A woman has taken to TikTok to express her shock at receiving an alert about an Apple AirTag that was travelling with a new car she bought from a dealership. The incident left her quite confused as to how it ended up in her vehicle.
TikTok creator Jaci (@the.jaci.effect) posted the video on her account and said that she had bought the car just a few weeks ago. However, there was no indication that there would be an AirTag in the car.
According to Jaci, she first got an alert about the AirTag after the first week of owning the car. But when the alert came through on her phone while she was outside the car, she didn’t hear the AirTag when she tried to make it make a sound. With no noise being heard, Jaci just carried on with her day and forgot about the alert.
It wasn’t much later that, while driving to work, she got another alert about the AirTag. This time, she was able to stop the car and stay inside, and it was then that she heard the noise. The AirTag was dinging from behind her steering column.
Jaci Had To Dismantle Part of the Car
@the.jaci.effect TikTok Sleuths Do Your Thing!! #airtag #follow #storytime #fyp #viral ♬ original sound – the.jaci.effect
This time, Jaci was able to enlist some help to find the mystery AirTag. This did entail some dismantling; however, “They had to take the steering wheel column thingy off,” she said. “And they had to take another cover off underneath. Hidden all the way back against what’s called the firewall … hanging from a thick wire was an AirTag in a case. So that bad boy was not coming out, and obviously it wasn’t meant to be found, either.”
Following this, Jaci went to the local police station to file a report on the AirTag. Some information came off the tag, and she posted her video on TikTok in the hope that someone on the social media platform would be able to help her out. Jaci was clearly puzzled by its presence, and it’s possible it was put in the car for nefarious reasons. Sadly, there are people out there who love to track others.
Some on TikTok, however, suggested it could have been put there by the dealership for repossession reasons. “I’d say that was installed at the dealership for repo reasons,” one person said. “My dealership sold me the car, and it had one in there too, and the dealership in my state found it. I had him take it out. No big deal,” said another. One other user said it could have been put in in case of theft while the car was for sale, but the dealership just forgot to take it out.
Do Dealerships Use GPS Trackers?
Airpinpoint states that a lot of dealerships use GPS trackers to make sure a car can be located if the loan terms are violated. It enables a dealer to repossess a car should that happen, although it is more common at buy here/pay here lots rather than dealerships.
One location that is popular to hide them is behind the dashboard panel, which is close to where Jaci found the AirTag in her car.
“The device sits between the firewall and the dash, invisible unless you pull the panel,” said Airpinpoint.