Apple AirTags being used by thieves to steal cars — what you can do

Apple tree AirTags being used by thieves to steal cars — what you tin do

An Apple AirTag that seems to have been retrieved from a hiding place inside a car's bumper.

An Apple AirTag that seems to take been retrieved from a hiding place inside a auto's bumper. (Paradigm credit: York Regional Police force, Ontario)

Automobile thieves are using Apple AirTags to steal cars, written report the York Regional Police (YRP) in the suburbs north of Toronto.

According to the YRP's public service announcement yesterday (Dec. 2), the thieves await for desirable cars in public places, such as shopping-mall parking lots. When they find a car they want, they secretly place an AirTag somewhere on the car that the owner might not detect, such as within the gas-make full flap door, in a tow hitch, inside a bumper or in an external electrical port.

AirTag Vehicle External Electrical Connection Port — An Apple AirTag placed inside a coach'southward external electric connection port and hidden past the port's flap door. (Paradigm credit: York Regional Police, Ontario)

In that location accept been at least 5 such incidents in the area since September, says the YRP.

"We've started to find a new tendency emerging in the motorcar-theft industry," said Detective Jeff McKercher in a YouTube clip posted by the YRP yesterday (Dec. 2). "It'southward these tagging devices using GPS and Bluetooth engineering, and they're using that to install on dissimilar vehicles that they're looking to steal."

(In a more ominous development, many women across the Us have reported being stalked past rogue AirTags, and not all the incidents can be explained every bit related to car thefts.)

Later that night, the car thieves utilise the AirTag to rails the vehicle to the owner's home and steal the automobile from the driveway. They break into the car using screwdrivers or similar tools, plug a mechanic'south electronic tool into the car's on-board diagnostics port to reprogram the key settings, and drive away.

"By using an iPhone, they tin ever tell where the vehicle's location is," McKercher added. "They can almost wait and commit their theft on their watch, maybe subsequently on in the nighttime, and it always gives them the location of where that vehicle is being stored at the fourth dimension."

McKercher said that Lexus, Toyota and Honda crossover SUVs currently seemed to be the most desirable for automobile thieves in the Toronto suburbs, along with the eternally pop Ford F-Series trucks.

The YRP never uses the word "Apple" in the public-service declaration and two related YouTube clips that were posted yesterday (Dec. ii). Simply the images and language make it pretty articulate exactly what kind devices they're talking well-nigh.

"Car thieves are thinking differently," begins the other YouTube clip, which almost looks like an Apple tree promotional video. "Typically, thieves roam residential neighborhoods (sic) looking for specific models of vehicles. Now they are roaming parking lots and leaving a tracking device called an AirTag on target vehicles. Thieves then rails the vehicle using the AirTag and steal it at a later time."

An AirTag will start to chirp if it'south been separated from its paired iPhone for betwixt 8 and 24 hours. That withal gives auto thieves plenty of time and the chirps might not be audible over the noise from a car's engine.

Your iPhone is supposed to be able to alert yous when a "mystery" AirTag not paired to your iPhone comes home with you lot. Simply that doesn't ever seem to work, and people who don't have iPhones won't become those alerts.

Nosotros reached out to Apple tree for comment and were directed to this Apple support page that tells you what to do if you find someone else'southward AirTag in your property or y'all hear chirps from an AirTag that's been separated from its possessor.

To be off-white, auto owners tin also utilise AirTags to recover stolen vehicles. FoxNews.com's Gary Gastelu ran tests over the summertime and constitute that AirTags were just as effective at finding lost vehicles as car-tracking devices that tin costs hundreds of dollars to install or come with subscription fees. A single AirTag costs $29, and a pack of 4 costs $99.

In August, Dan Guido, a digital-security researcher, told his Twitter followers how AirTags helped him recover a stolen electric scooter. But he warned that the scooter thief seemed to have noticed that there was an AirTag subconscious on the scooter (Guido had placed one in an obvious place, and another hidden inside the handlebars) and tried to remove it.

My scooter was stolen terminal week. Unknown to the thief, I hid two Airtags inside it. I was able to employ the Apple Find My network and UWB direction finding to recover the scooter today. Hither'southward how it all went down:Baronial 10, 2022

How to lessen your take chances of AirTag car theft

Back in Ontario, the York Regional Police offered these tips to car owners:

Park your car in your garage if you have one, not in the driveway
If you lot don't take a garage, and then park the auto as close to your house as possible
Utilize a third-party steering-wheel lock
Put a third-party lock on the OBD-Two data port
Check your vehicle regularly for tracking devices

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has likewise been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul commuter, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security infinite for more than fifteen years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom'due south Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown upwardly in random TV news spots and even chastened a panel give-and-take at the CEDIA abode-technology briefing. Yous can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.