Apple AirTags are Being Used to Stalk People, Steal Cars Say Researchers

A new article published by the New York Times has highlighted how Apple’s coin-sized AirTags are being used to track people and even high-end vehicles so they can later be located and stolen (via Daring Fireball).

According to the researchers, Apple’s AirTags equipped with Bluetooth technology could be revealing a “widespread problem of tech-enabled tracking,” something which privacy groups had predicted could happen when Apple introduced the devices earlier this year.

Unlike similar tracking products, such as Tile, the AirTags present a “uniquely harmful” threat because “the ubiquity of Apple’s products allows for more exact monitoring of people’s movements,” said Eva Galperin, a cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“Apple automatically turned every iOS device into part of the network that AirTags use to report the location of an AirTag,” Ms. Galperin said. “The network that Apple has access to is larger and more powerful than that used by the other trackers. It’s more powerful for tracking and more dangerous for stalking.”

People who said they have been tracked have called Apple’s safeguards insufficient, with some revealing it took days before they were made aware of an unknown AirTag.