Airtag location discrepancy in neighbour's house

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Level 1

4 points

Airtag location discrepancy in neighbour's house

So I put an Airtag on my cat’s collar because my neighbours were feeding it / housing it / generally keeping it. The airtag always seemed to show their address so I kept asking them to return the cat (they made excuses like he is asleep or gone out).

Last week I saw my cat with my own eyes (hurray!) and the cat’s collar and airtag were missing. Neighbours say they haven’t got it, but the Airtag still says it’s in their house.

When I try to connect to Find My it can’t find it, just says move around. And when I try to play the sound it says Airtag not reachable. Yet the location refreshes regularly (always same location).

Is there any way I can find my Airtag or should I give up? The cat is another issue….

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Posted on Nov 14, 2024 6:09 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

152,428 points

Nov 14, 2024 6:41 AM in response to mirandaphone

When an AirTag is outside the Bluetooth range (~30-40') of your iPhone, it will rely on Apple's Find My network which consists of literally millions of other iPhones.

If your neighbor has an iPhone and has the tag, the tag's encrypted ID will be picked up by their phone, and then, both the tag's ID and their iPhone's GPS location will be relayed to the Apple servers over an Internet connection. This is where you would see this location with the Find My app on your phone.

At this point, you have a few choices:

Enable "Lost Mode" on the tag which allows you to provide contact information to the finder of the tag. This, of course, would be if you want the tag returned.
Do not enable this mode. The battery will eventually wear out, or the finder could remove it anyway to disable it. Regardless, do not remove it from being associated to your Apple Account. Doing so would allow the finder to associate it with theirs and it will no longer be useful for you. Leaving it associated to your account will provide two "benefits:" 1) They wlll not be able to use the tag, and 2) They would not have any way to track this tag back to you.

To answer your question directly, you would need to bring your iPhone to their property, close enough to pick up the tag's signal. It would then appear on your phone. At this point, I cannot advise you on what action you should take. Only you can decide if it is worth it to you.

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