If someone might be watching this device, read this on another one. Quick exit

Before you read on. Quick exit sends you straight to the weather. It does not clear your browser history, and it cannot undo anything monitoring software on this device may have already recorded. If you think someone can see what you do on this device, please read this on a different one. A friend's phone, a work computer or a library computer are all good options.

If you are in immediate danger, call 000.

Digital Safety & Recovery Australia

An unknown tracker is moving with me: what to do on iPhone

That alert is real, and your phone is doing what it is meant to do.

Both iPhone and Android will warn you when a Bluetooth tracker that is not yours has been travelling with you and is away from its owner. Apple and Google built this together, so it works across both. An Android phone will warn you about an AirTag, and an iPhone will warn you about other tags that follow the shared standard.

But no alert does not mean no tracker. Some common tags, including Tile and Samsung SmartTag, sit outside that shared standard and may never set off an alert on your phone. Some also have modes designed to avoid detection. If you have a real reason to think you are being followed, keep looking physically even if your phone has said nothing.

An alert does not always mean someone is following you. A tracker in a borrowed bag, a hire car or a friend's luggage can set it off. It is worth taking seriously and it is not proof on its own.

Using Android instead? Read the Android version of this page.

Before you change anything, please read this

If someone is monitoring you, the moment they lose that access is often the moment things get more dangerous. Family violence services see this pattern often enough that it shapes all of their advice.

So, three things before you touch a setting:

  1. Do not uninstall an app you suspect, and do not factory reset your phone, as your first move. It can tell the other person that you know.
  2. Removing it also removes the proof. If you might ever want to go to the police, that proof matters.
  3. Talk to someone first. 1800RESPECT is free, confidential and open 24 hours, on 1800 737 732. Call from a phone you trust, not from the one you are worried about.

None of this means you have to keep a phone you do not trust. It means the order matters, and the safest order starts with a plan and a person, not with a delete button.

One more thing worth knowing now. Talking about this near the phone can be enough. If monitoring software is running, it may be able to hear the room. Have this conversation somewhere else, or on another device.

Finding it with your iPhone

Tap the alert your phone showed you and follow the prompts. Your iPhone can usually help you locate the tracker, and for an AirTag it can make it play a sound.

You can also look manually. Open Find My, then the Items tab, then Identify Found Item. This works for AirTags and for other trackers that follow the shared standard.

Alerts rely on your phone being able to see the tracker, so check that Bluetooth is on, and that Settings, Privacy & Security, Location Services is on, with Find My allowed. Tracking Notifications live under Find My, then Me.

Common hiding places

The pockets and linings of bags, coat pockets, prams, under and behind car seats, in the boot, in the spare wheel well, and inside items that were given to you as gifts.

When you find it, stop before you touch it

This is the point where people do the natural thing and pull the battery out. Please consider two things first.

It may be evidence. Photograph it where it is, before you move it. Include something in the shot that shows where it was. Note the date, the time and the place. If this ever goes to police, that photograph is worth more than the tag on its own.

Removing it tells them. The moment it goes quiet, or starts moving somewhere unexpected, the person who put it there may know that you found it. If that could put you in danger, talk to 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 first.

Getting details from it

If the tracker is an AirTag, you can hold it to the top of most phones and it will open a page showing its serial number, and sometimes part of the owner's phone number if they have marked it lost. Take a screenshot or a photo of that page. Police can do more with a serial number than without one.

Turning it off, if you decide to

An AirTag is silenced by pressing and twisting the shiny back cover off and taking out the battery. Other tags differ.

If you are not sure it is safe, you do not have to decide today. Leaving it somewhere that is not sensitive to you, rather than destroying it, is sometimes the safer middle option, and a family violence worker can help you think it through.

Installing a tracker to follow someone without their consent is against the law in Australia. You have not done anything wrong by finding it.

What this page will not do

We will not tell you your phone is clean. Nobody honest can.

Monitoring software that is any good is built to hide, and the reliable way to find it is a forensic examination of the phone, usually done by police. Any website or app promising to scan your phone and give you a yes or no answer is overselling what it can do, and most of them are selling something. We are a not-for-profit and there is nothing to buy at the end of this.

Next: what to do, in a safe order

Back to all safety guides

Where to get real help

  • In immediate danger: call 000.
  • 1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732. Free, confidential, 24 hours, by phone or online chat. For anyone affected by domestic, family or sexual violence.
  • Police assistance line: 131 444, for threats to your safety that are not an emergency.
  • WESNET Safety Net Australia: techsafety.org.au. Specialists in technology and family violence. If you use an Android phone and you think spyware may be on it, they ask people to contact them from a safe device.
  • eSafety Commissioner: esafety.gov.au. The national regulator. It has legal powers to help with serious online abuse, including image-based abuse.