Stalkers Using Apple AirTags To Hound, Pursue Potential Victims, Women Warn

A woman from Maryland has claimed to have found an Apple AirTag embedded in her car on Saturday, Dec. 18, seemingly in a stalker’s attempt to track her location, as calls from private citizens and law enforcement about the potential misuse of this Apple product increase.

The woman, known only as Jeana, created a Twitter thread questioning the privacy safety of the Apple AirTag after someone allegedly put the device on top of her car’s front wheel while she was drinking at a bar, the New York Post reported.

While she drove away, she said that she kept receiving notifications in her phone about the AirTag device, which told her that her location could be seen by the AirTag’s original owner. After over thirty minutes of following her, she drove into a safe location to check if someone had planted an AirTag on her person.

“I checked all my things, like my purse, my trench coat pockets, my wallet—couldn’t find anything. Then I was like what if they stuck it on my car? But I didn’t find anything,” she tweeted.

She later found the device affixed to the underside of her car’s front wheel.

Apple AirTags allows owners of small- to medium-sized items to track down the live and current location of their objects using Bluetooth technology. Security and privacy experts like Tyler Wildman have warned about how these devices could potentially be used by criminals to track the location of potential victims, according to ABC affiliate First Coast News.

“The laws haven’t really caught up to the problem and law enforcement probably hasn’t been trained specifically on this and it’s hard for something like this to become front and center of a department with limited resources,” he said.

Apple has responded to questions regarding the potential criminal use of its devices by reaffirming its commitment to the safety and privacy of its users, as well as highlighting the technology that they created in order to ensure that the AirTags remain safe to use.

“AirTag is designed with a set of proactive features to discourage unwanted tracking — a first in the industry — and the Find My network includes a smart, tunable system with deterrents that applies to AirTag, as well as third-party products as part of the Find My network accessory program,” the company said.