Only one case out of the 150 we reviewed involved a man who suspected an ex-girlfriend of tracking him with an AirTag.ĪirTags have also attracted some attention as a potential vector for human trafficking. The overwhelming number of reports came from women. Contact Samantha Cole on the secure messaging app Signal at +1 6, or email all cases involved exes in some, the women were still in relationships or marriages with the men stalking them, and became physically violent when they were confronted about the AirTags. Have you been a victim of harassment using AirTags? We’d love to hear from you, and you can remain anonymous. She suspected a man who had been violent toward her before, who was now appearing wherever she went. One woman came into a police station to report that she was getting notifications for weeks about AirTags nearby, and had found multiple AirTags mounted under her car. The report said she was afraid he would assault or kill her. Another who found an AirTag in her car had been wondering how a man she had an order of protection against seemed to always know where she was. When the cops arrived, she answered one of his calls in front of the officer, and the man described how he would physically harm her. She’d gotten notifications that an AirTag was tracking her, and could hear it chiming in her car, but couldn’t find it. One woman called the police because a man she had a protective order against was harassing her with phone calls. Multiple women who filed these reports said they feared physical violence. She took her car to a mechanic, who found an AirTag in it. One woman kept spotting her ex following her. Seeing exes mysteriously appear wherever and whenever they went out was a major red flag for several women who made these reports. In another police report, a woman said she started noticing something beeping inside her vehicle every time she left her house she found an AirTag in her car and confronted an ex who admitted to putting it there to see if she was “cheating.” She said she knew it was him because he was showing up to her locations at the same time as her. A woman in another police report said she’d found AirTags attached to her car multiple times, and knew it was her ex, who has a history of assault. Most cases involved angry exes one woman called to report that her ex had slashed her tires and left an AirTag in the car to watch her. Motherboard is excluding specific details from these reports so as not to identify victims, for their safety. The woman said the same man threatened to make her life hell, the report said. In one report, a woman called the police because a man who had been harassing her had escalated his behavior, and she said he’d placed an AirTag in her car. Those women reported that current and former intimate partners-the most likely people to harm women overall-are using AirTags to stalk and harass them. Of those, 25 could identify a man in their lives-ex-partners, husbands, bosses-who they strongly suspected planted the AirTags on their cars in order to follow and harass them. Of the 150 total police reports mentioning AirTags, in 50 cases women called the police because they started getting notifications that their whereabouts were being tracked by an AirTag they didn’t own. We obtained records from eight police departments. Motherboard requested records mentioning AirTags in a recent eight month period from dozens of the country’s largest police departments. Police records reviewed by Motherboard show that, as security experts immediately predicted when the product launched, this technology has been used as a tool to stalk and harass women.
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