AirTag — a hassle-free device or a threat to public safety?
The objective is to assess how many instances when AirTags are used for misconduct and committing crimes and explore the impact of AirTags on public safety.
Background Significance
In 2021, Apple released a new line of products called AirTags. AirTag is a device that is as small as a half-dollar sized and is equipped with a speaker, Bluetooth antenna, and a battery. AirTag is described to help users track and find their items. It sounds like an amazing device to own to keep track of stuff. It is beneficial since you can retrieve your wallet in case you left it on the bus, and you don’t have to worry about if someone out there can take advantage of your personal information. However, there have been reports to the police about AirTags being used to stalk and steal cars. The purpose of this research is to see if AirTag should be made available on the market and how this product impacts public safety.
AirTag is only $29, and it is a cheap option for stalkers to stalk victims without them knowing. AirTag is so small and can be attached to cars without the victims knowing. Attaching the AirTags to cars is the easiest way to track a person or even just pop it in purses that stalkers can do without getting caught. Police records have shown that Apple AirTags have been used to stalk women across the country. 50 cases out of 150 police reports regarding AirTags were from women reporting to the police that they were being tracked by an AirTag that they don’t know. And one major theme behind these reports involved domestic violence. 25 women out of 50 cases can identify that the AirTags were being used by their current or previous partners to stalk them. Other cases involve car thefts and robberies. The police also don’t know how to respond to incidents involving AirTags. And the current jurisdiction and laws do not have clear information on what to do with incidents using AirTags. Without appropriate disciplinary action, the number of cases involving stalking with AirTags would be surely on the rise.
Apple has been trying to provide more safety features but there are still loopholes around them. Apple released an update where AirTags will start beeping if the AirTags are far from their linked devices within a day. However, the sound is not loud enough to find the AirTags, and the AirTags are small which makes it hard to find them. And Android users won’t even know if they are being tracked by an AirTag or not. Even though Apple released an Android app that scans for AirTags, not everyone will know about this problem and download it and actively use it.
A study done by Secure Mobile Networking Lab of the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany reveals that Apple’s tracking protection fell short in terms of notifying its users of potential unwanted tracking. AirGuard is an Android app that is created by researchers at the university to discover the limitations of iOS tracking protection. AirGuard detected way more trackers compared to Apple tracking detection. This raised a concern regarding the actual effectiveness of Apple’s tracking detection system.
There is also a potential that this device can be used for human trafficking. Even more reasons for a study in place to assess how AirTags are used up to their purposes. My proposal for this research is to analyze qualitative data (such as interviews and surveys) to further understand the implications of AirTags.
Research design, methods, and schedule
Interviews: For this research, it would be necessary to cooperate with police departments to collect reports that are regarding the AirTags. This way we validate that these cases involving AirTags ACTUALLY happened and made the people who reported felt so unsafe that they had to call the police. When the victims report their incidents with AirTags, they would be asked for consent if their reports can be released to this study and if they are willing to be interviewed for the research. Conducting interviews would provide more insights and opinions of those who were tracked by AirTags and understand what mechanisms help them find out that they were being tracked. For the participants that agree to be interviewed, the following questions will be asked:
- Do you know about the existence of AirTags before the incident?
- How did you find out you were being tracked by AirTags? Did you receive an alert in Find My app (if the interviewee has an iPhone) or the Android equivalent app? Or did you notice sound coming from the AirTags?
- Do you personally own AirTags? If yes, what are your opinions on them? (Follow-up questions if the interviewee answers yes to this question: How have AirTags helped you in other ways? Can you think of any suggestions that would make AirTags better?)
Surveys: Online surveys will also be distributed to collect the public’s perception of AirTags. Even though the credibility of the answers to the survey can be questionable, it can give a lot of data and insight into how the public view it and if they were aware such scenarios can happen. Online surveys can be quite tricky since there is no way to validate their answers, but it is also a good way to get data and insights from the public and their opinions. Another caveat that could potentially affect the trustworthiness of the answers from the survey is that there is a possibility of responses are only from people who have had bad experiences with AirTags. Therefore, the survey could paint a picture of AirTags being more negative than it actually is.
Some survey questions that I can think of:
- Do you know about AirTag before?
- What do you know about AirTag?
- Do you own an AirTag? Or any other competitors of AirTags?
- Do you know about stories of people being tracked by these devices?
- Were there ever any instances where you receive an alert that you are being tracked by an AirTag? If so, can you describe what happened?
- What is your opinion on AirTags and other tracking competitors?
- Is there any suggestions to improve AirTags’ safety mechanisms?
- Do you think these tracking devices should be continued? Please explain your answer.
For qualitative data, coding can be performed to “closely examine your data and count the number of times a concept or theme reoccurs, essentially turning qualitative data into quantitative data”. The qualitative collected from this research will be coded to find out how many times a theme or keyword is mentioned in all the interviews and the survey. After coding, we will see a nice picture of the underlying theme when it comes to the perception of AirTags.
Suppositions and implications
The results of the study can be interpreted in many ways. If the results come back saying that there are many cases where people are aware of AirTags tracking them, that can mean that the Apple safety features do work. However, it will also imply that the instances of the misuse of these devices are concerning. Since the current laws and jurisdictions do not keep up with new problems being developed along with the current technology, I hope the results from this research can help jurisdictions to make laws regarding modern tracking devices to improve public safety.
I understand that stalking will happen no matter if AirTags exist or not. Stalking has been always a problem; in my opinion, AirTags have made the problem worse. Through this study, I hope it can reveal how much AirTags contribute to the stalking problem. However, this is not a problem only relating to Apple. The conversation also includes other competitors’ devices that use the same tracking protocols. There should be a comprehensive study of AirTags and all tracking devices to understand their impacts and implications.
