AirTag Stalking

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AirTag Stalking

Find My, an app for Apple mobiles, is an incredibly slick way to keep track of almost any Apple product you can think of. Making your lost phone make a noise, offline finding, and sending the last location when battery is low are some of the fine-tune options available.

An AirTag is a small round device which plugs right into the Find My options.

Misplace an item attached to an AirTag, and when you get close enough you’ll even have Precision Finding kicking in to guide to the lost item.

This is all incredibly helpful, especially if you’re good at misplacing things. Even better if something is stolen. Where it goes wrong is when people with bad intentions immediately figure out ways they can harass people with it.

This is an Apple-specific product where the phone will alert you to the tag’s presence, which means not all devices will be able to flag it. Android users are resorting to downloading standalone apps which can flush out unwanted AirTag stalkers.

Smart stalkers will place tags on items or in places victims won’t suspect. A tag under the car means victims may never even find out they’ve been stalked in the first place.

This isn’t great news for any company faced with a sudden wave of people abusing their devices.

Apple’s support document lists two ways to discover unwanted tracking.

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, Find My will send a notification to your Apple device. This feature is available on iOS or iPadOS 14.5 or later. To receive alerts, make sure that you:

Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services, and turn Location Services on.

Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services. Turn Find My iPhone on.

Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services.

Turn Significant Locations on to be notified when you arrive at a significant location, such as your home.

Go to Settings > Bluetooth, and turn Bluetooth on.

Go to the Find My app, tap the Me tab, and turn Tracking Notifications on.

If you don’t have an iOS device or a smartphone, an AirTag that isn’t with its owner for a period of time will emit a sound when it’s moved. This type of notification isn’t supported with AirPods.

Any alert on your mobile device that a tracker is nearby allows you to make the tracker produce a noise via your phone. You can make this noise repeat as often as you want until the device is found.

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