An Arkansas woman was in a consumer tech nightmare recently when she discovered that someone put an Apple tracking device on her car, a grim example of how high tech gadgets are often used for harassment.
A woman in Arkansas was shocked when she got a notification that there was an AirTag, Apple's new consumer tracking device, somewhere nearby when she turned on her phone in her car.
She told the station that she had an AirTag following and that it popped up.
The woman told KAIT that she jumped when she saw the device taped to the trunk of her car. As of yet, no updates on her case have been released to the public.
In her interview with local news, the woman said she doesn't know when the device was put on her vehicle, but thinks it may have happened when she was shopping for a Christmas tree. She told KAIT that she wouldn't be shopping alone soon.
The device was released in April and has been reported about the ease with which bad actors could use it to track people.
A woman in a video posted on TikTok shows how a small device behind her license plate can be used to track her movements.
The woman in the video is shaking.
It seems as if this real danger may be used to further a widespread sex trafficking hoax on the social network, the crux of which lies in the enduring stranger danger myth.
TikTok users tell a story that has been replicated in many forms for years, that they were approached in big box stores like Target or Wal-mart by usually-female strangers asking them if they want to make some.
The subjects are often given a business card with a man's name on it, but when they search the name, they find almost no information. Users do some more research and discover similar stories from other women and girls online, and conclude that they had a brush with human traffickers.
The Target human trafficking story has the same mix of real-life threats and word-of-mouth memetic power as urban legends popularized by films like "Candyman." Sex traffickers never picked up a victim in a Target, so who is to say that a conspiracy theory is true?
It isn't hard to imagine the stretch that would take you from knowing that you are being tracked to being scared of traffickers.
The existence of these $29 AirTags and the countless others like them are going to make people feel unsafe, and are a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
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