The Boston Police used an AirTag to find a stolen bicycle

Stolen Bike Recovered By Airtag
Stolen Bike Recovered By Airtag (Image credit: Gadget Lite)

What you need to know

  • Apple's AirTag helped the Boston Police locate a stolen bicycle.
  • Gene Gorter was able to use his AirTag to guide the police to the location of the bike.

It looks like AirTags are already proving their worth when it comes to theft.

As reported by Gadget Lite, the Boston police were able to uncover a stolen bicycle with the help of Apple's new item tracker. AirTag (and bike) owner Gene Gorter posted the story to Facebook about how, after his bike got stolen on the 4th of July, the tracker went to work and saved the day.

The next morning he discovered that his Bike had been stolen, but he remembers that he had Apple AirTag hidden in the bicycle pouch.Gene then provided the AirTag tracking information to Boston police. Surprisingly, the Boston Police were able to recover the Apple AirTag from a trashcan following the AirTag tracking details just beside Gene's stolen Bicycle.As soon the Boston police recovered the Bicycle, they texted Gene with the AirTag location and the stolen Bicycle photograph.

It's still unclear why the thief was not notified of the AirTag and disposed of it elsewhere. One possibility is that they aren't wise to the existence of AirTags just yet as they are technically a newer Apple product. The other could be that they were not an iPhone-owner.

Airtag

Airtag (Image credit: Apple)

Currently, only iPhone owners will be notified on their device if a rogue AirTag is detected traveling with them. Apple has promised to release an Android app that does that same, but that isn't supposed to see a release until later this year.

Regardless of why the thief didn't realize the AirTag was there, Gene was surely happy that he stuck the tracker in his bike.

If you want to get creative with how you hide your AirTags to protect your stuff, check out our list of the Best accessories for AirTags 2021.

Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.