Apple Sued by Women After Exes Use AirTags to Stalk Them

Apple is facing a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco by two women, one of which claims her ex-boyfriend used an AirTag to track her without her consent, reports Bloomberg.

Since their release in April 2021, the use of Apple's AirTags has raised concerns among privacy groups and law enforcement that the trackers could be used for illegal tracking. Apple has built several safeguards to protect against unwanted tracking, but according to the new lawsuit, those safeguards are "inadequate."

The lawsuit, filed on Monday, claims that the safeguards in place, which include alerting iPhone users if an unknown ‌AirTag‌ is found to be following them, are "woefully inadequate, and do little, if anything, to promptly warn individuals if they are being tracked." The other woman in the lawsuit says her husband placed an ‌AirTag‌ in her child's backpack in order to track her. The two women are requesting an unspecified amount of damages and accusing Apple of releasing an unsafe product.

An ex-boyfriend of one of the women who filed the lawsuit planted an AirTag in the wheel well of her car and was able to find out where she had moved to avoid his harassment, according to the proposed class-action complaint filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco. The other woman said her estranged husband tracked her movements by placing an AirTag in her child's backpack.

Apple has addressed concerns that AirTags could be used for unwanted tracking, including updates announced in February 2021, which included improved detection for unknown AirTags, louder AirTags alerts, and more. "‌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," Apple said in a February 2021 press release. "Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of ‌AirTag‌," it continued.

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