Two women from Michigan have filed a lawsuit against Apple after they were secretly stalked by ex-partners who were using AirTags.
The lawsuit accuses Apple of failing to build adequate anti-stalking safeguards into AirTags to prevent stalking.
The plaintiffs claim that Apple should have known that AirTags could be purchased by people who would misuse them “to track, coerce, control, and otherwise endanger and abuse innocent victims,” and yet released the products without adequate safety measures in place.
The lawsuit was filed against Apple on August 10, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan (Case 2:26-cv-12764-GAD-CI). The women pursuing the lawsuit under pseudonyms.
The AirTag® is a coin-sized Bluetooth device that Apple introduced April 2021. It was advertised for finding lost keys, bags and other items through Apple’s Find My network.
One of the plaintiffs is a woman who said her ex-partner began stalking her around July 2026. On July 2 she said he arrived at a park where her vehicle was parked. The next day, she said he knew she was at a fireworks event, even though she had never mentioned it to him.
She tried to escape his suspected surveillance by moving to a new residence, but he appeared at her new residence on July 23. Two days later, her 12-year-old son found an AirTag in her car.
She said she was using an iPhone at the time, but Apple never notified her that an unknown AirTag was traveling with her.
The other plaintiff in the lawsuit is a woman from Madison Heights who describes a similar pattern of stalking. The woman said she left an abusive 4-year relationship and moved into a new apartment in March 2023. She did not give her ex-partner the new address, but he appeared on the same day she moved in, banging on her door. Later, she discovered that her vehicle had been keyed.
Two weeks later, she discovered an Apple AirTag hidden under the back seat in her car. She had no idea the AirTag was hidden in her car because she was using an Android phone. The AirTag tracker was only discovered when her niece’s iPhone sent her of an unknown AirTag alert.
Android users originally had no warning at all. Apple released the Tracker Detect app for Android in December 2021, but users had to suspect they were being followed, know the app existed, download it, and manually run scans. It was not until May 2023 that Apple and Google released a cross-platform unwanted-tracking detection system.
The lawsuit brings legal claims for negligence, product liability, defective design, invasion of privacy through intrusion upon seclusion, and violation of the Michigan Consumer Protection Act.
The women are seeking compensatory and exemplary damages, attorneys’ fees, and an order barring Apple from continuing the practices described in the filing.
Apple says on its product page that location data and history are never stored on the AirTag, that the data is encrypted, and that the device is designed to discourage unwanted tracking.