Apple AirTag Stalking Is A Growing National Menace According To Alarming Police Reports

According to a new report, Apple AirTags are still being used in a high number of stalking incidents across the country. The report included police reports from some of the country’s largest police departments over an eight-month period.

An AirTag is designed to locate a user’s lost items and costs a mere $29. You can attach one to your keyring, wallet, purse, or even your new Steam Deck. If you lose whatever is attached to it, the device will ping every nearby Apple product with Bluetooth enabled in order to triangulate its location. Once it is found, its location is shown to you on a map, highlighting where the AirTag has been and where it currently is.

While the purpose of the device is innocent enough, those with more sinister plans have used them for nefarious deeds. Since the launch of the product, reports have been made that they are being used for the purpose of stalking an unwitting victim. Apple has attempted to thwart these attempts by updating the tracking devices with several changes. One of those measures was to make it possible to be alerted if an unwanted AirTag was near their own iOS devices.

However, it seems that those measures are not slowing down the use of the devices for the purpose of stalking. A report by Motherboard indicates that an alarming number of stalking cases still involved the use of an AirTag. A total of 150 reports from eight different police departments across the country were obtained for the study. In 50 cases women called the police after being alerted there was an unknown AirTag that seemed to be tracking their location. Of those, 25 reported having someone in their life who they strongly suspected having planted the device on their cars in order to follow them.

Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation cybersecurity director, pointed out that using a GPS-type device for the purpose of stalking is not a new phenomenon and can in some instances provide much needed evidence. “So, yes, we did understand from the very beginning that this was going to be a major problem,” Galperin commented. “But part of it I think is just reflected in the fact that stalking is a major problem. And that having the AirTag alert go off is actually something that a person can bring to the police as solid evidence, which sometimes they otherwise do not have.”

Women were targeted in all but one of the incidents filed in the study by Motherboard. There was only one case where a man filed a report after suspecting that his ex was utilizing an AirTag to stalk him. While the number of cases may seem low on the surface, this only represents eight police departments among thousands across the country. You also must consider the number of times an incident goes unreported, or when the use of the device goes undetected by the victim.

Apple is currently working on more safety features to try and make AirTags more easily detected in unwanted cases. Later this year, the company plans on releasing another update that will provide a more precise location feature to make it easier to locate unknown trackers. It is also said to be making it clearer when someone might be using an AirTag to track them. If you are concerned about being tracked by an AirTag, you can visit Apple's website to find out what safety measures you can take right now.