A woman has received over a million TikTok views in a week after sharing a weird and creepy story: She came home from a night out to find a Tile tracking device dropped into her purse.
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The Dallas-based artist shared the video from her TikTok account, @sheridanellis. She labeled it a “quick storytime-slash-PSA.”
As she explained, “This weekend on Saturday, I went to dinner with a group of friends for this girl’s birthday. If you know me, I don’t normally carry a purse, but on Saturday, I did, because we had decorations and stuff at the table.”
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She then continued, “At the end of the night I’m cleaning my purse out, and I find this.” She then holds up a Tile dramatically. “If you don’t know what this is, it’s a Tile,” she explained. “It’s basically a tracker. People put on their keys and whatnot.”
“It’s not mine,” she said with an air of concern. “I don’t know how it got in my purse.”
She did point out, “I immediately took the battery out, don’t worry,” but then advised her viewers, “Check your purses and stay safe out there.”
Her post attracted quite a bit of advice, ranging from the serious to the silly.
One commenter noted, “The police can definitely find out who purchased that and who downloaded the app registered to it. Go to the police. That is very scary.”
Another counseled, “Set up a sting operation! Put the tile on one of your huge male friends’ doorstep and monitor it with their Ring doorbell! Free 24 hour surveillance!”
Perhaps coincidentally, Apple has announced its AirTags—a similar product to Tile—is being modified to prevent people to be able to use it in stalking.
As British publication Silicon reported, “Apple has released a software update for its AirTags tracking devices after users complained that they could be used to stalk people.”
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The report noted, “Initially, Apple programmed the devices to emit a sound after they were away from the owner’s iPhone for three days. In theory, this would prevent them being used to track other people. But users said the 15-second warning beeps were not necessarily loud enough to be heard over ordinary household noises.”
It did point out, “iPhones also include a feature that alerts them when an AirTag they don’t own appears to be “following” them. Apple has now changed the window of time in which the AirTag will emit its sound warning – to a random time between 8 and 24 hours after the device is out of range of its owner’s iPhone.”
*First Published: June 9, 2021, 6:49 am
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