Video: nine million views for AirTags on TikTok

Imagine driving quietly in your Dodge Charger when a startling alert sounds on your iPhone. Depending on the device,an AirTag tracks you. Via the Locate app, the eponymous network is in fact capable of identifying potential beacons close to you when they do not belong to you and have been following your movements for a certain time.

This is what happened to a young TikTok user, Ashely Scarlett, according tohis own words to discover right here in pictures. Immediately, she would have decided to ring the little accessory in order to find its position. Bingo: this one was actually hidden behind the license plate. He allegedly got in there in just a few minutes, when the driver was parked in a parking lot. So, info or fakery?

A more than suspicious adventure

It actually seems that this misadventure is more than fictionalized. And this for several potential reasons:

• the videographer is also equipped with an iPhone, but it was only her friend's that warned of the presence of the AirTag and not her own. For this to be the case, this would mean that Bluetooth or Find My have been manually disabled from Settings (not Control Center). However, only experienced users generally know how to carry out these manipulations.
• an almost identical fact had already made the headlines on TikTok a little earlier.
• Newsweek, who reported the incident, contacted local police after Ashley claimed to have warned them. No trace of the call in question according to officials. What's more, Ashely did not respond to the newspaper's requests even though her main objective seems to be the quest for popularity.
• the last four digits of a phone number were displayed on Find My after detecting the AirTag. We know that buyers of the device can indeed provide instructions on how to find its owner in the event of loss, but this would really not be very wise when trying to be discreet.

Justice can be taken

As Ryan Railsback, in charge of communications at the local Riverside police station, recalls,it is completely illegal to track someone's movements in this way without their consent. If this time the case took place in Los Angeles County, the law is also similar in France.

With the serial number of each AirTag,Apple can - upon request - reveal to the authorities who it owns. It is therefore better to avoid playing cat and mouse in this way, at the risk of finding yourself prosecuted for violation of privacy.