AirTag harassment victims unconvinced by Apple’s fixes

Originally designed as a solution for the absent-minded, the AirTag digital tracking sensor is also sometimes deployed for a more sinister function, with manufacturer Apple now the subject of anger – and lawsuits – from Americans who have been harassed with using the branded product.

The $29 silver-and-white gadget the size of a large coin is “an easy way to keep track of your stuff,” Apple’s website boasts. Customers can attach it to their keys, a wallet or a backpack.

When connected to a smartphone app, an AirTag allows a user to track the real-time geographic location of their belongings in the event they get lost — but the little circular transmitter can also track the people carrying those items, sometimes without her Knowledge.

That’s what happened to singer Alison Carney in June 2022, when she found an unidentified AirTag in her bag while preparing to go on stage at a Chicago concert hall.

Carney didn’t put the AirTag there herself and says she never received an iPhone notification warning her that an unknown accessory was found nearby.

While disturbing, the discovery of the AirTag in her bag also helped Carney make sense of some perplexing events in her life.

Since the end of their turbulent relationship, Carney’s ex-boyfriend had been constantly calling and texting her, sometimes even pounding on her door in the middle of the night or showing up at restaurants where she was eating.

“It just became obvious when we found the AirTag that … I wasn’t crazy,” Carney, who lives in Washington, told AFP. “I know someone is following (me).”

“I felt hurt. I withdrew. I stopped going out,” she added.

“I know someone has the ability to put a device on my body or property that can track me for the rest of my life and they get smaller and smaller and smaller and harder to detect.”

Apple “strongly condemns any malicious use of our products”
Carney isn’t the only person in the United States who has been tracked against his will with an AirTag.

Last June, a 26-year-old man was killed in Indiana by his girlfriend, who tracked his location via AirTag, according to court documents, after suspecting he was cheating on her.

Police in the city of Irving, Texas, are also investigating several recent incidents involving Apple AirTags in which the victim and stalker already knew each other, said police spokesman Robert Reeves.

According to Reeves, the next step after filing a complaint is to identify the owner of the account linked to the AirTag using the item’s serial number.

But Carney never had a chance to find out exactly who was linked to the rogue AirTag in her bag — she didn’t file a police report for fear of retribution.

When asked about the situation, Apple sent AFP a statement released last year in which the tech giant “strongly condemns any malicious use of our products.”

The company also said it has updated its systems to warn customers who buy AirTags that they may be committing a crime by using the product to covertly track another person and to warn Apple users if a device notices an unknown tracker traveling with them.

But that reassurance isn’t enough to persuade Lauren Hughes and a woman going by the alias Jane Doe, who have filed complaints against Apple in California.

Doe says her ex-husband twice clipped an AirTag to their child’s backpack after a divorce.

And in a complaint filed in December, Hughes says she found an AirTag — colored with a marker and wrapped in a plastic bag — strapped to the wheel well of her car.

In court documents, both women accuse Apple of what they consider to be an inadequate warning system. AirTag alerts sent by the company are not necessarily instantaneous and are only available on iPhones running iOS 14.5 or later.

In addition to older Apple devices, according to Albert Cahn, Technology and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard University, users of Android or other smartphone operating systems are also left out.

Apple devices are constantly scanning for nearby unknown accessories, Cahn told AFP. But Android users need to download a special app and then specifically scan for potentially malicious AirTags.

“Does Apple expect Android users to spend their days constantly checking just to make sure they’re not being tracked?” he asked. AFP