Aware And Prepared

Holiday Shopping Safety Tips: How to Protect Your Belongings and Spot Tracking Devices - Part 2

• Mandi Pratt • Season 3 • Episode 33

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Welcome to Holiday Safety Series Part 2! Mandi shares practical street-smart habits to help you protect your belongings, stay alert in busy places, and avoid distraction-based thefts like purse snatching in stores. 

She also breaks down what everyone needs to know about AirTags and tracking devices (tech-facilitated abuse): how they’re misused, what warning signs to watch for, and what steps to take if your phone alerts you to unexpected tracking. 

This episode gives you simple, confidence-boosting strategies to stay aware, safeguard your stuff, and navigate the season with more calm and control. 


RESOURCES


Grab the free Checklist with MANY more tips or purchase Mandi’s Toolkit with ALL the tips to keep you safer.


Article on theft from shopping carts at Trader Joe's (2024)


Past episodes Tips From 911 Dispatcher Part 1 and Part 2


Connect with Mandi:


The primary purpose of the Women Aware and Prepared Podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute advice or services. Please use common sense for your own situation.

 Hey, brave one. Welcome to the Aware and Prepared Podcast. I'm your host, Mandy Pratt, trauma-informed, resilient speaker, domestic violence victim advocate, and narcissistic abuse survivor. Here we keep it real with true crime stories and real world strategies to prevent emotional and physical harm. My guests and I share a mix of insight and survivor grit.

All to help you feel safer, trust yourself more deeply, and live with greater peace and power. Let's trade fear for freedom and step into the peace that you deserve.

Hey there, it's Mandy with the Aware Prepared Podcast. Welcome into part two of our holiday safety series. In the last episode, we covered how to avoid jugging and stay safe in parking lots. Today we're focusing on street smarts, those everyday awareness habits that keep you and your belongings more secure and a newer concern.

We all need to understand air tags and tracking device. Safety, whether you're walking through a busy downtown area, traveling or just running errands, these are simple habits that can help you stay alert, protect your possessions, and keep technology from being used against you. Because feeling safer means being informed, prepared, and confident.

So let's dig in. So in our local Trader Joe's here in California, we've had some thefts going on. Luckily I receive our local police department reports when there's a crime they send out by email what's going on. So you know that there was an occurrence and if you had anything you know that you can add to it that you saw or you heard about it, you can call in the number that they give.

So I had seen this come through, and when I was getting ready to record this, I went and Googled the instance to see if I could find it. I didn't find the specific incident in our city, but I found something much more interesting that this is actually a statewide problem with Trader Joe's and people stealing wallets or whole purses.

Out of people's shopping carts. So I will drop that link into the show notes in case you're curious. So here's what happened in my city. Fortunately, our police department was on top of it and they waited for another occurrence and they were nearby and they nabbed the two guys who were doing this. So here's what they were doing.

As often happens, there's more than one. So here is a tactic that they would do. So you're shopping in the Trader Joe's and they distract you and they ask you a question. One of them asks you a question while the other one grabs your purse or your wallet out of your purse. And before you know it, your stuff's gone.

So here's some things that we can do to make sure that we're keeping our personal property safer when we're out and about. So you have a backpack or a purse, and I would recommend these five things. Number one, never put it on a chair next to you. You could put it either in your lap or around your chair leg, right?

There's no way somebody could yank it away unless you get up out of your chair. Number two, you could clip the bag into your cart. So let's say you're at Trader Joe's or Target. And you know how they have the little kiddo safety belts, you could hook your bag into that. I usually just keep my purse on my shoulder.

Uh, number three, you can get a purse with a flap and a zipper. So sometimes the thieves and Trader Joe's that were stealing things out of the purse, it's 'cause the purse was easy access, right? And the top is open. So I have to confess. A big purse with the open top and it does have a zipper, but I always forget to use the zipper.

So I will now be using the zipper. Alright. And next would be, don't get distracted by your phone, right? So you might be checking your phone, uh, maybe you keep your shopping list on there. Which I do sometimes. So you might be looking at, let's say the soup aisle and you're looking at the different flavors of soup, and you're checking your phone, what's on your phone, right?

And you're not paying attention to maybe your purse or backpack. So you wanna be careful that you're paying attention again, you. Keep your purse over your shoulder or, um, you can clip it in. Clipping it in isn't going to make sure that it's a hundred percent safe, but at at least it's one more thing that a thief would have to do.

Um, so it would take another extra second. Right. And lastly, when you're walking down the street, I would recommend that you put your purse or your backpack on the opposite side of the street. So let's say that I am walking. Along the street and the cars are on my left side, so instead of keeping my purse over my left shoulder, I would keep it on my right shoulder.

All right, so I hope those five tips are helpful to keep your personal property on you safe. So purse or backpack, never on the chair next to you. Instead in your lap or around your chair. Leg number two, you could clip it into the cart. Number three, you can make sure that you get a purse or a backpack that has full closures and you can carry it so it's not on the side of the cars that are zipping by.

And get a whiz by and grab that off of your shoulder pretty easily. Hopefully that helps you keep your personal property safer. Now that we've covered some tried and true street smarts, trusting your intuition, staying aware of your surroundings, and keeping your belongings close, let's shift to something newer.

Technology has brought a lot of convenience, right, but it's also created new risks. Air tags and other tracking devices can be misused by people with bad intentions. I told you in the past that happened to me, and I'll drop the link to that episode in here. Let's talk about what that looks like, how to detect it, and what to do if you ever suspect someone's using tech to track you or your property.

On Tuesday, March 28th, in the evening on my iPhone, I received a notification on the home screen and it said, air tag found moving with you. The owner of this item can see its location, tap to open, find my, and see available actions. So you guys know what find my is if you have a iPhone, that's where you can connect with your family and see where they're at.

If you guys all choose to do that and everybody can sense to that. So I can see where my son is and I can see where my husband is. And a lot of times that's super convenient. So I can see when he's about to come home. 'cause I know we have to leave to go somewhere, et cetera. But because Apple has made these air tags and Google also has their version, and there's another company, they made these air tags and they had to know the ill intent that was coming for.

Some of the ridiculous things some people would use them for, but originally they were used to track luggage or to put into your purse in case somebody steals your purse, you know where it is. So it's a tracking device. It's a small quarter like sized device, and once you buy it from Apple or Google, or you can buy it on Amazon, you pair it with your phone, your smartphone, and then you can track where that item goes.

Unfortunately, it's super easy for somebody to track you, so they put it on your car, as was my circumstance. And it's usually between like a boyfriend and girlfriend or uh, maybe an abusive spouse. They wanna secretly follow you, so they could do that, or in my case, it was somebody else, a stranger. All you have to do basically is follow the notification that the iPhone sends you and it will tell you what to do.

It'll tell you where to click. But all of that is found in the Find My app. And can you turn that off? No, I was trying to figure out a way to like turn off that whole thing in Bluetooth, but my phone can't really function that way. So if this happens to you and you are followed by an air tag, a lot of times it can be a fluke strange thing where, um, because there's so many of us and there's so many of these air tags and iPhones.

It might like bounce off of you on accident. So for me, I was concerned because it was twice that somebody was following my location, meaning two separate trips. So when I first got the notification that evening, I could see that somebody started tracking me with an Apple air tag early in the morning, like 4:55 AM.

I didn't get this notification until the evening, so that pissed me off basically. Um, thanks Apple for notifying me after the fact and not preventing this. But anyway, that's the way that you can tell. You just go with the phone, it'll tell you what to do, takes you to the, find my, and you look at items and devices and you can see the air tag.

And then you do a search and you go walk around your car and it'll beep if it finds it. So unfortunately for me, we could not find the dang air tag even though my dad pulled the car apart. So it may have fallen off after that initial day, uh, when the two followings were recorded. I don't know, but this coupled with another piece of evidence, I could tell who did it.

Unfortunately, it's not enough to press charges if you follow somebody with an air tag that technically is stalking and that technically is a crime. So don't let anybody else tell you it's not. So please go with your instincts. And speaking of, make sure that you document everything. Okay? So if this happens to you, you're taking screenshots of everything along the way, you're taking a screenshot.

The iPhone notification, you're taking a screenshot of where it takes you next, you're taking a screenshot of the route that somebody has tracked you. For me, it was from home to the grocery store and back. Um, and then the second was when I did a test and I drove around my neighborhood. So I called the police out for the first tracking because I had heard of these air tags and they came out and they searched the car and they couldn't find it.

And they said, just let us know, you know, call us back if there's a second tracking. So I did do a test and I drove around to the neighborhood and saw that it was still tracking me. So we called the police back and then they gave me a case, which means there was a detective on my case. So after I figured out who, it was only like a month ago, I figured this out because I followed my intuition and did some research of my own.

I called the detective back and he told me, because I didn't find the air tag, there's no evidence. So unfortunately I'm not able to press charges, but it was a lesson for me to understand these. So basically, I am not that concerned because I know how to defend myself. Am I going to be more careful? Maybe a little bit.

Because I have learned all of this, I have the freedom to feel safer and be able to take care of myself. I did notice that there is a class action lawsuit, um, that an Arkansas lawyer has put together. So I contacted them and I put my name into the hat for that because I feel that it's ridiculous how much Apple and Google are not doing to protect people.

They had to know that there would be. Some Ill intent with these little devices, so it's unfortunate that they have not done more. Of course, reach out to me anytime through Instagram at Women Aware and Prepared, or through my website, women Aware and prepared.com, and I'm happy to answer your questions. I hope these reminders help you move through this season at every season with more calm and confidence.

Please don't forget to call the police anytime that you need them. We pay taxes for them to be able to keep the peace and when I've spoken to them before, they tell me many times, please, please call us. If you see something that doesn't look right, please call us. I've even created a past episode for you where we had a 9 1 1 dispatcher on and she told us what to expect when you call the police.

Super helpful. I'll drop that into the show notes. Remember, awareness is empowering. You deserve to feel safe wherever you go, and if something happens, it's never your fault. The blame always lies with the person choosing to harm, not the person simply living their life. You can download my safety checklist with all the key steps we've talked about and many more at women aware and prepared.com/checklist.

If you'd like to, you can check out the toolkit I made. That even has these quick little downloadable checklists on them with all the many, many things that I figured out to do to stay safer when I was trying to stay safe from my ex who was abusive and also a criminal. Wanna buy the FBI? So if you would like to check that out, you can go to women aware and prepare.com/toolkit.

And if you found this helpful, please share it with someone you care about, a friend, a coworker, or a family member. So they can stay safer too, because the more aware we all are, the safer our communities become. And truly, women's safety is a community issue. And how much more would we be safe if we didn't have any perpetrators?

Right? So while we work on that, we're also helping ourselves learn to stay safer. So. Let's get out there and enjoy our holidays and stay safer and enjoy more peace. Thanks for tuning into the Aware and Prepared Podcast. Curious how tuned in your intuition really is. Take the free quiz at Aware and Prepared Life and get your score.

See how sharp your inner guide is. You are worthy of a safe and peaceful life. Talk with you next week and please share this episode with someone who came to mind while you were listening. Click on the top right menu in your podcast app. It might just be what they needed today.