Getty Images
When Apple debuted its new AirTag tracker earlier this year, part of our review focused on the privacy implications of the device. We called the device “a rare privacy misstep from Apple.” This week, Canadian police announced that car thieves have been using AirTags to track vehicles they want to steal.
York Regional Police (which serves an area north of Toronto) revealed that it has investigated five incidents in the past three months in which thieves have hidden AirTags on vehicles parked in public. Later, the thieves tracked down their targets to steal the cars at their leisure.
Other Bluetooth-based trackers have been available for some time now, but the ubiquity of Apple devices (which communicate with AirTags via Apple’s Find My app) means it’s generally faster and more accurate to track something remotely via an AirTag than a rival device like a Tile. And while they undoubtedly make it easier for users to recover lost stuff, the tags are being exploited by criminals.
Apple did build some anti-stalking functions into AirTags—if your Apple device detects that you’re being followed by an unfamiliar device, it will alert you, as long as you’re running iOS 14.5 or newer.
