Process behind accurately locate gps
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Air tags don’t have a GPS of their own. Instead, iPhones (including foreign iPhones that are not yours) are programmed to detect the presence of any AirTag (including ones that aren’t your own). When they detect one, the phone uses its location data and transmits an anonymous “AirTag encounter” report to apple. There are enough random iPhones in the world to make this actually a usable strategy.
That’s the only way an airtags battery will last more than 5 seconds.
Theoretically if an AirTag never encounters any other phone it can’t be located.
Also, this is how traffic reports are managed as well. iPhones constantly make anonymous reports to apple on many things. If there are a lot of slow moving iPhones on one road, iPhones report this… then Apple Maps knows to color it red for busy. All iPhones are constantly reporting lots of stuff every single day.
All of it is anonymous though, apple makes a big stink to ensure it’s anonymous.
Android does the exact same thing so it’s not an apple thing.
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