An Apple AirTag Photo: Daniel Romero / Unsplash
In April last year, the tech company Apple released a new device called the AirTag - a 2cm-wide round metal tag billed as "a private and secure way to easily locate the items that matter most".
Yet due to its creators' lack of forethought, the AirTag is now being used by stalkers as an easy way to track their victims.
Nine to Noon tech correspondent Mark Pesce Photo: University of Technology Sydney
AirTags can be tracked via Apple's global sensor network Find My which is made possible by the massive amount of iPhones floating around, tech expert Mark Pesce tells Kathryn Ryan.
"[The AirTag is] sending out a signal that pretty much any iPhone that's near it can pick up and then will end seamlessly through Apple's network and find its way to you."
Although the AirTag is a clever idea, the 'safe and secure' part turns out to be untrue as a stalker can easily drop one of the tiny devices into the handbag or car of a person they want to follow.
In releasing a device with such dangerous potential for misuse, Apple may have overestimated the goodness of humanity, Pesce says, but he thinks it's more likely the company was blinded by the power of their own creation.
Last month Apple updated its privacy features so iPhone users are now be notified if there's an AirTag device in their vicinity that they have not personally registered, he says.
Apple's 'AirTag Found Moving With You' notification Photo: apple.com
"Your phone will go 'there's this thing near you but it's not yours. Maybe you want to take a look at it."
Despite this move, Apple is dodging responsibility for having released a powerful tracking technology that in the wrong hands is being used as a powerful stalking technology, Pesce says.
"It kind of solves the problem but doesn't get rid of the fact that Apple has introduced a global technology for tracking which is really useful to stalkers and is now showing up more and more in police reports.
"You can't separate those two - if it's a tracking tech it is a stalking tech. You can't separate them - you get both together."
If AirTag technology is shown to have facilitated a crime, the reputational damage to Apple will be immense, he says.
"Apple is a 3 trillion-dollar corporation now. They should have teams in there whose sole purpose in life is to imagine the worst possible scenario for every technology they create. That should be baked into their development process and it is a profound embarrassment that it is not."
The Apple website has instructions for disconnecting an IOS device from the Find My network
