Someone attached an AirTag to my car while I was in a bar
This is news just because it&#x27;s an Apple device being used for something that was already trivially possible.<p>GPS trackers designed to be magnet-attached to a car which report their location via cell signal cost ~$20 on Amazon. You then tend to need to pay for either a SIM card or a subscription to the device maker&#x27;s service 
-- bringing you up to about the cost of an AirTag. These are <i>much</i> harder to detect, as you might imagine.<p>The Apple device does <i>try</i> to make itself less useful for abusive purposes. Nearby iPhones will notify you if there&#x27;s an AirTag following you. Apple released an Android app to scan for them (manually -- it&#x27;d probably be nice if they released something that did the same passive scanning as iPhones get, but there&#x27;s battery trade-offs there, and obviously most people won&#x27;t <i>have</i> that app). AirTags will also beep if they&#x27;re separated from their owner.<p>In fact, this is news we&#x27;re hearing about <i>because</i> of the steps Apple took to make it harder to use these devices for bad purposes. The tweet author got a warning about the device following them.<p>It&#x27;s tricky to make something that lets you find where you dropped your keys while walking the dog that can&#x27;t also be used for nefarious purposes.