Apple’s AirTag Bluetooth trackers have been an ingenious idea to help iPhone owners keep better track of their belongings, but as users have recently discovered, the tiny gadgets also have a certain dark side to them.
In the second such disconcerting story of the day, a Detroit man named John Nelson was going about his daily business as usual, parking his 2018 Dodge Charger in the local shopping mall’s parking lot to run an errand. When he had finished and returned to his car, Nelson’s iPhone buzzed with a strange notification that popped up on the screen.
“I was able to click on that notification and it gave me an option to have the air tag emit a sound and I heard it underneath my vehicle,” Nelson reported to Fox 2.
Unlike Nelson, however, Jeana was not able to find the option to make the AirTag emit an audible sound. Instead, Jeana parked and searched her entire vehicle, but was unable to find the offending tracker. Growing increasingly unsettled, Jeana decided to spend the night at a friend’s house, rather than risking leading a stalker to her home.
The next day, according to Jeana’s account, her friend finally located the AirTag tacked onto her car. It had been placed under the front passenger wheel well of her vehicle, tucked in well out of sight.
Her friend immediately threw it away, although if she had gone to the police with the device, they might have actually been able to track it to its owner and press charges—as Apple keeps end-to-end encrypted location logs for just such instances of blatant abuse.
Now, Android phone owners will also be alerted if they are being tracked by an AirTag
Although Apple’s failsafe warning system to prevent victims from being targeted by stalkers came to iPhone right alongside the AirTags’ release in April, Android phone owners have been especially vulnerable until now, with no way of knowing if they are being followed.
However, despite the warning system in place on both iOS and Android, as we saw in Jeana’s case, AirTags are still able to do a significant amount of damage if abused—such as revealing the victim’s home location, for example— before they are picked up on and discarded.