Apple is facing the biggest scandal in early 2022

Launched at the end of April last year, AirTag is expected by Apple to be a “hot” accessory, helping users easily manage their belongings. Although a fairly useful product, but AirTag is gradually becoming Apple’s biggest scandal this year.

AirTags is a very useful and easy to use product with many functions as advertised. Unfortunately, that’s exactly the problem. While these are great accessories for tracking the location of your keys, they can also be easily abused to track others. As soon as AirTag launched, there were concerns that bad guys would use it to spy on someone, and this is no longer a theory because it has been and is happening.

In December last year, York regional police (Canada) said investigators had identified a new method being used by thieves to track the expensive vehicles they intend to steal. that is taking advantage of the ability of AirTag. They use AirTag to track the vehicle coming to the victim’s home and then steal it when it is parked in front of the house.

Sports Illustrated model Brooks Nader has warned women to be careful after discovering her location was being tracked by a stranger using an Apple AirTag.

On social networks is also full of sharing about someone being tracked by strange AirTag.

There are also some cases of not being tracked for nefarious purposes. For example, a young girl whose mother secretly put an AirTag in the car for fear of her missing child, or a girl who uses a rented car and the owner of the car installs the device without notifying it. However, according to the New York Times interview, all the respondents experienced a state of fear and even reported to the police.

Apple has been marketing its products for the past few years as a way to give users more peace of mind about their lives, such as the health features on the Apple Watch. With AirTag, it has the same potential for life support, but comes with a bigger downside.

This year, we’re sure to see more instances of AirTags being used in nefarious ways. It can turn out to be a product remembered for its terrifying shortcomings.

Apple has worked to improve the way it detects AirTags that don’t belong to a legitimate user, but these messages have proven to be buggy and often wait too long to alert users.

Add to that the fact that Apple doesn’t seem to take the safety and privacy of Android users as seriously as iOS, as Android users have no way of detecting them when hidden, other than to wait long enough to AirTag emits a sound. It took a long time before Apple released an app for Android, but there wasn’t any setting to schedule automatic scanning, so the only way to use it was to manually open it every time you wanted to scan. , that’s when you were in fear of being tracked by AirTag.

The AirTag isn’t the only or first device with tracking capabilities. However, according to security researchers, AirTag is a particularly serious threat, as Apple makes every iOS device part of a network for AirTag to use and report location. With the popularity of Apple devices, tracking with AirTag will be very accurate.

Regardless of what Apple updates to iOS to address AirTag issues, Android’s vast ecosystem will keep the protections out of reach of many of the people at risk of being targeted.

In response to incidents of AirTag being abused for tracking, Apple often talks about how it values ​​the safety of its customers and that customers should contact local police for help. “If users feel they are at risk, they are encouraged to contact local law enforcement, so that they can work with Apple to make any information available about the unknown AirTag. “, an Apple spokesman said.

For such a potentially risky nascent product category, it’s hard to accept how Apple justifies the continued sale of AirTag. Apple delivered exactly what it promised with AirTag’s capabilities, but didn’t consider the full range of direct consequences of AirTag’s capabilities.

Reference: TechCrunch