AirTag, you're it - whether you like it or not

The idea behind Apple's AirTag - which lets you locate misplaced items - is a reasonably good one. Who hasn't put their keys down somewhere. Or forgotten where they left their wallet. Or, God forbid, have their tablet or laptop stolen. With AirTag, you place a small button on the object you want to track, and you can track where it is using your iPhone (or even a pedestrian Android phone), or your iPad or Mac (useful if you want to track the whereabouts of your phone).

There are plenty of other trackers out there, but most work within a somewhat limited range. AirTag uses an approach that includes all the iPhones out there helping do its tracking. 

In any case, AirTags aren't just used to track the lost, the stolen, the strayed. They're used for stalking.

Fortunately, you're alerted if an AirTag that's not yours is moving with you and is being tracked by someone who is not you. (If you're an Android user, you need a separate app to get the alert.)

Still: ultra creepy.

One woman got the alert and, when she arrived home, told her husband. He found the tracking device in her coat pocket. A woman in Georgia found one in her gas tank.

Just recently, Francesca Nardelli, a young Boston woman, spent the night out in South Boston, which has become something of a night out hub for young locals. She received a notification the next morning that someone was keeping a technology-enabled eye on her.

“I was like immediately in panic mode,” she said. “Anybody could’ve put something on our stuff and started tracking us.”

Unsure of what to do next, Nardelli called the police who checked her car and her purse but came up empty.

“Everywhere that I’ve been, everywhere that I’m going is just being watched, so I didn’t feel safe going anywhere,” she said. (Source: WHDH)

Another Boston woman has also reported an incident to the police.

Nardelli is working with BPD to try to figure out who's stalking her. Good luck, Francesca! Hope they find and nail the bastard. 

“This is my personal nightmare. I’m so terrified of people violating my personal privacy like that,” she said.

Of course it's terrifying. Made all the more terrifying by the fact they haven't found the AirTag button that someone placed with her. Something like this happening has to make you ultra paranoid, that's for sure. 

Maybe the stalker is "just" doing this for the kicks, for their own personal entertainment. But maybe they're obsessing on a person for some reason. The examples I've seen are all of attractive young women. Is there a mere teched-up but harmless incel tracing them, or is it a psycho killer? Who wants to wait around to find out...

Anyway: sick, sick, sick. And women have a right to be sick, sick, sick and tired of this crap. 

As Satchel Paige once famously advised, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you." If Satch were still with us, he'd have to revise his quote. Maybe to something along the lines of "Look back. Someone you don't know is using AirTag to stalk you." Or "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

You know, sometimes technology's a good thing.

Other times...

I realize there were bad guy stalkers out there before technology. Ted Bundy had a VW bug, not any sophisticated tracking devices. Still, technology makes this crap a lot easier. Ugh...