AirTag placed between car seats helps retrieve a stolen car in a twisted double robbery plot
India Today
A man in Texas found an unidentified AirTag between the seats of his newly purchased cars. The events that came to light talk a lot about Apple's location tracker and its potential misuses.
Apple came up with AirTag with a vision to keep certain belongings of iPhone users safe. At its website, it mentions these use-cases to be household keys, backpacks and similar items. But what if AirTag managed to help you retrieve your stolen car. While this may not have been the original purpose for the tracking device, AirTag can now boast of being helpful to the cause.
Case in point, Apple AirTag recently managed to bring a stolen car back to its owner in Texas. The story is not as straightforward as it may seem though. In this case, the AirTag was not originally planted by the owner to keep a track of the vehicle. In fact, the AirTag was placed carefully between the seats of the vehicle by those who stole the car from the owner and then sold it.
The idea, as per experts, was to keep tracking the vehicle until an opportunity arises to steal it back. The offenders would have then resold the vehicle with a different registration number to make more out of it.
The situation was brought to light after a person in Texas received an iPhone alert warning of an AirTag following him. As per a report by 9to5Mac, the driver reported the incident to the police, which then found an AirTag hidden between the seats of the car.
The police suspected that it was a stolen vehicle. After discovering that its identification number had been changed and checking a missing report for the used pickup truck, the suspicion was confirmed. Turns out, the thieves who had stolen the car had changed its number and sold it to the man who reported the incident, for a down payment of $800 or about Rs 60,000.
The offenders had also placed the AirTag in the vehicle, in a suspected attempt at a double robbery. Meaning that the thieves were planning to steal the car once again and sell it someplace else for more money. The AirTag was then meant to track the whereabouts of the vehicle at all times, which would have let the thieves plan a heist accordingly.
This plot was foiled though, thanks to Apple's subsequent rollout of a feature that detects unidentified AirTags around you. After complaints of such potential for stalking emerged from various parts of the world, Apple released a feature on Find My app that notifies iPhone users if an unknown AirTag (or other Find My network accessory) is seen moving with them over time. It even released an app for Android users that does the same.
