9.99.
Yesterday, as Fleishman noted in a new post on Six Colors, ElevationLab announced its decision to remove the product from sale, in a brief note acknowledging the obvious opportunity for misuse the accessory afforded.
The note, titled “An apology,” reads:
We launched an AirTag silencing tool recently. We have always made products we want for ourselves, and this was no different – we wanted it for AirTags on our bikes. (Some of us here have bikes more valuable than our cars.)
In retrospect though, this also has the side effect of aiding someone with bad intentions to track someone that wouldn’t get phone notifications.
We have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.
Sincerely,
Elevation Lab
The product is also no longer listed on Amazon, although it still appears as an autocomplete suggestion in search results.
9to5Mac’s take
It is worth noting that the now-pulled product information page for ElevationLab’s AirTag Silencer noted that it worked “on multiple AirTags.”
As a longtime AirTag accessory maker, ElevationLab was certainly aware that one of the changes Apple made with the second-generation AirTag was making its speaker harder to remove, a change that could help discourage tampering and unwanted tracking.
Be that as it may, the product is no longer for sale, and it would be great if ElevationLab kept the public informed about its efforts to prevent similar devices from being sold through the promised enforcement of its patent.
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