In yet another case of apparent AirTag stalking, Detroit outlet FOX 2 Detroit last week reported on a case where a local man found one of Apple’s Bluetooth trackers hidden in his Dodge Charger.
When the owner of the Dodge came back from shopping, he received a message on his iPhone to say that he was being tracked by an unknown AirTag. The perpetrator had unscrewed a drain cover under the bonnet of the Dodge and put the tag inside, enabling them to track the car and potentially steal it later.
We’ve covered a number of similar incidents in Canada, but it appears the phenomenon has now crossed the border to the US. And the Dodge case isn’t even the latest such incident, with another in Texas reported by the German-language site Heise.de.
And in the same article, Heise.de reports a case in which a woman who had driven off in her car – she was on her way home from a bar at night – suddenly received a warning on her iPhone that an unknown AirTag had been detected. She shared this discovery on Twitter (but has understandably set her account to private, so you may not be able to see the tweets in question). The AirTag was eventually found hidden in the front wheel well.
Apple is well aware of the dangers of AirTags being used for stalking, and has implemented a number of features to mitigate this. But there remain limitations: if you use an iPhone, like the woman in the latest story, you’ll be warned of any unknown AirTags following you around, but the corresponding Android app, Tracker Detect, does not offer automatic background detection, which would be particularly important in such cases.
In a separate article we’ve compiled more details on this topic and how you can protect yourself better.
This article originally appeared on Macwelt. Translation (using DeepL) by David Price.