CINCINNATI (WXIX) – When the Apple AirTag was unveiled in April of 2021, it was promoted as “a private and secure way to easily locate the items that matter most,” according to a press release from Apple.
In the year since it’s been available to the public, security concerns have been brought up. Specifically, the concern of unwanted tracking.
That concern found its way to Danielle Delong.
Delong lives in Cincinnati and was flying back from Los Angeles. She had just gotten off her flight at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and was waiting for her friend to pick her up.
She said when she arrived at her friend’s home and turned on her phone, she noticed her phone telling her it had detected an AirTag.
“You always hear about these things, but you’ll never you know, you never think it’ll be you,” Delong said.
Delong said she freaked out and immediately started going through her belongings.
She couldn’t find the tag so she called Erlanger police.
Delong said the officer didn’t find anything but told her if she felt unsafe she could have an officer patrol her home.
Delong said she was digging through her bag at the airport for a lighter and thinks that’s when the tracker fell out of her bag.
“Thankfully, I like my cigarettes. The one time it’ll save you, right? If I hadn’t dug out that lighter, who knows, you know, it could have followed me home,” she said.
Cybersecurity expert Kevin Jackson says stories like these are another example of the best intentions sometimes having unintended consequences.
“Well, it’s a great example once again, of fantastic technology that can be misused in horrible ways,” he said. “And now we have a lot of cases popping up in the news almost on a monthly basis where the same easy-to-use low-cost devices are being used as stalking devices ways to track the actual physical location of unsuspecting people from an iPhone from an Android device on a computer. It’s far too easy, unfortunately.”
Jackson is the CEO of Waypoint Cybersecurity, he offers this advice to anyone worried about possibly being tracked.
“If you have an older phone with an older operating system, you may not have the newest software that allows these alerts to even show up on your screen. And then on top of that, you really do have to have features like Bluetooth and Location Services enabled on your phone in order for those alerts to work,” he said.
Delong said that after her experience, she wants people to always know what or who is around them.
“Be vigilant, stay aware of your surroundings? Even if you think you are aware, stay more aware because I thought I was I was traveling alone and just stay safe. It’s crazy. It’s a crazy world.”
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