Woman discovers boyfriend planted Apple AirTag in car to track her
CHICAGO - An Australian woman made a shocking discovery when she learned that her own boyfriend placed an Apple AirTag on her car to track her movements.
The woman, who went by the name Rachel when speaking with 7News Australia, said that she was running several errands on Feb. 10 when she received a message on her iPhone that she was being tracked.
"I got a notification that an AirTag was tracking my location," Rachel said. "I was doing some shopping throughout the day and I continued to get the notifications, but I had no idea where they were coming from."
After receiving the notification, the 19-year-old woman from Melbourne said that she felt "sick" to her stomach and continued to try to find the AirTag, looking through her car, but couldn't find the Apple tracking device.
"It was so frustrating I kept looking and looking and I couldn’t find it anywhere," Rachel said. "Then I thought the only person that had been in or near my car was my boyfriend."
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Apple AirTags are devices meant to keep track of personal belongings in the event they are lost, but have been used for nefarious purposes, such as tracking would-be victims.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 14, 2022: Discussion of Apple AirTags by Washington Post reporter Geoff Fowler in San Francisco, California Monday March 14, 2022. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Rachel decided that she was going to confront her boyfriend of six months, who initially denied placing the AirTag in her car. However, he confessed to placing the AirTag in her car's wheel hub when she was about to file a police report, according to the report.
"It wasn’t until I told him I was going to the police to report it that he finally confessed," Rachel said. "I felt so violated and I was in a state of shock."
"It just blew my mind that someone I trusted so much could do something like this," she added.
After the incident, Rachel broke up with her boyfirend, who has tried to defend planting the AirTag in her car.
"He told me he had been hurt in the past and didn’t want to risk getting hurt again," Rachel said. "But I wasn’t buying it. I decided I needed to get out of the relationship before the behavior continued or even escalated."
"It’s really just so scary to think about what could have happened or what his intentions were," Rachel added.
A spokesperson for Apple has previously pointed Fox News Digital to a recent update and stated that it works with law enforcement to track down errant AirTags.
"Every AirTag has a unique serial number, and paired AirTags are associated with an Apple ID," the Apple spokesperson said. "Apple can provide the paired account details in response to a subpoena or valid request from law enforcement."
Fox News Digital reached out to Apple for comment.