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How an Apple Tracking Device is Popping Up in Alleged Crimes

2021-12-23T14:08:06.299Z


Not the first tracking tool to become a source of concern for criminal use, AirTags have been linked to harassment and car theft.


By David Ingram -

NBC News

On Friday night, a woman from an East Coast city walked out of a bar, drove, and began receiving alerts on her phone. 

"An AirTag has been found moving with you," read a notification on his iPhone.

"The location of this AirTag can be seen by the owner," he added.

Alarmed that someone might be following her, she began searching her purse, coat pockets and wallet for an AirTag, an Apple-made tracking device that went on sale this year.

But he found nothing. 

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"I did not want to go home, so I spent the night somewhere and told myself that I would solve it in the morning," he later wrote on his Twitter account, which he has already made private. 

The next day, he had someone search his car, and they found an AirTag stuck inside a wheel well. 

"It bothers me because no matter how safe women try to be (I was NEVER alone, parked in a well-lit place, etc ...) it doesn't matter if someone really wants to hurt you," she wrote. 

In a follow-up message to our sister network NBC News, she said she now suspects someone was trying to steal her car because it wasn't parked close enough to the bar for someone to associate her with the vehicle.

He reported the incident to law enforcement, but did not know if they would investigate.

Her friend dropped the tracker.

NBC News hasn't verified the details of its experience, but is echoing a growing number of complaints about Apple's new location beacon.

Evidence is mounting that people are using AirTags to try to harass others and steal cars, according to law enforcement officials, local news, personal anecdotes posted on social media, and domestic violence and computer security experts. 

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"I don't think there is any doubt that Apple AirTags are being used to harass," explained Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based digital privacy group.

She was one of the people who predicted this outcome months ago. 

Police in Colorado, Georgia, Michigan and Texas have reported misuse of AirTags, including for domestic harassment and attempted car theft.

The Twin Falls, Idaho sheriff's office warned residents this month that AirTags pose a danger, especially to potential victims of domestic violence.

And an unwanted tracking attempt described on TikTok has received more than 27 million views.

AirTags have a fair use, but misuse also fits into an expanding market for surveillance technology, as people buy other cloud-connected devices, such as cameras, to monitor each other and to commit or prevent crime. .

A Connecticut police department told residents in June to consider putting the AirTags "somewhere hidden in your car, boat, jet ski or even in a backpack" to retrieve them in case of theft.

Some people have reported using AirTags to recover stolen bikes.

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Location beacons made by other companies have been around for years, but Apple's product is especially powerful because it uses the company's network of more than 1 billion devices and its cloud computing service to frequently update the location of an AirTag. 

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"People who engage in unhealthy or abusive behavior have suddenly realized that they have a sophisticated, inexpensive, and enormously effective tool at their disposal," says Adam Dodge, a California attorney specializing in the formation of nonprofits, bodies security and other organizations to deal with abuse on the internet. 

Apple markets AirTags as a way to find personal items such as keys, wallets or backpacks, whether they are lost at home or away, such as at the beach.

Each device sells for $ 29 on Apple's website, or four for $ 99. 

An app called Find My on iPhones tracks the distance of the tags and displays a map with their location. 

But AirTags connect to more than just the owner's iPhone.

Using Bluetooth technology, an AirTag sends a signal that any nearby iPhone, iPad or Mac can detect.

These devices can then send the location of an AirTag to Apple's cloud computing network and to the owner. 

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Apple claims that only the owner of an AirTag can see where it is, and that the device itself does not store location data or its history. 

Apple has not released sales figures for the AirTags.

Gene Munster, managing partner at investment firm Loup, said he estimates sales so far at 25 million devices, based on an analysis of Google search data for AirTags and other products.

Keychain and bow accessories for the new AirTags on display at the George Street Apple Store on April 30, 2021 in Sydney, Australia.James D. Morgan / Getty Images

An Apple representative did not dispute that some people were misusing AirTags to track others.

However, it declined to say how many times local law enforcement agencies have contacted the company to request information on the owner of an AirTag. 

While it's unclear how widespread the abuse of AirTags is, the potential danger has prompted Apple to make two software updates in recent months. 

One of the changes has to do with a function to deter unwanted tracking: an AirTag will make a sound if it is left away from its owner for too long.

In June, Apple shortened that time frame from three days to a random time from 8 to 24 hours. 

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The second change concerns the phone notifications that people traveling with someone else's AirTag can receive, including one that has been posted.

People with iPhones already had the possibility of receiving a notification that said: "AirTag found moving with you: the location of this AirTag can be seen by the owner."

But similar notifications would not reach the billions of people with smartphones using the Android operating system.

Last week, Apple released an app called Tracker Detect that those users can download to receive notifications, though it's not a universal solution. 

“Not everyone wants to download the application.

Not everyone knows how to download it, ”said EFF's Galperin.

"Those mitigations are not enough."

Any broader change would require action from Android owner Google, he said.

Google did not respond to a request for comment. 

In a statement Monday, Apple said: "We take customer security very seriously and are committed to the privacy and security of AirTag." 

The company said its features to discourage unwanted tracking were an industry first.

"We are raising the bar on privacy for our users and the industry, and we hope that others will follow," he said. 

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Erica Olsen, director of the safety net project for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said the misuse of AirTags is concerning, but that Apple deserves credit for trying to create safeguards, something that she says, no other manufacturer of locator beacons has made. 

"We are glad that some steps have been taken towards creating safeguards, and we hope that it will become a standard for the entire industry," he said.

He added that a change is worth it if it makes the devices even slightly less useful to an abuser. 

Olsen said that before AirTags went on sale in April, it was already common practice for drop-offs and other service providers to check a person's personal belongings for tracking devices upon arrival.

And he said it is unrealistic to think of going back to a world without those devices, whether they are made by Apple or anyone else. 

"They are not the only ones, as a company, who want to offer something that a lot of people want to use, and that they want to use legitimately," Olsen said. 

But there are situations where Apple hasn't come up with a solution, such as when someone can't find the AirTag that is following them. 

In a Nov. 21 video, viewed 27 million times, a TikTok user said her iPhone informed her of an unknown accessory that was traveling with her from Texas on a flight to Boston.

But after searching his luggage, he said on the video: "I can't find a tracker." 

In a second video, six days later, he said he ended up finding an AirTag that someone had taped to the inside of his travel bag.

He didn't say who might have done it, but claimed in a comment that the bag had been near a sliding window on his truck while he was shopping in Texas before his flight. 

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Detective Bryan Franke of the Longmont, Colorado Police Department said his department is investigating two recent cases of domestic harassment in which the suspects used AirTags.

He said the devices have some advantages for would-be stalkers compared to other GPS trackers, including connecting to Apple's cloud network to give more precise locations, but also some disadvantages.

They don't offer historical data, and AirTag sound and phone notifications are deterrents, he said.

“For now they will be popular, but I think they will start to be residual.

They're not going away, obviously, though, ”Franke said. 

Other examples illustrate the misuse of AirTags. 

A Nashville, Tennessee woman said she believed an AirTag had been attached to her car while helping a friend move out this month, and that when she went to get the device, two men who had been by her car ran off, WHNT-TV reported. 

And agents from a Toronto, Canada-area police department have investigated five incidents since September in which people placed tracking devices, including AirTags, on high-end vehicles to locate and steal them later, according to a statement this month. .

The Austin and Detroit media have reported similar incidents. 

Apple claims that each AirTag is registered with the owner's Apple ID, which the company says it can make available to law enforcement - along with associated personal information of the AirTag owner - in response to a valid legal request, as a subpoena. 

But law enforcement doesn't always make that request, and many crime survivors don't have money for a separate attorney to investigate, according to Dodge, the California attorney.

For now the best way to counteract tracking devices is to be aware that they exist and how they work. 

"What we tell victims of bullying is to trust their instincts," he said.

"I'm not holding my breath that we are going to have a perfect technological solution, so we have to work by other means," he added.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting

www.thehotline.org,

or texting START to 88788.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-12-23

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