Apple has been granted a restraining order against a Virginia woman it said has been stalking Apple CEO Tim Cook for more than a year, emailing him photos of a loaded pistol and trespassing at his home, according to court filings.
In its application, Apple accused the woman of "erratic, threatening, and bizarre behavior." The company included in the application copies of photos, emails and tweets purporting to come from the woman. Apple said in the application that it believes the woman "may be armed and is still in the South Bay Area and intends to return to (Cook's) residence or locate him otherwise in the near future."
How to blur out your home in Apple Maps and Google Maps
Tim Cook's plush home in Palo Alto, California, has been blurred out inside Apple Maps and Google Maps -- likely because of an alleged stalking incident. If you enter his address, you'll see nothing but a gigantic, pixelated wall.
But this kind of digital scrubbing isn't reserved for top CEOs and celebrities. In fact, anyone can quite easily get their own home hidden from online maps. All you need to do is ask Apple and Google to conceal the locations. We'll show you how.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @02:16AM
Are you saying that Tom Apple was the victim of the Aristarchus doxxing? OMG! It is more serious than I thought!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @02:47AM (2 children)
Just checked and the latest Google street view of my house continues to show a nice pic of the hedge out front along the street. This time they picked trash day, the trash bins are out at the street. From one angle you can just see a sliver of the wood house...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @02:53AM (1 child)
Ha, just checked again, inching along the road to see if they got a better shot up the driveway. This time I found a partial "double exposure" -- the telephone pole at the end of the driveway has a clone...planted in the middle of the driveway! Really, I see the phone pole, and in the same picture a copy of that pole about 10 feet to the NE of the real location!
Is Street View is trying to interpolate between photos to show a frame in-between?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @09:57AM
Yes, they do that. They also interpolate to give you different viewing angles. It can have strange results if one of the cameras was misaligned or they try to combine pictures taken in different years.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Friday February 04 2022, @02:49AM
Heh, back in the good old days, if you were stalking Bill Gates you had to use a nice old fashioned paper map. Or perhaps a laptop with a map program loaded from floppy disk. External parallel port BackPack CD-ROM drive for DeLorme Street Atlas? woo hoo!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @03:27AM
Here are some images purporting to be his home:
https://www.urbansplatter.com/2021/06/tim-cook-house-the-palo-alto-condo/ [urbansplatter.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @03:28AM (2 children)
Fortunately all I need to know when I check/stalk on an ex-girlfriend to see if she's still living with her parents is looking for her Subaru car parked out in the street..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @03:40AM (1 child)
Yuck!
Where's the -1 Too Creepy mod when I want it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @04:02AM
Indeed-- someone living with their parents when in their 40s is very very I must be somewhere else territory...
(Score: 5, Touché) by Gaaark on Friday February 04 2022, @03:49AM (1 child)
it's a crime and a problem when someone stalks a software executive, but when the software executive makes the decision to stalk it's users, gathering information on every place they go and everything they do and everyone they know...HEY, WHAT ME WORRY?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday February 05 2022, @02:53AM
FTFY
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 04 2022, @04:00AM (6 children)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-tracking-device-made-by-apple-is-showing-up-in-suspected-crimes/ar-AAS4Tyy [msn.com]
All of the *EOs of Big Tech need to become the victims of stalkers. These are the people who create the tech, push the tech, sell the tech used to stalk all of us. I have zero sympathy for Little Timmy. How do we encourage a few more crazies to go after him?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Friday February 04 2022, @08:56AM (1 child)
Gates is getting old and senile, he should be just forced to use MS Bob for the rest of his life.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 05 2022, @05:43AM
Since he got divorced, he's probably using Neil and Bob. [urbandictionary.com] Premium Edition, of course.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rob_on_earth on Friday February 04 2022, @11:40AM (1 child)
What I find scary is that if you extrapolate from here the only situation possible is everyone is tracked in some way.
Either one or more governments make this type of device illegal. But some will not and any anyone can make one, it will be come a black market item.
The devices will stay legal or just for licence professionals. In which case you get the "bad actors" that always exist in a large enough data set.
Once upon a time GPS trackers were big (relative to Tiles) and required cell access i.e. a SIM card and paid for account.
If there is very small barrier to entry then the cat is out of the bag the flood waters are already free and horse has bolted the stable.
I would love to hear that this can be fixed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @12:44PM
These tags have legitimate uses, they're here to stay. The "fix" is that people are going to purchase short range RF scanners.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 04 2022, @02:54PM (1 child)
AirTag found moving with you
Snopes busted this myth.
Impeach Donald Palpatine and his sidekick Elon Vader
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 04 2022, @03:15PM
I read the Snopes article. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/apple-airtag-tracker-stalker/ [snopes.com]
So, the "myth" isn't busted. Snopes only claims that they are investigating it.
The fact is, Air Tags are meant to be used to track stuff. Air Tags are used to track stuff. If I put an Air Tag to use, without your knowledge, to track your movement, what are your options? If you have an iPhone, you'll pretty obviously learn about it, and quickly. If you have an Android, and you install and Apple app on your Android, again, you'll learn about it. If you don't carry a cell phone, and/or you haven't installed Apple's app? You may learn about it, if someone you know happens to spot it. Or, I may track you for months without your knowledge.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 04 2022, @08:19PM (1 child)
Every major company has a monarch. Or seems to. I suspect the monarch is far less consequential than the public imagines. For many users, when they have a problem with Windows, they talk as if Bill Gates personally failed or even sabotaged them. And, heck, some of the boneheaded moves MS has made over the years, such as the excessive DRM in Windows Vista, maybe that was Gates' sole decision.
Decades ago, they figured out that the "captain is God" approach to flying planes resulted in more crashes than "crew resource management". This principle ought to be applied to large corporations. Make it so there isn't a single figure at the apex. Can't have this CEO staking problem if there is no CEO. It wouldn't totally prevent stalking, of course, but it could help a little. And perhaps improve corporate decision making.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04 2022, @10:07PM
Is a CEO staking problem when you have a vampire as the CEO and no one has managed to plunge the stake in yet?