If you have a feeling your car is telling someone else where you go, it makes sense to be concerned. We hear this a lot: a car that always seems to be “expected” somewhere, an ex who shows up at places they shouldn’t know about, a soon-to-be-former spouse who mentions details about a trip you never told anyone about. That gut feeling may be worth paying attention to.
At Lawrence Ryan Investigations, we’ve spent decades helping people in Chicago and beyond investigate exactly this kind of situation, and a hidden GPS tracker on a personal car is one of the most common culprits.
Think someone’s tracking your car? Here’s exactly where to look and what to do about it.
Why someone would put a tracker on your car in the first place
Check your phone before you touch the car (iPhone, Android, and backup apps)
How to locate a GPS tracker on a car: the full physical search
How to find a tracking device on a car with an RF detector
Found a tracker? Here’s what to do next, including how to disable it
When it’s time to call a professional
Worried someone’s tracking your every move? We’ll help you find out for sure. Call Lawrence Ryan Investigations for a free, confidential consultation.
Someone Watching You? Act Now
Hidden cameras, tapped phones, and stalkers aren’t just unsettling—they’re dangerous. Our Chicago-based experts find and stop surveillance quickly, protecting your safety and peace of mind. Every investigation is confidential.
Why Someone Would Put a Tracker on Your Car in the First Place
Before we get into where to look, it helps to understand who does this and why, because it shapes what you do once you find the device.
A partner or ex who wants to know your every move. This is the most common reason we see, especially during a divorce or custody dispute.
A parent keeping tabs on a teen driver. This is legal if it’s their car, but it’s still worth knowing about.
An employer monitoring a company car. Also usually legal, and typically disclosed.
Someone with harmful intent. Stalking cases sometimes start with a small device stuck to a bumper, controlled through a tracker app on someone else’s phone.
Whatever the motive, using a tracker to monitor an adult’s personal car without their knowledge may be unauthorized surveillance and can be illegal.
If any of this sounds close to home and you feel unsafe, please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline in addition to working through the steps below. Your safety comes first, always.
Check Your Phone Before You Touch the Car
Most guides jump straight to crawling under your vehicle with a flashlight. We’d rather you start somewhere easier: your phone. Congressional researchers have flagged small Bluetooth trackers like Apple AirTags and Tile as an increasingly common way people’s movements get tracked without consent, and cars are one of the most frequent places they turn up, not the hardwired black box many people picture.
That’s very different from a legitimate “Find My Car” app, which you turn on yourself to locate your own personal car in a parking lot. A hidden GPS tracker on your car does the opposite: it reports your movements to someone else without asking. Your phone can often check your car in seconds.
On an iPhone
Open the Find My app and check the “Items” tab. Apple’s Find My network is built to flag Bluetooth trackers like AirTags, Tile trackers, or similar accessories that have been traveling with you, and it will alert you automatically in most cases. If you want to run a manual check right now, Apple’s own guide to detecting unwanted trackers walks through the exact steps.
On Android
Go to Settings, then Safety & Emergency, then Unknown Tracker Alerts, and run a scan. Google’s official support page explains how this works and what to do if a tracker turns up. This feature catches AirTags and other trackers using the shared industry standard, so it isn’t only an Apple problem to check for.
If you want a second opinion
A free Bluetooth scanner app from the App Store or Play Store, like nRF Connect, can pick up nearby Bluetooth devices your phone’s built-in alert might miss, including unnamed tracker chips that haven’t been set up with a name yet. This step alone catches a huge share of cases, especially anything battery-powered and cheap enough for someone to grab off Amazon.
Is there a phone app that can detect a GPS tracker on my car?
Beyond the built-in Find My app on iPhone and Unknown Tracker Alerts on Android, free Bluetooth scanner apps in the App Store or Play Store can pick up nearby tracking devices, including bare tags that haven’t been named or configured yet.
How to Locate a GPS Tracker on a Car: The Physical Search
If your phone comes up empty, or if you suspect an older, hardwired device that doesn’t use Bluetooth at all, it’s time to search the car itself. Give yourself 20 minutes, bring a flashlight, and work from the outside in.
Exterior spots (check these first)
The four wheel wells. Run your hand along the underside of each wheel well. Magnetic trackers cling to bare metal here because it’s easy to reach and rarely gets a second glance.
Behind the bumpers. Front and rear. Plastic bumper covers don’t block signals from GPS satellites, so this is a common hiding place for anyone placing a tracker.
The undercarriage. Get a mirror and a light and take a good look along the frame rails and near the fuel tank for anything that looks out of place or unusually clean.
Under the hood, in the engine bay. Check around the car battery terminals and the fuse box for anything that isn’t a factory part. A tracker in the car’s engine bay may have one or two wires that don’t belong.
Interior spots
The OBD-II port. Located under the dashboard, usually near the steering column. This is one of the most overlooked hiding spots because a small plug-in, plug-and-play GPS tracking device can be plugged directly into the OBD port and draw power from the car itself. No wiring, no battery to swap, and it looks like it belongs there. Whoever placed it can use GPS tracking through a simple app or web dashboard without ever touching the car again.
The glove box and center console. Take everything out and check underneath any loose panels or paperwork.
Under the seats. Slide the seats forward and back and feel along the tracks and underside of the cushions.
The trunk. Lift the floor mat and check the spare tire well.
Hardwired vs. battery-powered: know the difference
This distinction matters because it changes how you search and how long you have. A battery-powered tracker, the most common type of car tracker we find. It is a small device, often magnetic, that someone attaches from the outside. It’s worth knowing what a tracker looks like before you search: usually a black or dark gray plastic box, a couple of inches long, sometimes with a magnetic backing plate. Battery life is the limiting factor here. Most last a few weeks to a few months before someone has to sneak back to swap it out, which is also a moment when they can get caught. Real-time tracking models that report your location every few seconds drain a battery much faster than passive loggers that only save data for later download.
A hardwired tracker taps directly into the car’s electrical system, usually behind a panel near the fuse box or steering column, and never needs a battery change because it draws power the whole time the engine runs or the battery is connected. These are harder to find and usually mean whoever installed it had real access to your vehicle, not just a few minutes in a parking lot.
Can someone track your car without you knowing?
Unfortunately, yes, and it happens more often than people expect. A small device tucked behind a bumper or plugged into the OBD-II port can send location updates for weeks without you ever noticing anything different about how the car drives or looks.
How to Find a Tracking Device on a Car with an RF Detector
If you’ve checked your phone and searched every spot above and found nothing, but you still don’t feel right about it, a handheld RF detector is the next tool. These scan the radio frequency spectrum for signals like the ones a real-time GPS tracker sends when it’s reporting your vehicle’s location. A dedicated locator or locator app used by whoever placed the device can pinpoint your exact location down to a few feet, so if you’re serious about tracing a vehicle tracker back to its source, this step is worth the investment.
Drive the car for a few minutes first. Many trackers go quiet to save battery life when the car is parked, and driving wakes them back up.
Do the scan somewhere away from your home Wi-Fi and other people’s phones, since those signals will trigger false positives.
Move the detector slowly around the dashboard, bumpers, and undercarriage, and watch for a spike.
These detectors run anywhere from thirty to a few hundred dollars, and they’re a reasonable investment if you drive for work, share a car with someone you don’t fully trust, or simply want peace of mind after everything above turned up nothing.
Found a Tracker? Here’s What to Do Next
Take a breath. Finding the device is the hard part, and you’ve done it. What you do next depends on your situation.
Don’t smash it or throw it in a lake. If there’s any chance you’ll want to involve police or an attorney, the tracker itself and its location history are evidence. Photograph where you found it before you touch anything.
If you’re in danger, call the police first. A tracker placed without consent can be a sign of a bigger safety issue, and officers can help you file a police report and document the device properly.
If you just want it gone, below we explain how to document and safely remove it.
One thing worth remembering: tracking done without consent matters legally in Illinois and most other states, regardless of who owns the car or the black box attached to it. Tracking a spouse, ex, or adult family member without their knowledge so you can always “find their car” is not a gray area. Skipping consent is illegal, and courts treat it that way.
How to Disable a GPS Tracker on a Car
For a battery-powered magnetic unit, simply pull it free and remove the battery to stop location sharing immediately. For an Apple AirTag or similar Bluetooth tag, your phone’s app will usually walk you through disabling it once you tap the alert. For anything hardwired, we’d honestly recommend you take it to a mechanic rather than pulling wires yourself. Trying to remove a tracker tied into your car’s electrical system can damage or disable another component, and an automotive electrician can confirm it’s disconnected safely.
Where do people usually find a GPS tracker on a car?
Based on what we see in the field, the top three spots are the wheel wells, behind the bumpers, and the OBD-II port under the dashboard. Together those account for the vast majority of the trackers we’re asked to help locate.
When It’s Time to Call a Professional
Sometimes a device is hardwired deep enough, or hidden well enough, that a flashlight and an RF detector won’t cut it. That’s when a certified sweep makes sense. We offer digital forensics and spyware detection services for exactly this kind of situation, whether it’s a vehicle, a phone, or a home. We’ve done this work for people going through a divorce, parents worried about a custody dispute, and business owners who suspect a company car is being used to track more than mileage.
If the tracker turned up because you suspect a spouse or partner, it’s also worth reading up on our domestic investigation services, since GPS trackers often show up alongside other surveillance. And if the goal is building a case rather than just removing a device, our team can help you understand what Illinois surveillance law actually allows, because using GPS tracking without consent is not a gray area here.
Under 720 ILCS 5/21-2.5, it is illegal in Illinois for a person to use an electronic tracking device to determine your location or movement without your consent, full stop, regardless of who owns the car. If you believe this happened to you, Illinois Legal Aid Online has helpful, plain-language guidance on your options.
A GPS tracker isn’t the only way someone keeps tabs on you. If you’re already checking your car, it’s worth doing the same sweep for hidden listening devices in your car and for hidden cameras in your home.
And if this whole situation has you wondering whether you’re also being followed or watched more broadly, our guide on how to catch a stalker covers what the law allows and how a PI can help build a case.
On the flip side, if you’re curious how investigators themselves use this technology, we’ve also written about how private investigators use GPS devices and tracking, which is a different angle from the one in this guide: that article covers the investigator’s side; this one covers yours.
What are the signs that my car is being tracked?
A battery draining faster than usual, a faint clicking or beeping under the dash, unexplained wear near the wheel wells or bumper, or someone always knowing where you’ve been are the most common red flags. If any of these sound familiar, it’s worth running through the phone check and physical search above.
Worried Someone’s Tracking Your Every Move? We’ll Help You Find Out for Sure.
If you’ve searched your car and you’re still not sure, or you’d rather have a licensed professional handle the sweep from start to finish, give us a call.
Lawrence Ryan Investigations offers free consultations, 24/7 availability, and transparent pricing, so you’ll know exactly what to expect before we ever start. Contact us to talk to a real investigator about what you’re seeing.
