Imagine receiving a notification saying, “Unknown accessory detected. This item has been moving with you a while. The owner can see its location”. You don’t know this and can’t do much about it. This reality happened to a Twitter user just this December.

She isn’t the only one. People have taken to Twitter, Reddit and Facebook to complain about finding AirTags on their belongings – without prior information about the device. Launched in the first quarter of 2021, Apple’s AirTag is a 1.26-inch disk that can track the location of your belongings, lost keys and bags, among other items. 

What started as a (possibly) well-thought-out product can also be a device for stalking, considering someone could use the small disk to track an unknowing person. While just like the Tile or Samsung SmartTag tracker, Apple has built-in security features to prevent online tracking, it fails when someone could just slip the device in your purse. Or slip it into your car, where a 17-year-old New York citizen found the AirTag that her mother had planted to follow the teenager’s whereabouts. 

According to The New York Times, a similar instance occurred with Estrada that followed her story of recovering an iPhone notification saying “AirTag Detected Near You.” It pointed out to the AirTag that had been with her for over four hours. She doesn’t own one. Upon prodding further, the AirTag’s history mapped out Estrada’s whereabouts within the few hours it was on her. Meanwhile, Apple’s AirTag policy assures users saying, “The whole process is anonymous and encrypted to protect your privacy. Your location data and history are never stored on the AirTag itself.”

While it took Estrada four hours to receive the notification, many others have taken days. Apple said the timing of these alerts varies depending on the iPhone’s operating system and location settings.

Tracking someone after tagging them with Apple’s AirTag is possible given the device’s use of sensors and wireless signals that round up to Apple’s ‘Find My Network’. This massive growth in technology just might be aiding culprits with easier methods of stalking, whose possibility many privacy groups have predicted. 

It’s not just privacy groups; authorities across states have noticed this and raised red flags. For example, New York’s West Seneca Police Department issued a warning regarding the AirTag’s tracking potential after finding it on a car bumper. In response, Apple corporated by providing subpoenaed information regarding the AirTag in question. Similarly, a Canadian local police department reported investigating five incidents where thieves have placed AirTags on luxury vehicles to locate later. 

In a YouTube video, Erika Torres described going from a bar to her home and being notified that an ‘unknown accessory’ had been detected near her for two hours. She took to YouTube after not getting answers from police or Apple, and the comments were filled with people sharing similar incidents. “I have exactly the same situation. In the last past few days, I got these notifications about an AirTag around me. So today, I have found the AirTag underneath my scooter,” said a viewer, followed by another claiming, “This just happened to me and my wife. Red dots and showing exactly where we live.” 

A viewer has claimed a similar notice on his phone, but he may have found the culprit behind the issue. After playing with his girlfriend’s AirPods with the sound sharing on, he figured out the tracking occurred given he had the AirPods on him.

Another similar story was shared by a Twitter user, saying, “I put them on our car keychains, and now my wife, daughter, and son get notifications that someone might be tracking them!”

This goes to show that the notice might just be a glitch occurring with Apple. In fact, many researchers have pointed out that the Bluetooth connection may be the culprit behind enabling easy technical tracking since it emits a digital signal that can be detected by Apple’s Find My Phone.

But, this problem goes beyond just Bluetooth. According to Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, considering the universality of Apple’s products, there is a huge scope for monitoring people’s movements. Additionally, Apple has automatically enabled AirTag to access iOS devices that are part of the main network. Apple does state, “Devices that relay the location of your AirTag also stay anonymous, and that location data is encrypted every step of the way. So not even Apple knows the location of your AirTag or the identity of the device that helps find it.” While no known theft cases have been linked back to AirTags, the growing and potential misuse of the technology needs to be curbed at this early stage. 

It does seem like Apple has taken the warnings in heed. Last June, the company introduced an update to AirTags that makes them beep if they have been away from linked devices for more than a day. Earlier it was three days.