LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas — Earlier this year, THV11 investigated concerns over tracking people with Apple AirTags.
An Arkansas woman we spoke with said she experienced this, and it took her sense of security away.
Now, Apple has updated its software to prevent this very thing.
THV11's Ashley Godwin asked her coworkers, Sarah Horbacewicz and Tyler Cass, for permission to hide Apple AirTags on their person to see if she could successfully track them.
The AirTags were hidden in their cars and among their belongings.
The goal was to see if Ashley could find them as they went through their day and to see if they would get a notification that they were being followed.
During Ashley's first time pairing an Apple AirTag to her phone, a message popped up— it was a warning that the device is meant to track belongings, and using it to track people without consent is a crime in many areas. It also said the device is designed to be detected by victims and allows law enforcement to find the owner.
Once Sarah left the news station, we started to learn just how accurate the location software actually is.
We were able to view a location instantly. We drove to the spot where the AirTag last connected but didn't see her. When we checked in with the device again, it pinged to a different area. Once we got to the new address, we tested the "directions" feature seeing how close it would lead us to the car, and it gave us the exact coordinates.
"You guys found us fast and you found us before I knew anything about it," said Sarah Horbacewicz. "Seeing you here versus knowing that is theoretically possible are two very different things."
We tried the experiment again, and paired the AirTag to an older iPhone and put it directly on THV11's sports reporter Tyler Cass.
He kept his wallet with him for several hours and waited to see if there was a notification that the device was with him. Back at the station, Ashley tried to check in on the device to see if it was connecting. It was silent and showed the device was still in the building.
To check the software, Ashley activated the sound alert. and it turned out that the AirTag we were tracking was one at the news station, and Tyler's wasn't paired to any phones.
We thought the experiment was a dud, but when he got back he told us he got a notification that the AirTag was with him. It even showed him a map of where he had been.
What bothered him was that his phone detected the AirTag fairly quickly, but didn't notify him until hours later.
"I got the notification a little after 8 p.m. that the AirTag was there, but in that notification, it tells me the AirTag was first detected at 3:56 p.m., so my phone knew there was an AirTag tracking me that I may or may not have known about for 4 hours," said Cass.
We wanted to go even further by seeing how long an AirTag could be without its owner before it activated a sound alert.
We put the AirTag in a car that was driven around for several days.
After four days, the AirTag was not heard by the person driving the car even though Apple designed the new security measure with one of the loudest tones to make it easily findable.
And finally, we used the "Tracker Detect" app to see how well it worked to help Android users find AirTags near you.
We used two Android phones and both detected unknown AirTags, but the alert sound wasn't very loud and didn't last long.
We used several iPhones to see if a phone would show the information of an unknown AirTag and how to report it— which is another updated security feature. Out of six phones, only one worked the way Apple described it should.
Like any technology, it is not always reliable. That goes for the tracking capabilities on the Apple AirTag as well as its safety guards, like the notifications and sound alerts.
We reached out to Apple about our findings but did not receive specific answers back.
Keep in mind, that tracking someone with a device like this is technically not illegal according to Arkansas law unless it can be proven with additional charges of harassment or stalking.