I bave seen more than one instance of people having an especially wide seperation between their wireless earbuds.
Unfortunately, there’s a fundamental tension between anti-stalking measures vs. being useful for tracking stolen items. I did see this recent article:
The short version is that the researchers suggest using a cryptographic scheme to split the AirTag identity information into parts which can only be collected over a period of time. With just a single sample, you can’t tell anything and the tag looks like any other random one. But if you collect enough pieces, you can tell that there is a persistent tag in the vicinity. They could divide it up to take, say, 24 hours to collect enough pieces. That might be enough for a stolen item to be tracked (without the thieves catching on) while being short enough to not be as useful for stalking.
They do (or was that sarcasm?):
It was sarcasm, you can buy them on Amazon for a few bucks.
“Air Bags work by exploding a big bag and driving plastic fragments into your chest, killing you!”
“Emily, it’s ‘Air Tags’, Air T - A - G - S. Not Air Bags.”
“Ohhhh, Nevermind.”
One reported Airtag issue is: after a certain amount of time (weeks?) out of proximity to the owner’s device, the tag will stop pinging and updating its position through the network and need to be reset or re-paired.
More detailed information should be available concerning specific firmware versions, which brings up another issue, that Apple utilises your devices to push firmware updates without notifying you or asking your permission. Downgrading or installing custom firmware is not for the casual user.
unless somewhere, somewhere, has an Apple Bluetooth connected device somewhere nearby.