Police Records Show Women Are Stalked With Apple AirTags Across the Country

samleecole shares a report from Motherboard: 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. Motherboard requested records mentioning AirTags in a recent eight month period from dozens of the country's largest police departments. We obtained records from eight police departments. 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. 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. 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. Multiple women who filed these reports said they feared physical violence. One woman called the police because a man she had a protective order against was harassing her with phone calls. She'd gotten notifications that an AirTag was tracking her, and could hear it chiming in her car, but couldn't find it. 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. 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. The report said she was afraid he would assault or kill her. [...] The overwhelming number of reports came from women. Only one case out of the 150 we reviewed involved a man who suspected an ex-girlfriend of tracking him with an AirTag.

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