It’s quite frustrating when we lose keys, wallet or purse and technological advances have come to our rescue with things like the Apple Air Tag – a small quarter-sized piece of technology that can be put on a key chain, in a wallet or purse or any number of ways for items we don’t want to misplace. The Air Tag can be paired with your iPhone, sorry for all those non-iPhone owners out there, so that you can use the “Find My” app to find your lost or misplaced item. Way cool and so reassuring to not worry about having to search under the couch cushions or rearrange your house to find your keys! The best part of this solution is how inexpensive the Air Tag is, $29 today on Amazon! Now comes the bad part of technology…criminals will exploit it to their advantage!!!
Security Mindset Matters!
In 2021, news articles started to appear discussing how people were tracked and victimized by a criminal using an Air Tag. Quite disturbing and unsettling to say the least. The “MO”, method of operation, is that the criminal will attach an Air Tag to your vehicle somewhere you don’t usually look, like behind your license plate or in a wheel well. Now this $29 piece of tracking technology is going to be used to track YOU! Consider this scenario, your spouse or child park at the local mall to go shopping. A criminal in the outskirts of the parking lot sees them leave the car and walk in without any concerns to enjoy a day of shopping. The criminal now approaches the car and sticks the Air Tag behind the license plate and leaves the area. As your spouse or child leaves the mall with the spoils of a mall warrior, the criminal is now tracking them home.
Situation Awareness At All Times!
Again, sorry to the non-iPhone users because you will not get this notification unless you’re using a 3rd party app specifically for identifying trackers. If you are like most people when pesky notifications pop up, like at a traffic light and you get notified of all the wifi’s in the area, you probably just clear the notifications. Time to reconsider that practice and look for things like an unknown Air Tag “moving with you”.
Air Tag Tracking Roadtest – IT WORKS!
VGSC tested this Air Tag tracking to really see if it works, and IT DOES!! We purchased an Air Tag placed it in my wife’s car when she went into town. I was at home but knew where she was by tracking my Air Tag on my iPhone.While it doesn’t seem to give the “live” tracking where you can see it moving down the road, it seemed to ping locations about 120 seconds behind my wife’s actual movement. That’s still a decent track for a criminal to follow especially if they already know what kind of vehicle they ‘tagged’.
Awareness and The Criminal Target
There are a thousand ways this Air Tag technology can be used by someone with bad intentions. They are always watching people to identify potential victims. Most people are not thinking in terms of how they could be victimized or what signs they are displaying that may lead a criminal to select them to be their next victim. The practice of situation awareness is not really used by the average person but good situation awareness and an understanding of how to protect yourself is becoming more important every day.
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