Woman issues warning after ‘being tracked’ by Apple air tag in her bag

TikTok user claims she found the AirTag in her handbag

(Getty Images)

A woman in Manchester has claimed she found an Apple AirTag in her handbag one day when she returned home from a supermarket shopping trip and has subsequently issued a warning to other women.

The woman, who goes by @molly3232 on TikTok, shared a series of videos on the platform explaining she initially didn’t know what the coin-shaped device was.

Apple AirTags are small tracking devices used to keep track of various belongings.

After discovering one in her handbag, the woman claimed she was convinced that someone had placed it there to track her wherabouts.

In one of the videos, she said: “Girls if you’re listening and this has happened to you before, just be careful.

“If you ever see one of these AirTags in your bag, be careful, go and soak it in water like me and put it in the grass.”

TikTok users replied in the comments warning her about the safety risks of walking around with an AirTag that is not yours.

@molly32320

Get rid of it!

♬ original sound - molly32320

One user wrote: “It’s a tracker they can find out where you live go to the police and report it hun. Please stay safe [sic].”

Another added: “It’s an AirTag so if u have that with u then it tracks your location but it’s built to track your bag if you’ve lost it etc.”

In a subsequent video, the TikTok user explained that she had soaked the AirTag in water in the hope of de-activating it before throwing it away in a patch of grass far away from her house.

A spokesperson for Apple provided The Independent with the following statement, which can be read in full here:

“We condemn any malicious use of any of our products. Unwanted tracking has long been a societal problem, and we took this concern seriously in the design of AirTag. It’s why the Find My network is built with privacy in mind, uses end-to-end encryption, and why we innovated with the first-ever proactive system to alert you of unwanted tracking.

“We hope this starts an industry trend for others to also provide these sorts of proactive warnings in their products. We have been actively working with law enforcement on all AirTag-related requests we’ve received. Based on our knowledge and on discussions with law enforcement, incidents of AirTag misuse are rare.”