Terrifying AirTag tracking saga detailed by actor who was being followed

Find My Precision Finding Airtag Hero
Find My Precision Finding Airtag Hero (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

  • Actor Hannah Rose May has taken to Twitter to share a story about being tracked by an AirTag.
  • An unknown AirTag was tracking May during a visit to Disneyland.
  • Apple's privacy features alerted May to the unknown AirTag.

Apple's AirTag item trackers are again at the center of a report that claims that one of the coin-sized devices was used to track an actor as she walked around Disneyland.

In a series of tweets actor and writer Hannah Rose May shared her experience of what happened when she was at Disneyland for a function in late June. According to the tweets, May's iPhone alerted her to an unknown AirTag traveling with her — an important security feature that ensures people are warned when an AirTag that isn't theirs is moving with them.

May says that she was at Disneyland from 23:45 through 02:00 the next day and received the Find My warning towards the end of the night. After tapping the notification, May was alerted that her "current location can be seen by the owner of this item" and that she could disable the AirTag if she wanted to.

That's exactly what she did, disabling it before returning home. Thankfully, May says that she was never alone during her trip to Disneyland although it isn't clear from the Twitter thread exactly where the AirTag was located.

May also posted the same story to Instagram, where she was immediately met with reports from people saying that they had experienced the same thing. We've heard multiple reports of AirTags being used to track people and even cars, with Apple already aware of the privacy and safety issues related to AirTags. The company outlined Find My changes earlier this year in an attempt to help keep people safe.

It's important, as ever, to remember that AirTags aren't the only item trackers available for people to buy and they are unlikely to be the only ones that are being used by people potentially looking to do harm. However, Apple's AirTag and its privacy alerts do mean that it is one of the most visible — a good thing that can ironically make it look even worse due to an increased number of unwanted tracking reports.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.