What you need to know
- An Apple AirTag was found in a car that appears to have been tracked for a later theft.
- The driver's iPhone alerted them that an AirTag was present.
- This is the latest in a run of similarly concerning reports.
Amid ongoing AirTag privacy concerns, one appears to have been used to try and track a car that had been marked for a later theft. According to local reports, a Detroit man found an AirTag in his 2018 Dodge Charger after leaving it parked at a mall.
Earlier this month, just two days after buying the car, Detroit man John Nelson parked up at a shopping center for a couple of hours. When he returned, his iPhone warned him of an AirTag that wasn't his.
FOX 2 Detroit picks up the story.
"I was able to click on that notification and it gave me an option to have the air tag emit a sound and I heard it underneath my vehicle," Nelson said.Whoever did this unscrewed a drain cap under the trunk of John's car and slipped the tag inside.
This comes after recent reports of AirTags being used to track people which themselves came after reports they were being used to steal cars.
Notably, the FOX 2 report says that a local auto theft task force says that the AirTag approach is one that's being used more and more.
It's important to note here that Apple's system did exactly what it was supposed to and alerted the car's owner that an unknown AirTag was with him. That allowed him to find the AirTag and remove it — but that wouldn't have worked if the driver was using an Android phone without the AirTag Tracker app installed and active.
