Sharing photographs of a person's private parts may not be in Apple's purposeful intentions for AirDrop, a number of reported cases show that the file transfer tool has been used by perverted individuals to send lewd contents. A new victim has come forward to share her horrible experience, which Apple should take note and AirDrop users should learn from before things could go out of hand.
Talking to The New York Post, 28-year-old Brooklyn local Britta Carlson narrates her going to uptown 6 train night of 7 July in New York City when a message request popped up on her phone's screen. The note reads: "iPhone 1 would like to share a note with you".
Titled "Straw", the anonymous stranger's message piqued her interest so she accepted the request. But she was horrified by what had displayed on her screen, revealing "It was just a huge close-up picture of a disgusting penis".
Carlson says she immediately kept her smartphone on her chest and had her eyes roam around the subway train in hopes to find the perverted stranger. Unfortunately, she did not find any suspicious man who would have supposedly done such lascivious act in public.
This is not the first time that this kind of incident had happened. In 2015, a straphanger also did the same act to a woman in a public transportation in London.
On an iPhone owner's end, the only way to avoid this untoward incident is to tweak the AirDrop setting by restricting the senders from 'Everyone' to 'Contacts Only' or 'Receiving Off'. AirDrop with open public access can be reached within Bluetooth range, at around 328 feet.
Carlson notes that she was not aware of her unrestricted AirDrop setting since she is using the service to send and receive photos at work. "It never even crossed my mind that someone may use it to send stuff like that," admits Carlson.
Apple did not return a request for comment.
