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A former “Love Island” contestant said she found an AirTag that didn’t belong to her in her bag.
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Montana Brown says she got an alert after landing at LAX that someone could be tracking her location.
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There have been previous reports of AirTags being used to try to track women.
A pregnant former “Love Island” contestant says she found an Apple AirTag that didn’t belong to her in her bag in what she feared was an attempt to stalk her.
Montana Brown flew from London to Los Angeles earlier this month to attend the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards on March 4.
After her flight landed at LAX, Brown told Insider she got a notification on her iPhone telling her she was carrying an AirTag that didn’t belong to her, or anyone in her contacts.
Brown, 27, said her iPhone told her the tag had been tracking her for about two hours, meaning it’s likely the AirTag was placed in her bag either as she was boarding or during the flight.
“I didn’t feel like I got any funny looks from anybody, I didn’t feel like I was being targeted in any way. So obviously it was done very discreetly without me knowing,” she told Insider.
After alerting her boyfriend Mark O’Connor to the incident, he told her to go to the restroom and check her bag for the device.
Brown, who appeared in the third UK season of “Love Island,” eventually found the AirTag at the bottom of her bag and flushed it down the toilet.
It was only when Brown returned home to the UK and told friends that she realized the potential gravity of the situation.
“That’s when I started thinking oh, that’s kind of bad. A woman travelling by herself, especially pregnant, what were their intentions? And that’s kind of the scary thing.”
The former reality contestant announced in December that she was expecting a baby with O’Connor.
Brown didn’t report the incident to police, explaining she was unaware if a law had been broken, while realizing flushing the AirTag down the toilet meant she didn’t have any evidence.
She said she tried to disable tracking for the device, but was unable to do so, so decided to get rid of it as fast as possible.
Apple AirTags are designed to help people keep track of their possessions such as keys or luggage, but have sometimes been misused.
In January last year, model and Instagram influencer Brooks Nader said someone slipped an AirTag into her coat pocket to try to track her location.
Apple was hit with two lawsuits in December from other women who said AirTags had been used to follow them. One said a tag had been left in her car.
Such incidents prompted Apple to launch a new safety guide for AirTags in January, which included helping someone check if an AirTag is tracking them, as well as guidance for Android users who want to check for a nearby tag.
Apple declined to comment but referred to a statement about AirTag security that said it condemned “in the strongest possible terms any malicious use of our products,” adding that updates mentioned in it were now live.
Read the original article on Business Insider
