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A 19-year-old woman in Australia says she felt "sick to her stomach" when she discovered she was being tracked with an AirTag by her new boyfriend.
Apple's AirTags had a bumpy introduction in Australia, with the local authorities warning of a choking hazard, and one retailer pulling them from sale for the same reason. But now AirTags are commonly available in the country, yet another stalking case has been reported.
According to Channel 7 News, a 19-year-old woman from Melbourne, was alerted to her being tracked, by Apple's anti-stalking measures.
"I got a notification that an AirTag was tracking my location," the anonymous woman said. "I was doing some shopping throughout the day and I continued to get the notifications, but I had no idea where they were coming from."
Feeling "sick to her stomach," the woman reportedly ransacked her car. "It was so frustrating," she said. "I kept looking and looking and I couldn't find it anywhere. Then I thought the only person that had been in or near my car was my boyfriend."
Her boyfriend of six months, also unnamed by Channel 7 News, initially denied tracking her.
"It wasn't until I told him I was going to the police to report it that he finally confessed," she continued. "I felt so violated and I was in a state of shock. It just blew my mind that someone I trusted so much could do something like this."
The boyfriend reportedly said that "he had been hurt in the past and didn't want to risk getting hurt again."
The woman says she "wasn't buying it." She has since ended the relationship.
If someone is alerted that an AirTag is tracking them, they can take certain steps. In this case, It doesn't appear that the woman went to the police, but she could have taken the AirTag to them.
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Andrew O'Hara
Christine McKee
5 Comments
The AirTags are working as designed. I suppose Apple should be more explicit about how to track if your'e being tracked. And same for other similar devices.
Let’s remember once again that while Apple wasn’t the first to sell tracker tags, they were the first to include anti-stalking features.
What kind of a dumbass uses an AirTag to track someone with an iPhone. This is a very well known feature.
PS What happened to that guy that claimed Apple will recall these devices because they brought awareness to stalking by added an anti-stalking feature?