In a new kind of digital fraud, an Ahmedabad woman found a tracking device placed in her car stealthily by someone to stalk her.
The 36-year-old businesswoman from Krishnanagar filed a complaint with Cybercrime police, saying that someone had hidden an AirTag, a tracking device, in her car to stalk her. According to police officers, they have identified a business rival as being behind the stalking using the tracking device.
The coat-button-sized AirTag, launched in April 2021, is a Bluetooth tracking device to find keys, backpacks, wallets or any other thing to which it is attached. The device does this by showing its location on a map or by playing a sound.
The complainant, a realty developer, in her FIR said when she was driving her car towards her office on June 27, she saw a notification on her iPhone saying “AirTag found moving with you”. The next day, when she was moving in her car, she saw that notification again. On June 29, it appeared again and she asked her driver about it. Her driver clicked on the notification and a message popped up saying, “Your current location can be seen by the owner of this AirTag”. She then realised that someone was stalking her, after which she complained to Cybercrime police on July 1.
The notifications were part of the product’s built-in anti-stalking feature.
The complainant said she had taken her car to a service station in Bopal and got it checked thoroughly. During this, she found an AirTag hidden in the cover of its passenger seat.
The AirTag had been stuck there with tape. On July 8, she got her car back from the service station. The next day, she could not find the device there.
A Cybercrime police officer said a man acquainted with the woman had placed the device there to track her. Police have caught the accused.
