Two women sue Apple, claiming they were stalked by exes who used AirTags to track them

Two women have filed a class action suit against Apple alleging the tech giant’s AirTags are “unreasonably dangerous” products that can be used by stalkers.

The two women—Lauren Hughes of Travis County, Texas, and an unnamed Kings County, New York, woman (designated as “Jane Doe”)—filed the suit Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The two women say they filed the suit on behalf of all those who were tracked without consent by AirTags, asking the court to find Apple guilty of negligence, product liability and violating privacy rights, in addition to other consumer violations. “The benefits of Apple’s AirTag design do not outweigh the risks of the design,” the suit reads.

Apple brought the AirTags, battery-powered devices about the size of a quarter, to market last year as a way to keep track of your keys, purse, backpack and other belongings. Bluetooth connections on Apple smartphones and other devices “see” the AirTags and help you find them using Apple’s Find My app.

But the women, who say they have been and remain at risk of being tracked by AirTags, allege Apple failed to “to adequately disclose the risks associated with the AirTag … (and) affirmatively misled the public and the press as to those risks,” in the suit.

The complaint chronicles some past cases in which stalkers used AirTags to track someone. In one case an Indiana woman, who tracked her boyfriend over a suspected affair, ran him over and killed him in June 2022.

In the suit, Lauren Hughes said after ending a three-month relationship she was stalked online and found an AirTag hidden on her car. Plaintiff Jane Doe said, in the suit, after “a contentious divorce,” she found an AirTag in her child’s backpack. She removed it and soon it was replaced, she said.

Earlier this year, Apple released a personal safety guide for AirTags, including a Tracker Detect app for Android devices, to address concerns about people being tracked without their knowledge.

But the women charge that Apple’s measures “are woefully inadequate, and do little, if anything, to promptly warn individuals if they are being tracked,” they say in the suit. “Moreover, there is a gross imbalance between the protections available to iOS/Apple users, versus those available to individuals with Android devices—rendering Android users nearly defenseless to tracking/stalking using an AirTag.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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