More concerningly, the alerts can be turned off – which a victim of domestic violence may be coerced into doing by their aggressor. This could be done by the victim returning home or within range of their stalker within a three-day window. One experiment showed a tag can be placed on a person and would not trigger any of the safeguards if reconnected to the stalker’s device regularly enough. But these measures are relatively easy to circumvent. The alert can appear on the victim’s phone (if they use an iPhone) but can also raise an audible alert on the tag itself. Stalking technology?Īpple says it has implemented a range of safeguards to detect and prevent attempts to use AirTags for stalking, including an alert triggered when an AirTag seems to be accompanying someone who’s not its owner. That’s probably fine most of the time, but if you are travelling internationally you might be hit with unexpected charges if you’ve forgotten to disable data roaming. When it “hears” one, it uploads details of that tag’s identifier and the phone’s location to Apple’s servers.īesides any privacy concerns, this also likely uses small amounts of your data allowance. By using an AirTag, you are effectively availing yourself of a global monitoring network containing millions and millions of devices.Įveryone’s iPhone (assuming Bluetooth is enabled) is listening for AirTags. While the actual nature of the data transmitted is not too concerning (tag ID and location), what makes it worrying is the sheer scale and number of devices involved.

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