"If your girl says she’s just out with friends every night, you’d better slap one of these on her car."#TikTok
TikTok Shop Sells Viral GPS Trackers Marketed to Stalkers
TikTok Shop is selling GPS trackers marketed with viral videos that have voiceovers explicitly encouraging secretly tracking a romantic partner. Some of the videos have millions of views, and TikTok Shop’s own metrics show that that more than a hundred thousand of the devices have been sold.One of the accounts 404 Media found
“If your girl says she’s just out with friends every night, you’d better slap one of these on her car—no, it is not an AirTag, it’s a real GPS tracker,” one clip, which has 5 million views, begins. The video shows someone putting a tracker in various hidden locations in a car—a plastic bag in the trunk, magnetically attached underneath, or on the inside of the hood. “And, unlike AirTags, this thing doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t send alerts, she will never know it’s there. It’s tiny, black, magnetic, hide it under the seat, in the trunk, wherever. It’s got its own SIM so you can track her anywhere in the world, no wifi, no bluetooth, just raw location data whenever you want it.”
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1×The trackers are advertised as undetectable by Apple’s FindMy system. Many of the videos encourage people to secretly install the devices in their partners’ cars if they suspect them for things like being “out with friends every night.” TikTok deleted the video mentioned above after 404 Media asked the company for comment, but dozens of similar videos remain online, and the trackers are still for sale.
“This is absolutely being framed as a tool of abuse,” said Eva Galperin, co-founder of the Coalition Against Stalkerware and Director of Cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Anything where the justification is ‘catch your partner cheating’ or ‘get peace of mind about your partner’ is enabling coercive control,” she said.
404 Media’s reporters have previously written about the use of “stalkerware” that domestic abusers have used to spy on their partners, and on the use of AirTags to stalk people.
404 Media found a handful of accounts promoting these types of trackers, and there are several different versions on the TikTok Shop. Once a user clicks from the videos into TikTok Shop, the algorithm began to show us many more listings. One of the clips we saw has 86,500 likes, and links to a tracker that had 32,500 sales. Another from the same vendor currently has 97,900 sales, and there are several accounts offering the same products with similar branding and scripts. In the comments of one of the videos, a user says “I bought some and put it on cars of girls I find attractive at the gym.” The original poster responds with “Ok 😂.”
The TikTok content policy says that the platform does “not allow any violent threats, promotion of violence, incitement to violence, or promotion of criminal activities that may harm people, animals, or property.” We asked TikTok for comment about the videos that had been posted by one of the accounts we’d originally seen.
A spokesperson for TikTok said "We don't allow content encouraging people to use devices for secret surveillance and have removed this content and banned the account that posted it. We further prohibit the sale of concealed video or audio recording devices on our platform." However, 404 Media was able to find many more almost identical videos on the platform the following day, raising questions over how proactively the platform is monitoring to prevent content like this.
The videos skirt around the legality of what they are suggesting. One voiceover asks, over footage of the tracker being attached to a car, “it’s illegal to track people using this thing? I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure if you stalk someone using this GPS tracker, you’re probably gonna get in trouble.”
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
The majority of the videos, though, frame the trackers as a way to spy on a partner: “men with cheating wives, you might wanna get one of these,” one video in Spanish begins. “Not everyone who uses this is crazy, they just want answers.” “Guess what my girlfriend put in my car?,” another says. Other videos start with ”Don’t let what happened at the coldplay concert happen to you”, “She seriously didn’t trust me, so you know what, I put one in hers too”, or “You got a cheating girlfriend?”Eleven states explicitly prohibit digital location or GPS tracking in their stalking laws, and a further fifteen states prohibit tracking a vehicle without the consent of the owner. “Showing people how to do something that might be illegal is not necessarily illegal,” Galperin said. But TikTok is still allowing people to make money by marketing the tech specifically for the use of spying on a partner.
Alongside the trackers, the same creators are advertising secret audio-recording devices with similar abusive framing. “Your girl always stepping out to take calls? Want to know who she’s really talking to? Just place this AI recorder in her car—she’ll never notice”, says one post, tagged #husband, #wife, and #coldplay.
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1×Video advertising a voice recorder as "the legal way"
Another video for the audio devices with 136,000 views describes bugging a cheating girlfriend’s car: “I heard everything she said with that guy.” Several videos claim that secretly recording audio is legal (“Think your girlfriend’s cheating? Want to know who the guy is? Then do it the right way—legally” and “Got a feeling something’s off? Then find out the truth—the legal way” and “Why the hell did I find a used condom in my car?”) However, recording a conversation without the awareness of the people involved can often be illegal.
Galperin also said that the TikTok videos reflect an extremely common attitude. “You would be amazed how many people think stalking, or recordings, or stalkerware is perfectly justified, as long as they think their partner is up to something like cheating,” she told 404 Media.
A 2021 Kaspersky survey found that 30 percent of 21,000+ respondents found “no problem in secretly monitoring their partner” under certain circumstances. The survey report also found that 29 percent of respondents who had been digitally stalked had their location tracked.
These devices are advertised and sold as undetectable. However, all the examples I found had high numbers of one-star reviews, many of which complained that the trackers did not work as advertised, and defeated “the point” by alerting people to their presence via Apple’s FindMy system. The Apple support site for FindMy-enabled devices says that “They should not be used to track people, and should not be used to track property that does not belong to you.”
Reviews for one of the trackers on TikTok Shop
In 2021, 404 Media’s Sam Cole reported on Apple AirTags being used to stalk women; in many cases, by attaching them to or hiding them in their cars. For that story, she reviewed 150 police reports of people who had said they were being tracked by current or former partners. After that story, Apple added safety features like phone notifications when an Airtag is nearby, but an ongoing class action lawsuit argues that the devices are still insufficiently “stalker proof.”
Several of the videos were tagged #coldplay
Earlier this month, WIRED reported that TikTok shop was selling stickers that could block the recording light on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. Again, many of the reviews found that the product didn’t work as advertised, but the platform did allow the stickers to remain available for sale.Police Records Show Women Are Being Stalked With Apple AirTags Across the Country
Motherboard obtained reports of stalking, harassment, and abuse using AirTags, targeting victims of intimate partner violence.Samantha Cole (VICE)
People failing to identify a video of adorable bunnies as AI slop has sparked worries that many more people could fall for online scams.#AISlop #TikTok
AI Bunnies on Trampoline Causing Crisis of Confidence on TikTok
A generation who thought they were immune from being fooled by AI has been tricked by this video of bunnies jumping on a trampoline:@rachelthecatlovers Just checked the home security cam and… I think we’ve got guest performers out back! @[url=https://mastod.org/users/ring]🦅 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿[/url] #bunny #ringdoorbell #ring #bunnies #trampoline ♬ Bounce When She Walk - OhboyprinceThe video currently has 183 million views on TikTok and it is at first glance extremely adorable. The caption says “Just checked the home security cam and… I think we’ve got guest performers out back! @[url=https://mastod.org/users/ring]🦅 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿[/url]”
People were excited by this. The bunnies seem to be having a nice time. @[url=https://social.coop/users/Greg]Greg[/url] posted on X “Never knew how much I needed to see bunnies jumping on a trampoline”
Unfortunately, the bunnies are not real.The video is AI generated. This becomes clear when, between the fifth and sixth seconds of the video, the back bunny vanishes.
The split second where the top left bunny vanishes
People want to believe, and the fact that it is AI generated is causing widespread crisis among people who thought that AI slop would only fool their parents. We are as a culture intensely attuned to the idea that animals might do cute things at night when we can’t see them, and there have been several real viral security camera videos lately of animals trepidatiously checking out trampolines.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
This particular video was difficult to discern as AI in part because security camera footage is also famously the blurriest type of footage. The aesthetics of this particular video make it very difficult to tell that it’s AI at first glance, because we are used to looking at surveillance camera footage as being blurry and dark, which can hide some of the standard signs people look at when trying to determine if a video is AI generated. The background of the image is also static; newer AI video generators are getting pretty good at creating the foreground subject of a video, but the background often remains very surreal. In this video, that’s not the case because of the static nature of the background. Pretending to be nighttime security footage also helps to disguise the things AI is often bad at—accurate movement, correct blur and lighting, and fine details. Tagging “@[url=https://mastod.org/users/ring]🦅 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇦🇺🇳🇿[/url]” was also pretty smart by the uploader, because it gives a plausible place for the video to come from.People are responding totally normally, embodying a very relatable arc; the confidence of youth to think “that will never happen to me,” followed by the crushing realization that eventually we all become old and susceptible to scams.
This guy sings that the video of the bunnies “might manufacture the way you made me feel - how do I know that the sky’s really sunny?”
@olivesongs11
7/29/25 - day 576 of writing a song every day
♬ original sound - olivesongsWhile @OliviaDaytonn says “Now I feel like I’m gonna be one of those old people that get scammed”.
@oliviadaytonn I wanted them to be real so badly #bunnies #trampoline ♬ original sound - olivia daytonAnother TikToker says the bunnies were “The first AI video I believed was real - I am doomed when I’m old”
@catenstuff #duet with @rachelthecatlovers #bunny #AAALASPARATUCURRO #bunnyjumpingontrampoline ♬ Bounce When She Walk - OhboyprinceAnd @sydney_benjamin offers a public apology to her best friend for sending her the video. “Guys, I fell for AI.. I’m quite ashamed, I think of myself as like an educated person.” She says that she felt good when she busted a previous AI video trend for her friends (Grandma Does Interviews On Street).
@sydney_benjamin
This one was hard to admit
♬ original sound - Sydney BenjaminThis video breaks down the animal-on-trampoline trend and explains how to spot a fake animal-on-trampoline video.
@showtoolsai How to spot AI videos - animals on trampolines #bunnies #dog #bear #bunny #ai ♬ original sound - showtoolsOf course, because the bunny video went viral, there are now copycats. This video, published on YouTube shorts one day after the first, by a different account, is also AI generated.
Copycat AI-generated bunny trampoline video on YouTube shorts
This is a theme that has a long history of being explored in song; for a more authentic trampolining-bunny musical experience, there is this video which is from a comfortably pre-AI “9 years ago”.
The uploader, @Rachelthecatlovers, only has four other videos. The account posted its first video a year ago, then waited, then posted a second one this week, which is also somewhat unusual for AI slop. Most AI slop accounts post multiple times a day, and most of the accounts are newly created. @Rachelthecatlovers has one other AI bunny video (the flap to the door disappears) and a bird cam video. It also has a video of grapes being rehydrated with a needle, tagged #bunny.
@Rachelthecatlovers' previous AI bunny video
People are freaked out by being fooled by this video and are clearly confident that they can usually spot videos that have been generated. But maybe that’s just the toupee fallacy; you only see the bad ones. Trampolining bunnies have broken that facade.
- YouTube
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.www.youtube.com
The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.
The TikTok ban and Donald Trumpx27;s rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.#Socialmedia #DonaldTrump #TikTok #TikTokBan
Decentralized Social Media Is the Only Alternative to the Tech Oligarchy
The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.Jason Koebler (404 Media)
South Korea's ‘4B’ Movement Goes Viral in US After Trump Elected
No heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, or sex with menJules Roscoe (404 Media)
