Apple AirTags And ‘High-Tech Stalking’: What To Know In Franklin

FRANKLIN, WI — Chances are, you know someone in Franklin who uses Apple AirTags to keep track of their keys, backpacks and other stuff through their iPhone Find My app.

What you may not know is that stalkers, carjackers and other criminals may be using these coin-sized devices to keep track of you.

AirTags are Bluetooth-enabled tracking devices so small that can be surreptitiously slipped into a purse or coat pocket or attached to a luxury car targeted for theft, police across the country are warning.

It's happened in Franklin, too. On Tuesday morning, the Franklin Police Department had a report that a resident found a tracking device duct-taped inside the bumper of her car, the agency announced via Facebook on Tuesday.

Domestic violence and privacy advocacy groups warned when Apple released the AirTags last April that they could easily be weaponized for high-tech stalking. Tile, whose trackers work with both iPhone and Android devices, also faces similar criticism.

The privacy warnings about the small device, designed to unsnarl users' lives, appear to be well-founded. Everyone from supermodels to used car buyers to friends on a shopping date report they’ve been tracked by someone they don’t know.

‘I Felt So Violated’

Sports Illustrated model Brooks Nader, 25, discovered she’d been tracked after leaving a bar in New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood, calling it the “scariest experience.”

Describing the AirTag tracking experience in a series of videos on Instagram, Nader told her more than 800,000 followers that she went to several bars before getting “the notification that was like, ‘Someone’s tracking you and has been for a while.’ ”

“So I freaked out, obviously, and then, of course, my phone died,” Nader said. “It turns out it was an AirTag, which is a tiny little white circular thing that Apple makes. I had no idea that these existed.”

Ashley Estrada was at a friend’s house in Los Angeles on a Sunday night in September when she got a notification on her iPhone that an AirTag had been detected. A map of the tag’s history traced her path as she went about the city doing errands.

“I felt so violated,” she told The New York Times. “I just felt like, who’s tracking me? What was their intent with me? It was scary.”

Some other recent examples in which AirTags were used for purposes other than their original intent:

• Two women shopping in Orange County, California, reported to authorities that they were cyberfollowed by someone using AirTags. When alerted, a map on their phones showed everywhere they’d been, including one of the women’s homes.

• In December, a man in Novi, Michigan, reported he found an AirTag on the car he’d purchased a couple of days earlier; it was a muscle car often targeted by thieves in metro Detroit.

In each of those cases, the people being tracked by unauthorized devices received notifications. Apple says the audible alarms and messages are built into AirTags to warn of suspicious activity to thwart “unwanted tracking,” but privacy groups say that’s only a partial solution.

Even after people get alerts that AirTags are tracking their movements, the discs are so small — about 1¼ inches in diameter — the targets can’t always find them.

And the alerts weren’t immediately triggered. It can take between four and eight hours before alerts are triggered — a delay that can be fatal for someone who’s being cyberstalked.

AirTag is a small accessory that enables iPhone users to securely locate and keep track of their valuables using the Find My app. (Business Wire, via AP)

‘Inexpensive, Effective Stalking’

Geoffrey A. Fowler, a tech columnist for The Washington Post, allowed a colleague to pair an AirTag with his iPhone, slip it into Fowler’s backpack and track him for a week from across San Francisco Bay.

Though he got multiple alerts, “it wasn’t hard to find ways an abusive partner could circumvent Apple’s systems,” he wrote for The Post. “To name one: The audible alarm only rang after three days — and then it turned out to be just 15 seconds of light chirping.”

Also, criminals and others can plant AirTags on people regardless of the kind of phone they’re using. About half of Americans who have cell phones use Android models, and there’s no way to automatically alert them if they’re being tracked, Fowler pointed out. (Android has an application to detect AirTags, but its customers have to proactively install the app.)

AirTags get strong reviews among people using it for its intended purpose.

“But if someone else slips an AirTag into your bag or car without your knowledge, it could also be used to covertly track everywhere you go,” Fowler wrote. “Along with helping you find lost items, AirTags are a new means of inexpensive, effective stalking.”

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report says 16 percent of women and 3.7 percent of men have been stalked at some point in their lifetime, though it’s important to note CDC findings came before Bluetooth trackers became widely available.

Some states are prepared with laws that specifically address high-tech stalking. In New York, for example, “Jackie’s Law” expands the crime of stalking to include the unauthorized use of GPS or other electronic devices to track another person. It is named after Jackie Wisniewski, a West Seneca woman who was killed by her former boyfriend, who put a GPS tracking device on her car.

‘Double Steal’ Scheme

Tech-savvy auto thieves use the technology, too.

An auto theft task force in the metro Detroit area told news station WJBK that reports like the one from the Novi man who found an AirTag on his Dodge Charger are becoming more common, and that Dodge products appear to be a prime target for thieves.

Detroit is at the U.S. border with Canada, where similar incidents have been reported in Ontario Province, WJBK reported.

Last month in West Seneca, New York, police said they’d received two reports of AirTags being placed on unsuspecting owners’ cars. They, too, had been alerted on their iPhones before they could be victimized.

Police said in a Facebook post “there is no need to unnecessarily panic,” but warned against complacency. In Toronto, Canada, about 110 miles away, thieves use AirTags to steal luxury automobiles, West Seneca police said.

An Austin, Texas, man who got an alert on his iPhone and found an AirTag on a used truck he bought hours earlier in Houston “got bamboozled,” Lt. David Beyer of the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department told news station KTBC.

Beyer told the news station the device may have been planted as part of a “double steal” scheme.

“I’m sure the individuals who had the tracking device in there probably had a key to it so all they had to do was follow this guy to wherever the car was parked, get in it, take off in it,” Beyer said.

But just as AirTags can be used to steal valuables, they can also be used to protect them. The Newtown, Connecticut, Police Department told residents in June to hide AirTags their cars, boats, jet skis “or even a backpack” so they could be more easily recovered if stolen. In Boston, police recovered a stolen bike with an AirTag hidden on it.

What Should You Do?

So, what should you do if you get a notification that an unauthorized AirTag is tracking you?

Apple lays it out step by step on a customer support page, including how to disable the AirTag and stop sharing your location. But the company recommends calling police “if you feel your safety is at risk,” because investigators can work with Apple to unmask the owner of the tag.

Products such as AirGuard, an app available through the Google Play store, scan Android phones AirTags trackers near you.

Apple also has released Tracker Detect, also available on the Google Play store, in response to the criticism about its AirTags.

Also, iPhone users can tie alert sounds to unknown tags in settings, Macworld Executive Editor Michael Simon recommends.

“We know what you’re thinking: ‘But AirTags will beep constantly!’ Sure, there might be some annoyances, but we’re willing to bet that the instances where people are sharing AirTags are pretty low,” he wrote in a post on the site Thursday. “Plus Apple offers a way to disable an alert on known AirTags shared between family members, so nine times out of 10, the sound will be a warning not a nuisance.”