DH wants to put tracker/ AirTag in car WWYD?

[TrackerTracey]

Married nearly 30 years, all fine, no affairs or suspicions etc. However DH retired last year and in my opinion has too much time on his hands - constantly getting over involved in mine and the grown up children’s lives!

He is also big into tech and safety, and last year fitted a security camera at the front of the house which shows the front drive and cars etc. I have access to the app and live feed but I don’t have the set up codes or know how to access any recorded footage as that is all via his login and pc. At first it didn’t bother me, but I’ve become aware that he sits at his desk with the app open on screen so he can see comings and goings. He says it’s so he can see if parcels are being delivered, but occasionally he will comment about something else which makes me feel like we’re being watched (have a DS still living at home).

Anyway, we’re getting a new car and DH has announced that he wants to put an AirTag in it to track it in case it’s stolen. My initial reaction is that I don’t want this. It’s not that I’m likely to be going anywhere or doing anything bad, but I just don’t like the feeling of DH having this surveillance ability over my every move! And of course it will only work one way, because the AirTag will be logged to his device.

He says I’m overreacting and it’s just about safety in case the car is stolen, but I’m not happy about it. WWYD?

its not nonsense. My sibling gets a message on iphone when she gets into my car if I am not there. The criteria are that the tag has to be moving with you or in range for an "extended period of time" and also out of range of its owner. Apple had to do this to try to preveny airtags being used to track people without their knowledge.

This argument always gets trotted out! It’s so lame.

its called valuing your privacy and it’s a line used by coercive controllers!

I personally would not mind but I understand why many people would.

There is an incredibly simple solution to the issue of „one-sidedness“: get 2 AirTags! One logged to your phone and one to his.

Hmm. Seems to be a middle aged man thing. DH has automated the sod out of the house, everything has a bleddy app with a different log in. He sets me up on all of it but keeping track of it all when I get periodically kicked out of the app and have to log in again is tedious.

Same with the cameras but we have had a number of attempted burglaries and are set back from the road. He uses it mostly to ignore random callers or answer the door to all his deliveries so I don't have a huge issue with it.

Frankly if he's sad enough to track me [he's never said a word to indicate he is] he can fill his boots. I'm not up to anything exciting and he can already as we have Find my phone on everyone's device and the kids have AirTags on their front door keys to save our sanity. If he did comment in a way that implied he had an opinion or a tone to imply I should be doing something else, I'd take real issue with it. But we put social commitments in a shared diary so we don't clash and make sure someone is around should the kids need picking up etc.

It matters because the OP's husband has tripped down a rabbit hole of suspicion, excluding the OP from the ability to monitor the outside of the house, and is likely to fall further.

He has not shared the login for the security camera he installed and so has set himself up as the security chief of the family. This has created a power imbalance.

She needs to give him a large dose of reality and refuse the airbag. She also needs to insist on either full access to the security camera setup or its dismantlement.

My guess is he'll install an airtag anyway.

Being tracked by your H is no way to live, and the child still at school will resent the monitoring of comings and goings too.

My husband does all of this but to me it’s not a red flag.

re the car it’s mostly in case it gets stolen as we know people who have got their stolen car back by tracking down their AirTag! But the car (we share one) has an app anyway -
not unusual these days- so he’d be able to track it regardless

i don’t think he ever actually would though, unless say I was very late coming home and I hadn’t let him know

he is slightly obsessed with our cctv live feed, he gets an alert if anything is picked up and sometimes this is in the middle of the night. Always a fox.

Ps he is keen to give me logins for all the different “tech” he has in the house but I’m totally not interested

Simple solution - if he thinks its super reasonable and its just about tracking the car in case of theft, set up the tracker on your apple account instead of his.

Well that’s not what happens with BIL and his keys! I’ll have to tell him he’s got the settings wrong maybe. I don’t need to use AirTags so wouldn’t know but I do know that it does and can happen. Whether it’s settings or something else

So would it be the same if the company you worked for had trackers in the vehicles you used?
Would the bosses be considered coercive controllers etc

It's not an argument, part of the sensible, grown up discussion

I clarified this in a later post. But the original reply was misleading. People are not alerted every time they are near an AirTag.

So someone travelling in the car with the owner will not be alerted.

But if you are travelling with an AirTag and without the owner, you are alerted, which is a good anti-stalking detection.

The vehicle is being tracked...

I agree that all parties should have access to the app or whatever, that bit is blooming weird :)

Yep, searched on apple community and it’s a common occurrence. Especially where Bluetooth connectivity or WiFi connection is poor, not established with the device previously.

Nope!!

I refuse to have any trackers on my phone or in my car etc.

If the car gets stolen what is he going to do - run and track them down and beat them up so they hand the keys back over??

If the car gets stolen you’re not getting it back.
You call the police and the insurance company.

My 2020 Mini comes with an app that can tell me where the car is, plus do things like unlock it and start the aircon remotely. (It has saved me once when I locked my keys inside). So depending on what car you get this might not be optional!

Don’t do it. I stupidly gave my mum access to my location on the Apple app Find My and she stalks me constantly. Like other posters have said I get random WhatsApp’s from her, ‘why were you at the garage this morning?’ ‘Why were you in Sainsbury’s before work?’ It’s relentless. She does it with my siblings too, we have all told her to stop it and one of us will switch it off occasionally which isn’t worth it either as you get constant messages about why you switched it off…

Tell him you are worried about his health and would like to monitor the number of steps he takes a day, say you’d like him to wear a step tracker connected to your phone… if nothing else getting his steps in might become his new (healthier) hobby.

If the car gets stolen you call the tracker company who call the police who (hopefully) find it and call you to collect. Or at least that was my experience. The police said it’s v common for stolen cars to be driven a short distance then left to check if they’re being tracked. So personally I’d never not have a tracker- it’s for sure the only reason I still have the car. But it doesn’t sound like that’s why OP’s DH wants it, or like they have any real risk of theft, so really he wants it to track HER which is not ok.

Can't give any advice op as my answer would be "no" and that would be the end of it in our house 😂

It sounds like too much time on his hands to me but if you are buying a brand new car the odds are it will have tracking available built in so he is wasting his money.

I have airtags in things, keys, bags, car - BUT they are mine and there in case I lose them in offices, airports and enormous car parks.
Tagging of other people (even indirectly) needs to be agreed and you need to be able to disable it if you choose. You need access to the systems as well as being able to use them - so he will need to set up shared users and run you through the basics and you need to practice so you know how to use them. If he then changes stuff he needs to document and share the info with you. This may be enough to reduce his enthusiasm for it all but mainly it means in emergencies either of you can access and use the systems.

Do not be deterred by “its very complicated” which is manspeak for “I don’t fully understand it” or “I can’t be arsed to explain it” or both.

ANPR cannot spot a chassis number. The tracker is to tell the police where your cat is so they can go and fetch it for you.

OP I'm sure you can get trackers that are only switched on by a security company after the car is stolen. Tell him to get one of those, or buy a car where it's already able to be tracked by the manufacturer.

OP is taking so long in Tesco as she's obviously, shagging her lover in the store room...

OP, while I understand your husband wanted to ensure the car is safe, that level of surveillance if accompanied by questioning would annoy me too, YANBU

As someone with cameras in and outside the house, trackers on animals and our locations turned on this is still a red flag.

My household has had real safety concerns (hence the cameras), and are safety conscious (the locations on) but it’s all done with full awareness and agreement. He sounds like he needs a hobby, at best.

Could the solution be agree to the air tag but have it set up so you can see it, and only you if its your car? Same security, takes away his ability to track which if he genuinely only wants it incase its stolen shouldn’t be an issue for him.

I think this is a tricky one. We have air tags in several of our vehicles (not my car specifically because no one wants to steal it!) But in the rarer, more high value, desirable to thieves ones. But they have to be hidden to an extent that they won’t easily be found, but they will be annoying enough that whoever nicks it will abandon it.

It isn’t a silly thing to do, but there are probably better ways to track a vehicle than an airtag. That said, Dh and I have tracking on our phones and it’s very useful. I don’t have to ask him where he is or what time he’ll be home. Neither of us go anywhere we care to hide from the other, but it’s very useful because we can bother each other less and coordinate life a bit more easily.

But the issue is how it’s used. Dh never checks my location because he can’t really be bothered. I check where he is before I ask him to run to a shop or to see when to start dinner. None of us are preoccupied with it or constantly monitoring each other.