TrackerDetect: Unmask Spying AirTags – Apparata

Apple’s handy little AirTags are very popular. Unfortunately, they are also popular with people with less honorable intentions, because you can track someone exactly if you put an AirTag in their pocket or bag. You can track it down with the free Apple app TrackerDetect, even with an Android phone.

Car thieves use AirTag

For example, crooks are active in Canada who hide an AirTag in an expensive car that is parked somewhere. This way they can easily follow where this car is going and then steal the car keys from the house. Obviously this is not the way Apple wants to be publicized. That’s why the Apple development team has been working on a way to detect unwanted AirTags, TrackerDetect.

Unmask AirTags with TrackerDetect

Apple has built in a function that allows you, as an Apple user, to see on your iPhone whether someone has an AirTag in your area. But that is of course of no use to Android users and they too can fall victim to a stalker who has hidden an AirTag.

Apple recognized this problem and has now developed an app that not only allows users of their own iPhone, but also Android users to discover spying AirTags nearby.

The app is called Tracker Detect and you can download it from the Google PlayStore.

How do you use TrackerDetect?

Step one is that you download the app from the Google Playstore and install it. Then you agree to a piece of inscrutable legal text. You will then see the screen with the blue scan button at the bottom. Here you click. The app then requests access to Bluetooth. Is there an AirTag nearby? Then the app gives a signal.

Can’t find the app AirTag? Then there are two possibilities. There is no AirTag, or the owner of the AirTag is within Bluetooth range of the AirTag (a few meters). Is there no one within a few meters, and you don’t see an AirTag? Then you can be reasonably sure that it is not there either.

It could be that someone is using a non-Apple tracker to monitor you. These are not detected by TrackerDetect.