An unfortunate side effect of miniaturization is that tracking devices are no longer just the purview of crime shows and documentaries about stalkers, but something you can buy at your local electronics store for under a hundred dollars. So it would seem that protecting your friends and family from unwanted tracking would be a thing to be commended for.
A man found a tracker in his sister’s car and wondered if he was wrong to tell her after his family started to harass him. We reached out to the man who shared the question online via private message and will update the article when he gets back to us.
Most people don’t like the idea of being tracked without their knowledge or consent
Image credits: Onur Binay / pexels (not the actual photo)
“AITA for telling my sister about a tracker in her car?”
“I (23M) went to pick up food with my sister (30F) when I was alerted on my phone about a tracking device in her car. When we got back home we began to search for the tracking device and found it in a compartment in the trunk of her car. Immediately we thought about worse possible scenarios like if she was being followed but I decided to tell her to ask her husband (35M) if he had placed it there. She gave him a call and he in fact did place the device but since he never told her about it they began arguing about why he needed to be tracking her.
Image credits: RDNE Stock project / pexels (not the actual photo)
He says it for if their car ever gets stolen but she thinks he is assuming [she is] cheating. Now I’m getting heat from my parents about even finding the tracking device in the first place, so AITA?”
Credits: More_Independence_72
These days, tracking someone is unfortunately easier than ever
It isn’t entirely unreasonable to use an Airtag to protect a car from theft. Many modern vehicles actually allow the user to track the car, but an Apple Airtag is a pretty cheap solution. For example, in 2023, a family in North Carolina actually managed to track down their car for this exact reason and led the police to the car thieves. At the same time, there have already been cases of people discovering unknown Airtags on their vehicles.
However, this device is also a stalker’s dream. It’s pretty cheap, tiny and doesn’t need a lot to work efficiently. Unfortunately, this has become such a common use that Apple had to create a function so that iOS users can check if there are any Airtags nearby. This feature will make the tracker emit a noise so it can be found. Since the majority of the world uses Android devices, Apple was forced to also release a similar app for everyone else, but only much later.
However, if someone is willing to illicitly track someone, they are often ok with paying more, as “professional” trackers tend to not be available for common people. Journalists have discovered that one can buy aftermarket Airtags where the speaker system has been removed, rendering it silent even if someone is looking for them. This isn’t an isolated case where some enterprising stalker has personally modified it, there are entire illicit markets of modified Airtags online. Many of these were discovered by women who chanced upon them in their cars or even in their personal belongings and turned them over to journalists.
Being angry at the brother makes very little sense
So if you found one in the car of a family member and they were not aware of it, the very least you could do is bring it up. If she already knows about it, then all is well, if she doesn’t, then he has done her a favor. After all, there was no way he could know it was her husband, as there have been very real cases of people finding unknown tags in their vehicles.
The real question is why the husband put the tag there, “blaming” the brother is just a weird after thought. Indeed, if he didn’t tell her, that would be a considerably bigger cause for concern. The husband isn’t entirely unwarranted about wanting to track the car, as it has helped recover vehicles in the past. However, him not telling her is a reason to question his motives. That being said, he did “confess” immediately.
Affairs do happen, he might be suspicious, or he could be paranoid and controlling. This really seems like something the sister and her husband need to work out together. The brother getting “heat” from his family is bizarre, particularly since we aren’t given their reasoning or what this “heat” actually entails. Perhaps they also suspect the sister and are on the brothers side, but this just seems very unlikely. Perhaps they think this is a domestic issue and he shouldn’t have gotten involved, however, he had no way of knowing what it was. If it had been a stranger following her, she should have been informed.
It’s not a secret that many marriages these days don’t last. It’s entirely possible that the husband’s suspicions are there for a reason, which would explain why he never brought up the tracker. At the same time, he could also just be controlling and she hasn’t done anything wrong. In a healthy relationship, this could all be fixed through communication, but him not telling her, no matter the motive, shows that there is a serious gap here.
The man gave some more info
Most thought he was right to tell her
