Raven Lemon had just left dinner with a friend at Grand Lux Cafe in the Galleria area on July 29 when her iPhone notified her that an AirPod was detected nearby.
At first, she thought someone just walked past her — until she kept getting notifications. “I got notification after notification like an Amber Alert,” she said, making her suspect she was being followed.
“Something told me not to go straight home. We left and went to Memorial Park. I just started driving around hoping it would fall off or die.”
For 17 minutes, Lemon continued to receive notifications as she drove around the park, detouring around ongoing construction after missing a turn. The notifications mapped her entire route, indicating that the device had been following her every move.
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Screenshots from Raven Lemon’s iPhone show that an AirPod device has been tracking her location for more than 15 minutes after leaving a Houston area restaurant.
Screenshot / Raven Lemon
As an entrepreneur and trauma-informed firearms instructor, Lemon often works with vulnerable women in nightlife, teaching them situational awareness, how to shoot a gun and how to defend themselves. But in that moment, she still felt uneasy.
“I started freaking out because no ones prepares you for this,” Lemon said.
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The next day, she started retracing her steps and researching to discover how this could’ve happened. She first vigorously searched her Hyundai Veloster for the AirPod, but had no luck.
Then she turned to Google for answers. When she still couldn’t find what she was looking for, she asked Apple directly.
A Genius Bar worker at Willowbrook Mall told Lemon that people find AirPods or AirTags in their cars often and that she was lucky it was an AirPod versus an AirTag. “Those die,” the worker told her, “‘but (with) an AirTag, the battery can last up to one year.'”
Rise of unwanted AirTag tracking
Apple released their coin-sized AirTags in April 2021 to help users keep track of missing items like keys, wallets, purses and luggage through the “Find My” app. But numerous reports in the U.S. have shown that people, especially women, are being unknowingly tracked with AirTags, potentially by stalkers, thieves and sexual predators.
Retailing at just $29, experts say AirTag’s inexpensive cost is a major selling point.
“It’s a whole lot cheaper than hiring a private investigator,” said Dan Wallach, an associate computer science professor at Rice University who specializes in computer security. “That low cost is what makes it attractive. Now I can learn things at low cost.”
Apple issued a statement in February reiterating the AirTags’ initial purpose and denouncing unwanted tracking, claiming security was taken seriously when designing the product.
“AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property, and we condemn in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products,” the statement read. “Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag. It’s why the ‘Find My’ network is built with privacy in mind, uses end-to-end encryption, and why we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking.”
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Android users cannot receive these notifications automatically, but Apple released an app called Tracker Detect allowing them to scan for nearby unknown AirTags. However, Tracker Detect currently only operates when the app is open, according to NPR.
And even with alerts, incidents ensued.
A woman said her location was tracked without her knowledge for two hours around Disneyland California in June. An Alabama woman said she found one on her car in April, and a Cincinnati woman told a similar tale in July.
Earlier this year, a Vice investigation found that 50 of 150 total police reports mentioning AirTags saw women call the police because they started getting notifications that their whereabouts were being tracked by an AirTag they didn’t own.
A Houston Police Department spokesperson said the agency currently does not have any investigations involving AirTags and they are not noticing a trend.
What to do if you receive an alert
Had Lemon found the AirPods tracking her location, she said she would’ve reported it to HPD.
Another Houston woman, Frances Williams, said she tried filing a report after receiving alerts from an AirPod that was secretly slipped into her coat pocket. But officials deterred Williams, saying it’d be hard to trace.
“They said it would be pointless since they can’t actually track the AirTag unless I have the serial number,” Williams told the Chronicle in a direct message.
An HPD spokesperson said that “things might’ve been missed over the phone,” but advises anyone who believes a crime was committed to either call their non-emergency or emergency line or file a report in person. He also referred to safety tips on their website.
Lemon also suggested checking your car for places where criminals could possibly hide the devices, such as the front grill, the back camera, or even behind a tire.
“They put it somewhere where it won’t fall off,” Lemon said the Apple employee told her. “And from my understanding, it only takes 30 seconds.”
Apple also issued a set of guidelines if you get an alert that an AirTag, Find My network accessory or set of AirPods is with you.
An Apple spokesman declined to speak on the record or supply a fresh statement on the ongoing issue. But Apple also said in its February statement that they are planning to introduce a series of updates “later this year,” including precision finding, display alerts with sound, refining unwanted tracking alert logic and tuning AirTag’s sound.
“Without a doubt technology is often racing ahead of its own impacts,” Wallach said. “When Facebook and Twitter launched, none of the founders were thinking that it might have a detrimental effect on democracy. Any new tech creates new problems.”
He anticipates apps that can be directly installed on phones to notify users of unwanted tracking are going to become popular.
“It might even be built into the phone next.”
