Apple’s Find My feature is not “creepy”; defending thieves is
Tim Sweeney, the eccentric founder and CEO of Epic Games, a long-standing critic of Apple, has found another way to attack the company in a reply to a 9to5 Mac article on X, claiming that “Find My is a super creepy surveillance technology and should not exist”.
Sweeney explains that years ago, someone stole a Mac laptop from his car, and years later, checking Find My, noticed that the Mac was still connected to his Apple ID account, showing him the location where the thief lived.
Pointing out that a device can’t be tracked without tracking the person, Sweeney said “people have a right to privacy and this right applies to second hand buyers and even to thieves,” and that detection and recovery of a lost or stolen device should be “mediated by due process of law” and not exposed to the device owner “in vigilante fashion.”
I’ve long had my doubts about Sweeney’s sanity, but defending the privacy rights of somebody who steals my stuff was the final straw. First of all, the vast majority of people who use Find My do so because they’ve put their phone or laptop down somewhere and can’t find it. There’s nothing creepy about that.
Secondly and much more importantly, technology should help me recover what has been stolen from me by being able to alert the police and asking…
