When Apple launched the AirTags last year to help users keep tabs on easily lost items like keys, wallets, the Cupertino giant clearly underestimated just how easily the trackers could be put to nefarious use. US police records over the last eight months show that there were at least 150 cases in which bad actors deployed AirTags to stalk women, as per a report by Vice's Motherboard.

Of the 150 cases, only one victim was a man, as per Motherboard, and fewer than half the cases involved the theft of an item that had an AirTag attached.

“Stalking and stalkerware existed before AirTags, but Apple made it cheaper and easier than ever for abusers and attackers to track their targets,” Albert Fox Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told Motherboard. “Apple’s global device network gives AirTags unique power to stalk around the world. And Apple’s massive marketing campaign has helped highlight this type of technology to stalkers and abusers who’d never otherwise know about it.”

Apple has reacted to these reports by releasing updates over the past year that are meant to alleviate the situation. It also released an Android App which detects nearby AirTags in December, while iPhone users receive notifications from Apple that they are being tracked by unauthotised AirTags.

"We have seen reports of bad actors attempting to misuse AirTag for malicious or criminal purposes," Apple had said in a statement. “AirTag was designed to help people locate their personal belongings, not to track people or another person’s property.”

But Apple’s post-facto fixes cannot change the appeal of the AirTags as a cheap, effective and readily available method for malicious individuals to track others without their consent. Many privacy and cybersecurity experts suggest that the only way to fix the issue is to stop selling the AirTags completely.

“That was a completely ridiculous way to launch a new device, without having taken into account its use in a domestic violence situation,” Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Motherboard.

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AirTags or AirTracks? Here’s how to stay safe from Apple's tiny trackers