Police reports suggest a larger pattern of AirTag stalking
It’s been clear for a while that bad actors are planting location trackers on other people without their knowledge to track their locations. Trackers have been used in car thefts as well. Now, Motherboard has obtained some police data that casts some light on extent of the issue.
The publication requested records mentioning Apple AirTags (which the company announced a year ago) from dozens of police departments from across the US. The requests covered an eight-month period.
Motherboard received 150 reports from eight police departments and found that, in 50 cases, women called the cops because they received notifications suggesting that someone was tracking them with an AirTag or they heard the device chiming. Half of those women suspected the tags were planted in their car by a man they knew, such as a current or former romantic partner or their boss.
The vast majority of the reports were filed by women. There was just one case in which a man made a report after suspecting that an ex was using an AirTag (which costs just $29) to stalk him. Around half of the reports mentioned AirTags in the contexts of thefts or robberies.
Just one instance of AirTag-related stalking would …read more
