Last Monday, a woman in Jonesboro, Arkansas was on her way to work when she got an alert on her iPhone—someone was using a tracking device to follow her. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a false alarm. She told local ABC affiliate KAIT that someone had placed one of Apple’s new AirTags on her trunk.
“On my way to work and I went to hook my phone up to listen to music and then it popped up I have an AirTag following and I’m like, no,” said the woman.
Apple released its AirTag device in April of this year.
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After a long weekend of shopping for a Christmas tree, she said she has no idea when this was put on her car.
“And as soon as it got eye level, I jumped. Cause it was taped right here,” she said.
This woman may have been among the latest to find out that it’s almost too easy for someone to remotely stalk you with an AirTag.
Apple introduced the AirTag in April, billing it as a way to help users find lost keys, bags, clothes and electronic devices as well as lost cars. If you have an iPhone, you can use the “Find My” utility to find any item where you’ve placed an AirTag.
But Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler discovered in May that it’s also an all-too-handy tool for stalking. As part of an experiment not long after the AirTag rolled out, fellow reporter Jonathan Baran put an AirTag into Fowler’s bag. The results?
After placing an AirTag in my bag, my colleague was able to find my whereabouts with remarkable precision. Once he associated the AirTag with his iPhone, the tag’s location showed up in an iPhone app called Find My, included free with iPhones. (It started as a way to find lost Apple products and has now expanded to other things.)
When I was riding a bike around San Francisco, the AirTag updated my location once every few minutes with a range of about half a block. When I was more stationary at home, my colleague’s app reported my exact address.
These location reports are transmitted to the AirTag’s owner via Bluetooth.
Fortunately, this feature also allows anyone with an iPhone 6S or newer running with iOS 14 or newer to get an alert if you’re traveling with an AirTag that isn’t also close to its owner. This feature appears to have saved the Jonesboro woman. For now, however, this leaves many Android users out in the cold. However, apparently in response to Fowler’s alarm bell, Apple announced in June that it’s working on an app that allows Android users to detect if there’s an AirTag “moving” with them. Additionally, it rolled out updates over the summer allowing anyone with an NFC-capable phone to tap an unwanted AirTag for instructions on how to disable it. But what about those who have older phones, or no smartphone at all?
Once the woman discovered the AirTag, she put it in a plastic bag and took it to the local police department. Finding the bottom-feeder who did this should be relatively easy. Each AirTag comes with a unique printed serial number that is readable on Bluetooth. All a prosecutor has to do is get a court order for Apple to reveal the owner of the iPhone to whom the AirTag is registered.
The larger problem, though, is that Apple apparently didn’t take this prospect into consideration. Apple spokeswoman Kaiann Drance refused to say whether Apple consulted domestic abuse experts when it designed the AirTags. Reading this, I can only agree with an op-ed that privacy advocates Albert Fox Cahn and Eva Galperin wrote for Wired in May—Apple needs to make consultations with domestic violence survivors and experts “a central place in its development process.” Had it done so, it wouldn’t have taken a Washington Post investigation for Apple to do what it should have done from the beginning.