Three nights into a family holiday in Santa Susanna, Spain, Susan O’Neill received an alert on her phone: Someone was tracking their movements.
“I received a safety alert to make me aware an AirTag was tracking our location,” she says.
“Someone was tracking us and had been the full day!”
Apple Airtags, and similar devices, are often used when traveling to keep track of luggage, and even at home to easily locate commonly misplaced items like your car keys or wallet.
But they’ve been used for more sinister reasons like this, of late.
Sharing the experience on Facebook to alert others to be more aware of their surroundings, Susan explained how she received a notification about the device on her iPhone.
“Your current location can be seen by the owner of this AirTag,” the notification through the Find My app read.
“We believe they were wanting our two young blonde girls”
It then showed a map of their movements and how long the device had been unknowingly attached to their belongings.
By the time they received the notification, however, the device was long gone. Susan believes it fell out when her husband grabbed her wallet out of the back of the stroller.
“Something fell out which sounded like the noise of a coin falling on the floor,” she explains.
“We did not think anything of this at the time, but now we believe this was the AirTag someone placed in the pram [stroller].”
Because they no longer had the device, police couldn’t do anything, but they suspected it was an attempted theft.
However, Susan thought otherwise.
“We believe they were wanting our two young blonde girls.”
The whole ordeal scared Susan so much that they immediately booked flights home to Scotland for the following morning.
“I have never felt so scared in my entire life,” she says.
“No way was I risking anything happening to our girls.”
She went on to say that you often heard of these things happening online, but you never think it will happen to you.
“Please just be aware of everything around you and don’t let your kids out of your site, especially in another country.”