Skechers is making youngsters’ sneakers with a hidden AirTag compartment

Skechers launched a line of children’ sneakers that comprise a hidden compartment the place dad and mom can slip in an Apple AirTag.

Contained in the heel of the shoe, a small insert might be lifted to disclose the compartment. Then, dad and mom can monitor the situation of their youngster — or, at the least their youngster’s sneakers. These sneakers don’t include an AirTag, and so they don’t seem like an precise collaboration with Apple, however slightly, a third-party product that Skechers has developed by itself.

The sneakers have been introduced in mid-July to little press, however AppleInsider reported on the product on Wednesday.

Apple solely advertises its AirTags as merchandise to maintain monitor of things like keys, wallets, or baggage — not human beings. However dad and mom have been utilizing the expertise to keep watch over their youngsters. Already, there are merchandise like AirTag-compatible bracelets, insoles, pins, and even knock-off Crocs Jibbitz that may match an AirTag.

Maybe deliberately, AirTags will not be designed to be excellent at monitoring fast-moving issues, like a child on a faculty bus, for instance. Not like an iPhone with location sharing enabled, AirTags don’t have built-in GPS. As an alternative, they use Bluetooth beaconing technology to quietly sign their presence to close by Apple gadgets, giving the proprietor of the AirTag an estimate of its location.

This expertise can nonetheless be used for nefarious functions, nevertheless. Dangerous actors have hidden AirTags in individuals’s baggage or automobiles to stalk them, which sparked a class action lawsuit. Apple has instituted some anti-stalking options, resembling notifying somebody by way of their iPhone or Apple Watch when an unfamiliar AirTag is touring with them.

Since Skechers solely makes this product in youngsters’ sizes, it’s unlikely that these sneakers may very well be used to surveil adults towards their will — however the continued normalization of this type of surveillance might have implications past childcare. It’s attainable that Skechers or one other shoe model might make related merchandise designed for adults with circumstances like dementia, who could unintentionally get lost from their caretakers. Whereas these makes use of could also be well-intentioned, these sorts of merchandise may be used to trace adults with out their consent.