AirTags have been designed by Apple to help you find your personal items (bag, wallet, keyring). Some smart kids might be tempted to hijack their primary function to track you during your travels. Here is a solution to find out if an AirTag is following you and how to deactivate it..
What is the AirTag used for?
The Air Tag is a very powerful little device capable of locating your lost items. Sold for less than 40 euros, this Bluetooth beacon can be very easily attached to any object (keys, luggage). The information collected by the beacon is then centralized by the Find My application on your iPhone.
You will be able to locate your personal belongings very easily and even sound your AirTag via the built-in speaker to better locate it. This last option is very useful for locating a lost object at home. Those who are messy like me will be what I'm talking about..
Obviously worried parents, jealous husbands or stalkers could be tempted to use this tracker to follow the movements of a person without his knowledge. For that it would be enough to slip an AirTag in a bag or in a car without the consent of the person then to follow his position on his iPhone.
There are also several connected objects on the market with similar technical characteristics. These small GPS boxes sometimes taking the appearance of a watch are generally used to monitor the activity of children (or animals) outside the house. Below is a guide to find lost iPhone..
Think an AirTag is tracking you?
AirTags were designed to track and locate lost objects and not individuals. However, a malicious person could take advantage of this technology to locate you. This is why Apple has put in place all kinds of protection to inform the victim that an AirTag is following it.
For example, if the Find Find app detects an AirTag that doesn't belong to you near you, your iPhone will notify you immediately. You will thus receive a Detection of an AirTag message following your movements.
- Immediately click on the message
- Read the text carefully and then press the continue button
- Press the play sound button to start the locate process
- The malicious AirTag will beep
- Let yourself be guided by the sound to find it
- If the AirTag is attached to an object loaned by a friend click on the button deactivate notifications for a day. You can also if you wish to deactivate all security alerts coming from this tag
- If you don't know AirTag, click on the learn more button
- You will be able to know its serial number and know if it is declared as lost. In these cases you will receive a whole series of instructions for contacting the owner.
- Otherwise, you will need to press the Disable AirTag button and follow the instructions to block the tracking system.
- At the end of the process you will be asked to remove the AirTag battery to completely deactivate it.
If you don't have an iPhone, don't panic. The beacon automatically starts ringing as soon as it is out of range of the phone used to configure it. You should also know that unlike a GPS beacon, the updating of the position is not done in real time. For example, it is impossible to follow the movement of a person on a map.
