An Apple Watch was secretly wrapped around the spoke of a car tyre to stalk an ex

A man in Tennessee in the U.S. was arrested for allegedly attempting to track his ex-partner by wrapping an Apple Watch around her car’s tyre spokes. Police reportedly learned of the stalking attempt after a security officer informed them of a man following the woman near a Family Safety Center—where the woman wanted to acquire an order of protection.

“The victim told police that the boyfriend had threatened to kill her multiple times. She had come to the Family Safety Center in the past,” reported WSMV 4.

The victim also said that she and her ex-boyfriend used the Life360 app to keep tabs on each other’s whereabouts. Life360 is an app where people can share their locations 24/7 to people they are closest to—and something like that can be dangerous when fallen into the wrong hands.

However, the woman claimed she would “occasionally deactivate the app” before heading to the Family Safety Center. She had also been receiving texts from him demanding to know her location.

According to the police, they found the man crouched beside the victim’s passenger side door. The man had wrapped his Apple Watch across the spokes of the car wheel and then used the Watch to track her movements. When police eventually confronted him, he admitted the Watch was his. 

The man is reportedly being charged with attaching an electronic tracking device to the woman’s vehicle. The same man last year reportedly faced two domestic assault charges.

This might be the first reported time that an Apple Watch was being used to stalk a victim. However, there have been plenty of reports of stalking being done with the Apple AirTags. Apple has even released a statement regarding the issue, with plans to introduce new updates to make AirTags safer. However, Apple has yet to release anything regarding the Apple Watch being used as a stalking item.

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