To track his partner, he hangs his Apple Watch on a wheel

In the United States, a man was arrested after tracking his partner and threatening her with death. Rather than an AirTag alerting the victim to his presence, he simply hooked his Apple Watch to the woman’s car.

In less than a year on the market, Apple’s AirTag did color a lot of ink because of the many victims of abuse of this device – a device created to be attached to objects so as not to lose them again. But the various facts have multiplied. Many individuals have hijacked an AirTag to follow a young woman home, or to help steal a car.

To limit abuse, Apple has several measures in place, but a man in the US found an easy (but slightly more expensive) way to track someone: use an Apple Watch instead. The victim, his partner, went to a shelter after death threats. She then indicated that both were using theapplication Life360 to track herself, but that she had turned it off before coming to the shelter.

An expensive method of circumventing anti-harassment measures

The shelter called the police when the woman’s partner arrived, after harassing her with SMS. Instead of entering the refuge, he crouched down next to the front wheel of the victim’s car, on the passenger side. When police inspected the vehicle, they discovered an Apple Watch attached to the wheel rim, which the man recognized as his.

Apple therefore risks having to review its copy on its anti-harassment measures. The iPhone notifies the user when a Air Tag unknown is following it, but nothing is planned for it, if it’s an Apple Watch. However, with the proliferation of connected objects, this kind of problem is likely to become more and more frequent and concern other manufacturers.