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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Daniel Scott used an AirTag to trace his lacking baggage at LAX.
- In doing so, Scott discovered himself and the police investigating an deserted constructing.
- There, he recovered his baggage and located a stranger sporting his garments.
Since Apple launched the AirTag in 2021, there’s been no scarcity of non-public testimonials that show the worth of the world’s hottest Bluetooth item tracker. However maybe no case is more odd than that of Daniel Scott, a West Hollywood man who discovered himself on an intense scavenger hunt after discovering his baggage had been stolen from baggage declare final week, as reported by NBC Los Angeles.
Additionally: The best Bluetooth trackers of 2025: Expert tested
It began with a flight from Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah, to Los Angeles, California, when Scott observed that his baggage had gone lacking. After perusing a number of carousels to no success, he checked his iPhone to pinpoint the placement of his luggage-tucked AirTag, solely to search out it shifting towards the rideshare lot and out of the airport.
“I instantly began sprinting to the Uber lot. As soon as I received to the Uber lot, I noticed that it was persevering with to maneuver, and it had reached throughout the road,” Scott instructed NBC Los Angeles. Finally, he discovered himself in entrance of an deserted constructing close to Sepulveda Boulevard and 98th Road, in keeping with the report.
With the uptick in misplaced baggage reviews, many airports and airways can now assist AirTag location sharing for extra environment friendly recoveries.
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Whereas Scott wasn’t shut sufficient to search out the precise ground and room of his private belongings, Apple’s Discover My community pulled sufficient context to information LAX police to a profitable restoration and arrest, with a number of individuals within the constructing detained shortly after.
“I noticed the man with my garments on — my footwear on, my shirt on, my pants on,” Scott described the detainment. In the meantime, Scott’s baggage was left “sliced up” together with his garments littered throughout totally different rooms of the constructing, he recounted.
The fixed evolution of AirTags
Since AirTags debuted in 2021, they’ve had sufficient real-world utilization to warrant helpful and impactful updates from Apple.
Whereas Scott’s case is an effective illustration of the AirTag’s core performance — getting used as an merchandise tracker — prior circumstances have raised bigger issues with security and privateness, together with criminals who snuck AirTags into victims’ bags and cars.
To Apple’s credit score, the corporate swiftly addressed the malicious exercise by partnering with Google and others to send push alerts when an undesirable gadget is monitoring your location.
Additionally: How to find out if an AirTag is tracking you – and what to do about it
At present, the AirTag stays a extremely useful and integral piece of know-how for Apple customers. The corporate is predicted to launch its successor as quickly as subsequent week, along side the debut of the iPhone 17 series, with its potential upgrades together with improved battery life, extra exact location monitoring, and a tamper-proof speaker design.
