ElevationLab Pulls AirTag Silencer After Stalking Concerns

The product was announced on September 30. It used a piercing mechanism intended to neutralize the AirTag’s speaker without damaging the rest of the hardware, according to 9to5Mac. The accessory drew a lengthy critique from Glenn Fleishman on Six Colors a couple of weeks before ElevationLab pulled it.

In a new Six Colors post, Fleishman reported that ElevationLab had announced the decision to remove the product from sale. The company’s note acknowledged the opportunity for misuse. It 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.)” The note continued: “In retrospect though, this also has the side effect of aiding someone with bad intentions to track someone that wouldn’t get phone notifications.” It added: “We have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.” The note was signed Elevation Lab.

The AirTag Silencer is no longer listed on Amazon, 9to5Mac reported, though it still appears as an autocomplete suggestion in search results. ElevationLab’s now-pulled product information page said the device worked on multiple AirTags, according to 9to5Mac.

ElevationLab is a longtime maker of AirTag accessories. 9to5Mac said the company was aware that Apple made the speaker harder to remove in the second-generation AirTag, a change intended to discourage tampering and unwanted tracking.

9to5Mac said the product is no longer for sale and that ElevationLab should keep the public informed about its efforts to prevent similar devices from being sold through the patent enforcement it promised.