Apple AirTags are 'dangerous' device used by stalkers, lawsuit alleges - USA TODAY

Two women person filed a people enactment suit against Apple alleging the tech giant's AirTags are "unreasonably dangerous" products that tin beryllium utilized by stalkers.

The 2 women – Lauren Hughes of Travis County, Texas, and an unnamed Kings County, New York, pistillate (designated arsenic "Jane Doe") – filed the suit Monday successful U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. 

The 2 women say they filed the suit connected behalf of each those who were tracked without consent by AirTags, asking the tribunal to find Apple blameworthy of negligence, merchandise liability and violating privateness rights, successful summation to different user violations. "The benefits of Apple’s AirTag plan bash not outweigh the risks of the design," the suit reads.

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Apple brought the AirTags, battery-powered devices astir the size of a quarter, to marketplace past twelvemonth arsenic a mode to support way of your keys, purse, backpack and different belongings. Bluetooth connections connected Apple smartphones and different devices "see" the AirTags and assistance you find them utilizing Apple's Find My app.

But the women, who accidental they person been and stay astatine hazard of being tracked by AirTags, allege Apple failed to "to adequately disclose the risks associated with the AirTag … (and) affirmatively misled the nationalist and the property arsenic to those risks," successful the suit.

The ailment chronicles immoderate past cases successful which stalkers utilized AirTags to way someone. In 1 lawsuit an Indiana woman, who tracked her fellow implicit a suspected affair, ran him implicit and killed him successful June 2022.

In the suit, Lauren Hughes said aft ending a three-month narration she was stalked online and recovered an AirTag hidden connected her car. Plaintiff Jane Doe said, successful the suit, aft "a contentious divorce," she found an AirTag successful her child's backpack. She removed it and soon it was replaced, she said. 

Earlier this year, Apple released a personal information usher for AirTags, including a Tracker Detect app for Android devices, to code concerns astir radical being tracked without their knowledge.

But the women complaint that Apple's measures "are woefully inadequate, and bash little, if anything, to promptly pass individuals if they are being tracked," they accidental successful the suit. "Moreover, determination is simply a gross imbalance betwixt the protections disposable to iOS/Apple users, versus those disposable to individuals with Android devices – rendering Android users nearly defenseless to tracking/stalking utilizing an AirTag." 

Apple did not instantly respond to a petition for remark by USA TODAY.