“These things are very effective, and they’re very low cost and readily available,” Moriarty said. The bill would make tracking someone using a digital device without their consent a fourth-degree crime, which is a felony and can result in an 18-month prison sentence. The bills that have popped up in state legislatures all take the same general approach - explicitly making it illegal to track someone with AirTags or similar devices.ĭemocratic New Jersey Assemblyman Paul Moriarty signed on to sponsor the New Jersey bill after seeing reports of AirTag abuse. “When you leave your house, when you’re even just at home, because now somebody decided to do this, ‘Do they know where I live?’ I don’t even know how specific AirTags get so I’m like, ‘Do they know my apartment number?’” Singling out digital trackers “It’s incredibly anxiety inducing,” said Mathias. In the meantime, reports of AirTag misuse continue to mount.
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But many of these changes apply only to iPhone users people who have Android phones must download Apple’s Tracker Detect app to receive alerts about unknown AirTags.Īsked by Grid to comment on the issue, an Apple spokesperson referred back to the company’s February statement announcing the safety upgrades. It announced a set of safety-related upgrades in February - including a message warning anyone setting up an AirTag that it should only be used to track their own belongings, making alerts that an AirTag is nearby louder and more noticeable, and notifying a person earlier that an unknown AirTag or other Apple device may be traveling with them. Previous reports found that at least 19 states currently have explicit laws against electronic tracking.Īpple has tried to make it harder to abuse AirTags in this way. But those bills would do little to help people at the time they are being tracked. Similar draft legislation is circulating in Pennsylvania.
Lawmakers in Ohio and New Jersey have introduced bills that would criminalize tracking people unknowingly. Now, a handful of state legislatures are stepping into the ongoing safety debate with legislation designed to fill gaps in their criminal codes revealed by AirTag abuse. But the phone notification she received included a map of her movements over the course of the evening, which disappeared as soon as she changed her phone settings to disable the tracking. Since their introduction in April 2021, AirTags have been misused by thieves, stalkers and even murderers. But after reading Twitter threads detailing similar cases, she began to suspect that someone was using a different Apple product - AirTags, designed to help people track their belongings - to follow her movements. At first, Danielle Mathias wasn’t aware anything was amiss.īut after an evening out in Washington, D.C., a couple of weeks ago, a strange notification popped up on her phone - warning her that someone was using Apple’s Find My app to track her location, ostensibly via a pair of AirPod headphones.
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