Apple and Google announced on Tuesday that they have joined forces to create a new industry standard aimed at preventing lost-item trackers like Apple’s AirTag from being utilized to track individuals without their permission.
While iPhones are already equipped with a feature that allows users to detect unfamiliar AirTags in their vicinity, the joint announcement on May 2 suggests that a similar AirTag-detecting feature will soon be available to Android users, per CNBC.
Apple’s initiative to create a tracker-detecting feature was prompted by reports of people stalking others using AirTags, practically as soon as the device was first released in 2021.
The Apple AirTag is a device that enables users to locate their lost belongings, such as a wallet or a set of keys.
By sticking it to an object, a user can either use their phone to ask the device to emit a sound in order to help locate the object when lost or track its location via an app. The range is similar to that of any Bluetooth device.
Other similar lost-item trackers for Android users have been developed by both Samsung and Tile.
In a study of police records from just eight police precincts last year, Vice discovered that 150 incidents of AirTag stalking and harassment were logged in just eight months.
The Dallas Express’ coverage of stalkers using AirTags began over a year ago.
Recently, Grapevine Police Department investigated the case of a woman who found an AirTag on her vehicle, as reported by The Dallas Express. She had the anti-tracking feature on her iPhone and received an alert that an AirTag was nearby. She immediately contacted the police.
Apple and Google aim to develop their new anti-tracking tool by the end of 2023 so it can be implemented in future versions of iOS and Android, per CNBC News. It will also allow the makers of other trackers to create similar features for iPhones and Androids.
In the meantime, Apple is facing a class action lawsuit that was filed by two women at the end of last year, reported The New York Times.
The plaintiffs — Lauren Hughes of Travis County, Texas, and an anonymous woman from Brooklyn, New York — claimed that the company continued to provide “woefully inadequate” safeguards to prevent malicious use of the device despite being aware of the danger they present, the NYT reported.
Both women claim to be victims of domestic violence that were stalked by their former partners, who were using the Bluetooth device.
Of the 34,809 crimes that have been logged so far in Dallas by the Dallas Police Department this year, 4,530 have been family violence crimes, per the City’s open crime analytics dashboard.
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