Sports Illustrated Model Says She Was Stalked Via an Apple AirTag

Twenty-six-year-old Sports Illustrated model Brooks Nader claimed a stranger slipped an Apple AirTag tracker into her coat pocket and followed her for five hours on Wednesday night.

Reported first by the New York Post, the swimsuit model relayed the story to her Instagram followers, explaining she received a notification from her phone alerting her an unknown accessory had been detected, and that the item had been moving with her “for a while.”

“This ‘device’ followed me for the last five hours to every location and [it belonged to] no one in my ‘network.’ It also wasn’t a phone or tablet, it was an ‘item,’” she wrote on her Instagram story. In a video that has been reuploaded to Sports Illustrated‘s official Instagram account, Nader explains she had been in a few crowded bars Wednesday night, noting she put her coat on the chair behind her. She didn’t receive the notification warning her an accessory had been detected on her, until she was walking home alone at 11:30 p.m.

She reveled it was an AirTag, a button-sized tracking device Apple released in 2021 that is meant to help users keep track of their their keys, wallet and other essentials.

“So I’m just trying to raise awareness and tell all my ladies out there to watch your belongings, look out for the notifications,” said Nader, who added she wasn’t even aware AirTags existed until the incident.

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Unfortunately, Nader is just the latest victim of stalking via an Apple AirTag. Similiar disturbing stories have been shared across TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms, where users — predominantly women — have found AirTags attached to their cars or slipped into their purses, notes the Post. In May, The Washington Post published an extensive article detailing how AirTags make it “frighteningly easy” for abusers to stalk.

A spokesperson for Apple told the New York Post the company is “committed to AirTag’s privacy and security. AirTag is designed with a set of proactive features to discourage unwanted tracking — a first in the industry — and the Find My network includes a smart, tunable system with deterrents that applies to AirTag, as well as third-party products as part of the Find My network accessory program.” As Nader mentioned in her video, “the only silver lining” was that she actually received a notification that someone was tracking her.

Still, in Nader’s case, the notification came a few hours too late and at the most vulnerable time: as she was walking home at night, alone. And as The Washington Post points out, once you do receive the alarming notification that “Your current location can be seen by the owner of this AirTag,” Apple doesn’t provide much assistance thereafter to help you find where the device is hidden.

“Just check your belongings, check your surroundings,” Nader urged other women as she concluded her video. “It was the scariest, scariest moment ever.”