Apple AirTags: stalkers’ dream device, lawsuit says - Chicago Sun-Times

A national suit targeting Apple and its fashionable AirTags tracker says the tech instrumentality that was created to assistance radical way down their mislaid keys and wallets has “become the limb of prime of stalkers and abusers.”

The suit accuses Apple of negligently selling AirTags contempt warnings from privateness experts and advocates for home unit victims that they easy could beryllium misused.

The suit, filed successful bluish California, seeks nationwide certification arsenic a people enactment — meaning it would use to others arsenic good arsenic the 2 women who filed it — and much than $5 cardinal successful damages.

The stalking dangers it points to reflector the findings of a Chicago Sun-Times investigation past May that recovered galore reports of AirTags planted connected unsuspecting victims successful Chicago.

Soon aft AirTags archetypal became disposable successful April 2021, stalkers successful Chicago figured retired however to connect them to their victims’ cars and different items, the Sun-Times found. Between July 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, radical filed 33 constabulary reports saying AirTags were utilized to way them, without their knowledge, via Bluetooth technology.

“It’s the nonstop aforesaid thing,” says Gillian L. Wade, the Los Angeles lawyer who filed the suit connected behalf of a Texas pistillate who says she was stalked aft breaking disconnected a three-month narration and a New York pistillate who says her ex-husband stalked her by putting AirTags successful their child’s backpack.

The Texas plaintiff, Lauren Hughes, was harassed truthful severely successful 2021, the suit says, that she decided to determination to a caller apartment. But the suit says that, portion staying astatine a edifice earlier the move, she was horrified to find an AirTag attached to a rear instrumentality good of her car. The suit says the antheral besides taunted her connected societal media, posting a photograph from her caller vicinity with a winking emoji and a hashtag referring to AirTags.

The tracking devices are casual to use, close and inexpensive, selling for astir $29 each.

They emit signals that are detected by Bluetooth sensors successful immoderate adjacent Apple product, creating what the suit describes arsenic a web of “hundreds of millions” of Apple devices successful the United States. That ubiquitous Apple web makes AirTags highly close but besides “uniquely harmful,” the suit says.

It says extracurricular experts warned Apple that AirTags could beryllium misused but that the tech elephantine dismissed those concerns, falsely touting the merchandise arsenic “stalker-proof.”

“It’s a unsafe merchandise that they released into the marketplace knowingly,” Wade says.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment.

Last spring, the institution said, “We condemn successful the strongest imaginable presumption immoderate malicious usage of our products.” It besides said past that it was consenting to enactment with constabulary to place Apple IDs that are paired with AirTags utilized successful stalking cases.

AirTags bash person features to forestall misuse, including a notification to iPhone users letting them cognize an AirTag is successful their vicinity.

The instrumentality besides emits a chime erstwhile it’s distant from its proprietor for a play of time, which the suit says ranges from 8 to 24 hours. 

Critics accidental those measures aren’t capable due to the fact that the notification isn’t instant, and the chime isn’t peculiarly large oregon distinctive and tin beryllium disabled.

People with Android phones don’t get a notification. They request to download a escaped Tracker Detect app and often cheque it to person immoderate anticipation of detecting an unwanted tracker, the suit says.

The suit notes that AirTags were utilized to way victims successful 2 murders — 1 successful Akron, Ohio, past January successful which an ex-boyfriend stalked and changeable a pistillate and past killed himself, the different successful Indianapolis successful June successful which a pistillate was accused of tracking her boyfriend, whom she suspected of cheating, to a barroom and past moving him implicit with a car.

The suit accuses Apple of negligence for selling a merchandise with a known plan defect. It besides says the trackers interruption California’s privateness law.

The Sun-Times recovered complaints astir AirTag stalking each implicit the city, with victims often puzzled astatine archetypal astatine however their abusers recovered them — until they discovered hidden AirTags. 

Wade says that since the suit was filed Monday, she has heard “horrifying” stories from astir the state from different women and men who said they were stalked utilizing AirTags.

“What we truly privation present is for radical to beryllium safe,” she says. “This puts your privateness successful the power of idiosyncratic other — and your autonomy and your safety. And it’s conscionable not OK.”