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UPDATED

How to find, block, and

disable an unknown
AirTag moving with you
Apple’s AirTag tracker has a lot of positive
uses, but you might be concerned that
you’re being tracked by an AirTag, if you are
here's what to do.

By Karen Haslam
Editor, Macworld DEC 8, 2022 8:30 AM PST

Image: IDG

TABLE OF CONTENTS

How an AirTag can track you

How to know you are being tracked by an AirTag

How to find an AirTag that’s tracking you

How to stop an AirTag tracking you

2. Get the AirTag’s serial number and associated

phone number

The AirTag from Apple is a compact tracking

device that has an extremely long life and precise
locating ability in the right circumstances. Unlike
a GPS tracker, which requires cell service and
may drain a battery quickly, an AirTag relies on
the distributed Find My network of iPhones,
iPads, and Macs that hundreds of millions of
people around the world carry with them, and
uses Bluetooth LE to signal that hardware.

While there are a thousand positive and

legitimate ways to use an AirTag, it can be
abused when someone tracks you without your
knowledge, which potentially exposes you to a
dangerous situation. For example, back in
December 2021, the York regional police
department in Canada announced that AirTags
were being placed in hidden areas of target cars
parked in public, and then tracked to the driver’s
residence, where the cars are stolen while
parked in the driveway. In another incident, a
woman claimed that she found an AirTag hidden
in her wheel well after her iPhone alerted her to
an AirTag moving with her. State governments in
New York and Pennsylvania have issued
warnings about the misuse of AirTags and similar
tracking devices.

Incidents like this are rare (at the time, York police
said there had been five AirTag-involved thefts
out of 2,000 in the region). Apple has put some
safeguards in place so that an iPhone, iPad, and
AirTag provide varying alerts and information if
one is moving with you and the owner who
paired the AirTag with their iPhone or iPad isn’t
nearby. There are tools built into the iPhone to
find and disable AirTags as well as an Android
app that will scan for AirTags nearby.

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You probably know already if you’re a candidate

for involuntary tracking: someone in your life (or
formerly so) or a family member may show up at
unexpected times in unexpected places when
they have no reason to know you’re there. They
may comment in person, via email, or otherwise
about your activities or whereabouts. Or you’re in
the middle of or long past a nasty break-up of a
relationship or marriage or have broken off
contact with a parent or family members.

Whatever the case, if you’re in need of help,

consult the National Domestic Violence
Hotline or more specialized resources for victims
of domestic abuse, stalking, and other violence
listed by the National Coalition Against Domestic
Violence. Local law enforcement, the FBI, or
national police in other countries also offer
resources.

How an AirTag can track you

Because AirTags don’t register proximity except
to the owner, the only way it can be used to
gather information about you is if it travels with
you. An AirTag in your home, office, or classroom
won’t reveal anything to someone trying to keep
tabs. That reduces the “surface area” of
unwanted surveillance because the AirTag has to
be in your clothes, wallet, or purse, something
else you’re carrying, or in a vehicle you’re in and
using exclusively or at least regularly.

If you’re traveling regularly through urban and

suburban areas or on public transportation, other
people’s devices will still pick up and relay
location information about any AirTag that’s with
you. That can include something as innocuous as
pulling over to a rest area on a highway, and
someone 50 feet away has an iPhone, or even
driving on a highway near other people who
have iPhones or iPads connected to a cellular
network.

Bluetooth LE’s range is surprisingly long. I found

that an AirTag I temporarily placed in my car,
parked two flights of stairs down from our ground
floor and about 50 feet from the house still
provided regular updates about its location via
devices I owned—not to mention those of
neighbors walking or driving by.

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Everyone’s devices participate in relaying

secured, privacy-protecting location information
about their devices and AirTags unless they opt
out of the Find My network. That makes everyone
around you a potential participant in tracking you
via an AirTag you don’t know about.

Once the AirTag is in your possession it will relay

its location to the owner via the Find My network
and other Bluetooth devices.

How to know you are being tracked

by an AirTag
Apple issues alerts to let someone know that
there’s an AirTag near them that isn’t associated
with their iCloud account. These alerts happen
after some period of time or while you’re moving
and the AirTag is moving with you.

Should an unknown AirTag be tracking you you

will see an alert that will state: “AirTag Found
Moving With You”. Apple will invite you to open
the Find My app on your iPhone to go through
various options to disable the tracking and locate
the AirTag, discussed below. (Incidentally, you
may also see an alert for other devices moving
with you, such as AirPods and other Bluetooth
trackers).

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Apple recognizes that it could be an innocent

case of having borrowed an item from someone
with an AirTag attached or inside it, so one of the
options is to Pause Tracking Notifications.

To make sure you will receive an alert like this

follow these steps:

You will need to have an iPhone or iPad running

iOS/iPadOS 14.5 or later.

1. Open the Find My app.

2. Tap the Me tab.
3. Tap Customise Tracking Notifications.
4. Make sure the Allow Notifications slider is
green (it should be by default).

Via the alert, you can see how long this AirTag
has been with you. You can also see a map of the
locations that the AirTag has been tracked in your
possession, which may give you an indication of
where you picked it up.

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wherever you go

How to find an AirTag that’s

tracking you
Luckily Apple makes it easy to locate the AirTag
that is tracking you. Here’s what to do if you have
seen a warning from Apple that an AirTag is
following.

One option is to use Apple’s Find My app to

manually scan for AirTags near you using the
Items That Can Track Me option in the Items tab.

If you have an Android phone, you can also

check for unknown AirTags moving with you
using the Tracker Detect app. It’s far less robust
than Apple’s Find My app and needs to be run
manually.

1. Play a sound to locate the AirTag

You may find that the tracking AirTag will play a

sound once it has been separated from its owner
for a time and then moves.

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This happens after what Apple calls an “extended

period of time” away from its paired iPhone or
iPad (the company has disclosed elsewhere that
this is three days). After this period, an AirTag
makes a beep whenever it’s moved. If you hear
an unexpected beep from something you’re
carrying or within your vehicle, then it’s time to
engage in the hunt for an AirTag.

The audio alert winds up being less useful than

one might hope. If a stalker or other person
engaged in surveillance can come within range
of the AirTag at least every three days, and they
know you don’t have an iPhone or iPad that’s
running 14.5 or later, they can reset that counter.
The beep that’s made isn’t ongoing or particularly
loud, and it can be muffled without blocking the
Bluetooth signal substantially.

If you haven’t heard a beep, or want to hear it

again, you can force the AirTag to play a sound.

If you have received an alert about an AirTag that

is traveling with you and want it to make a sound
follow these steps:

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1. Tap Apple’s Alert.

2. Tap Continue.
3. Tap Play Sound.

You will have the option to play the sound again.

You may find that there is no option to play a

sound, in that case, the item may no longer be
near you or it may be back in range of its owner,.

Another reason why you may not be able to find

the AirTag is that it may have changed its
identifier (which happens regularly). The
Bluetooth ID produced by an AirTag, and by all
Apple devices that participate in Find My
crowdsourcing, changes on a regular basis to
avoid becoming a reverse tracking item: if it were
persistent, then someone could track your
devices based on the “anonymous” Bluetooth ID.
That means that your iPhone or iPad has to
notice an AirTag moving with it over a relatively
short period of time.

Another possibility is that the AirTag speaker has

been disabled. After reports of people disabling
AirTag speakers, Apple announced that it would
add a notification along with the sound on an
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch it is moving with.
Apple also says it will adjust the tone sequence
that plays when a user has an unknown AirTag
traveling with them to make an unknown AirTag
easier to find. In a 2022 firmware update version
1.0.301, Apple tweaked the unwanted tracking
sound to “more easily locate an unknown AirTag.”

If you own the AirTag it is easy to locate it using

the Find My app on an iPhone or iPad to play an
audible sound on the AirTag. As part of macOS
13.1, this feature also came to the Find My app on
Macs.

2. Use Precision Finding to find the AirTag

As well as the option to play a sound the alert will

also give you the option to use Precision Finding
if that is available on your device. Your iPhone
would need to support Ultra Wideband via the U1
chip to precisely locate an AirTag, which includes
iPhone 11 and later.

If Apple’s Alert gives you the option for directions

tap Go and you should see directional arrows
pointing you in the right direction and a guide to
the distance between you and the device. This
should help you locate it.

3. Search for the AirTag

If you didn’t manage to get it to make a sound

and Precision Finding wasn’t the answer for you
you will need to look for the AirTag.

The first step is to get familiar with

what it looks like. If you haven’t seen
A an AirTag before, consult Apple’s site.
n They have a rounded white top and a
A
ir silver base, are somewhat larger than
T an American quarter or a
a dollar/pound/single unit coin in many
g
( countries, and about three to four
u times thicker.
n
d As we mentioned earlier, the AirTag
e
has to be moving with you for Apple
r
s to have sent the alert, so look inside
i things that you have with you when
d you move around:
e
)
Check pockets: In clothing, not just
Image: Apple
pockets but also check inside the
lining or anywhere it could have been
sewn in.
Check bags: Look inside purses, luggage,
messenger bags, and other items, unzip and
also feel for an AirTag that’s been placed or
sewn in.
Check belongings: Someone could have
posted you an item with an AirTag in it.
Examine your car: A car may have a
number of locations that are unreachable or
hard to check. Because an AirTag has as
long as a year’s worth of power, someone
might wrap it in cotton (to stifle the beep it
may make; see below), slit a fabric seam,
slip it in, and sew it back up. Parking your
car away from homes and businesses and
using a Bluetooth scanner can help you
pinpoint if one is in your car.

Even if someone doesn’t have access to your

home, work, school, or vehicle, and you don’t
receive mail at the address at which you live—
you might use a P.O. box or another person’s
address—someone could ship you an item with
an AirTag in it, and when you take that home,
they could have your location. If you’re in that
specific situation, you may need to examine all
packages received elsewhere before bringing
them home.

4. Find the AirTag using a Bluetooth

scanner

Because AirTag regularly emits Bluetooth signals

that Apple devices can pick up, you can use a
simple Bluetooth tracker for iOS or iPadOS to
scan the area around you and see if an AirTag is
nearby. While these tracking apps can’t identify
AirTag as such—AirTag changes its Bluetooth ID
regularly to avoid being trackable themselves—
the apps give you the lay of the landscape. That
includes the names of Bluetooth devices that do
label themselves in their broadcasts.

BLE Scanner is a limited but free app that

provides a list of Bluetooth devices your iPhone
or iPad can detect, and offers a mapping feature
that roughly sorts them by signal strength into
distance away. This is particularly useful if you’re
checking out whether a car has a hidden AirTag;
less so inside when there may be dozens of your
own and neighbors’ devices close enough to
register. Regular Bluetooth devices typically
identify themselves generically (like my “HP
OfficeJet Pro 9010 series” printer) or specifically,
as with the sharing name of your Macs, iPhones,
iPads, Apple TVs, FitBit trackers, and so on.

Bluetooth BLE Device Finder (free to download,

but $4.99 to unlock needed features) has the
advantage of letting you drill down into Bluetooth
technical details, which may give additional clues
about which devices are legitimate and not.

If you can eliminate all known Bluetooth

devices, including by powering down
B equipment that you’re unsure of, and what’s
lu left has no associated name, it can be worth
e
t looking further by hand.
o
o
t How to stop an AirTag tracking
h
s
you
c
a There are a number of ways you can stop
n the AirTag from tracking you. We’ll run
ni through them all below.
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1. Opt out of the Find My network

While you can’t stop other iPhone, iPad, and Mac