27 ms·

iPhone remains findable after power off

321 points by chetangoti 5y ago

AndrewStephens 5y ago
Umm, isn’t this, like maybe, a good thing? If I want my very expensive iPhone found, I want it found whether it is on or off. If people are worried about being tracked maybe they should carry around a device that is always broadcasting radio signals to third party towers.
- krageon 5y ago
  Maybe you don't want to be tracked sometimes, and you expect turning off your device to turn it off.
  - lucideer 5y ago
    Exactly. For example, when you're a phone thief.
    - tdy_err 5y ago
      Or the target of a malicious actor.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      Or you're an activist attending a protest.
      - NineStarPoint 5y ago
        It’s almost strictly better to leave your phone home in that sort of circumstance though. Your phone looks like you stayed home all day, and you don’t need to worry about things like whether any information gets sent out despite being “off”.
        Someone 5y ago
        I think you would have to leave your phone home a lot more often than on days you don’t want to be nailed to where you are. Imagine a case where evidence puts you near a protest or crime scene while your phone is home. That’s coincidence, but if your phone also was home only at the three days three similar events happened, it becomes circumstantial evidence.
        jdavis703 5y ago
        Most of the time protests in America only start involving law breaking, riot police and mass arrests after the sun goes down. I’d never endorse perjury, but an argument of “I decided to spend the evening inside” seems like it ought to be pretty reasonable for most people.
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        Ideally yes. However, people need to communicate and coordinate. Even arranging transportation may be an issue without a phone.
        llsf 5y ago
        Sure, but if you really want to, you can communicate and coordinate. I know it might sound old and all, but before the mobile phones and pagers, people managed to communicate and coordinate. Admittedly it is not as easy, but it is possible. It might actually be a good thing to try, and to step back without a mobile phone and unclutter our current model of communication and coordination. It would likely involve more commitments (e.g. "we said that we would meet at that space and time") and less distraction.
        fastball 5y ago
        If you're communicating and coordinating while out at this protest then you're being tracked, Find My isn't moving the needle...
        yencabulator 5y ago
      - user-the-name 5y ago
        Every phone talks to cell towers, and they always track and log your location.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      Think of the children! A more reasonable, good-faith understanding would also account for people who don't want to be tracked. I keep GPS and any location tracking on with all my devices because I don't want them to have any more data on me than I can avoid.
      - lucideer 5y ago
        The original commenter was proposing that there's multiple perspectives. The replies were all completely ignoring this and adding nothing substantive to the discussion, so I thought a short jokey reply would suffice. To be serious though: there's a lack of acknowledgement of the functional benefits of tracking by those advocating for control and privacy in this particular instance. The fact is as long as Apple's closed walled-garden is offering actual value to users (FindMyPhone works, and works well, for the common use-case most "consumers" experience day-to-day), while open alternatives are actively sticking their head in the sand around features like this, then closed solutions will prevail. What's needed is proper discourse on the challenges of e.g. providing practical asset management features that bad actors cannot easily overcome, while at the same time ensuring full user control over their own device and privacy. This is a real world challenge without easy answers: "just turn it all off all the time" is an easy answer, and a cop-out. If we want to provide quality solutions to e.g. activists, those solutions need to be mature and practical.
    - CountDrewku 5y ago
      Ah the ol' innocent people have nothing to hide argument. Been used by bad faith actors for centuries.
    - bowmessage 5y ago
      Won't phone thieves just have some faraday bags to pop their winnings into?
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Dedicated ones, yes, but their numbers have declined significantly now that the phones can be activation locked. Opportunistic ones likely won't have such a thing. My wife's phone was once stolen by someone at a hospital lab... after they'd checked in their kid. It was a fairly easy job for the cops to track that down.
      - sbuk 5y ago
        You can remotely brick it. The minute that the thief tries to do anything with the device, it's functionally useless. It needs to be online to be reactived, and if the device is marked stolen, it won't activate.
    - propogandist 5y ago
      okay, your phone was stolen and you have location. What next? The likelihood of the local PD deploying resources to recover your $xxx device is extremely low (non-existent), so will you chase down your thief and confront that stranger? Do you have a weapon that you're prepared to use if the bad guy threatens you with one? All you have gained is the illusion of safety, while more data is siphoned off your device, even while it is off.
  - amimrroboto 5y ago
    What situation are you going, "I don't want big tech to be tracking me right now"?
    - nixgeek 5y ago
      Given the prevalence of geofence warrants nowadays, I don’t think the situation needs to be especially nefarious in nature. Perhaps you don’t want to be scrutinized just because you and 370 others were within 300 yards of a crime occurring? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/16/geofence-warrants-reverse-search-warrants-police-google https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/16/geofence-war...
      - jdavis703 5y ago
        My understanding is the power off tracking uses NFC. This is encrypted. If Apple’s documentation is to be believed, the location information cannot be decrypted by law enforcement.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      What situation are you happy to let your location data be sold? Will you give the rest of us your location data?
    - contravariant 5y ago
      All of them.
      - Terretta 5y ago
        Then leave the phone at home. Because knowing which cell a cellular phone is in, is how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking
      - poo-yie 5y ago
        Or use a case that functions as a Faraday cage.
    - 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    > you expect turning off your device to turn it off. When you turn your phone off there is a message that states: iPhone Findable After Power Off > Tapping that shows an alert with a description: iPhone Remains Findable After Power Off Find my helps you locate this iPhone when it is lost or stolen, even after power off The location is visible in Find My on your other devices and to people in Family Sharing you share location with. You can temporarily turn off Find My network and it will resume when this iPhone is turned on again [OK] [Temporarily Turn Off Finding] Seems very clear about setting expectations about exactly what your phone will be doing when you turn it "off".
    - OneLeggedCat 5y ago
      Mine has no such message, and I'm on iOS 15. I just tested it. Any idea why?
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Head to the "Find My" section in the settings, click into "Find My iPhone", and see if "Find My network" is on or off. If it's off, you won't get the disclaimer, because it's not active.
        TillE 5y ago
        That setting is enabled for me on iOS 15, and yet I have no such message on the power off screen. slide to power off, Emergency SOS, Cancel That's it. Nothing appears after I turn it off either.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Interesting. I'm on 15.1 beta, so perhaps there's a difference. Is it possible the "Find My network" isn't supported on some phones?
        sbuk 5y ago
        Look at the text under "Slide to power off"...
  - pfranz 5y ago
    I've found iPhones way too fickle to trust them to stay off. If you plug in a charger or tap the power button they power back on. If you don't want to be tracked turn off your phone and put it in a faraday bag.
    - Jtsummers 5y ago
      I would expect tapping the power button would turn most devices with a power button on. With respect to charging it, for most users that's probably the correct behavior. There are 2 reasons people seem to turn off (not just airplane mode or disabling some things) their phones: 1. To preserve a low battery or because the battery has died. 2. To fully disable the device. (1) is by far the most common of the two. In that case, once it's charging then turning back on automatically is the desired behavior. In the case of (2), if you have a strong motivation (avoiding detection, for instance) then you'd presumably have done a bit of research or noticed that this happens and make deliberate choices around how you use and charge the device.
      - pfranz 5y ago
        > I would expect tapping the power button would turn most devices with a power button on. I believe I was thinking of my older phone. Tapping the home button, perhaps even the volume buttons, would turn it back on. On my Xs, I have to hold down the power button for a few seconds before it would turn on. I find this a bit more reliable if I want my phone to be off for awhile.
  - riddleronroof 5y ago
    Yes, exactly this. Imagine à reporter going through an unfriendly country’s airport.
    - Tagbert 5y ago
      then their location is known anyway
  - Aaargh20318 5y ago
    You cannot be tracked using the Find My network. No one but you can track your phone or tags.
- exabrial 5y ago
  No. A device thats "off" should be "off" 100% of the time. When the device wakes it realizes it's been stolen, only then should it reach for home. This behavior can/will only be exploited by hostile nations and other bad actors.
  - nixgeek 5y ago
    You’re both correct, but Apple is optimizing for the majority with their ‘Find My’ network, where the majority don’t have a threat model which includes exploitation of a target by a nation state actor. It’s a toggle in Settings to turn off this functionality for those who want the surface area reduction, or an RF shielded bag if you don’t trust the toggle ;)
  - ubercow13 5y ago
    Then turn it off. Personally I’d like it on.
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    I guess that's why it's an option, with (IMHO) a reasonable default of being enabled. It's a useless feature against theft if it can just be turned off the thief.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Most devices never “wake up” after being stolen. Apple’s activation lock means that most stolen iPhone are only good for parts. If your threat model includes nation state actors, then you should probably be putting electronics in faraday bags if you don’t want to be tracked. For everyone else, the design of the Find My network provides significant protection against misuse.
- AndrewThrowaway 5y ago
  Off should mean off. Sleeping means that it can be woken up, woken up means that it microphones can be turned on and etc.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    You should be able to turn off the screen without putting it in sleep mode, but it should still display the microphone light.
- arthur_sav 5y ago
  If YOU want that option, that's fine. However, why force everyone to use this? From the comments is seems Apple is pretty aggressive with it and you can only turn it off temporarily.
  - otterley 5y ago
    Because most customers do want this feature. It’s not being “forced,” it’s just a default.
  - satysin 5y ago
    It's not "forced" on you at all. You can disable it with one setting change.
  - sbuk 5y ago
    It's only on if the 'Find My' feature is enabled, and then it can be disabled.
  - breakfastduck 5y ago
    Since when did something being a default setting become something being 'forced' upon users?
- defaultname 5y ago
  For the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations, it's a very good thing and is ideal behavior. It is only in conspiratorial "but what if nation states are tracking me" noise that this is cast as a bad thing.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    I personally just think it has a harmful effect on the metaphor of being "off". For the longest time, a device being 'off' was synonymous with being unplugged or unpowered, rendered fully nonfunctional. We worked really hard to build the metaphor of 'sleeping' devices to compliment this, and I think letting Find My run while a device is sleeping is perfectly fine. I worry for the end user though, who now has to tabulate the capabilities of their device in their head every time they power off.
  - sizzle 5y ago
    Big GDP nation states have teams harvesting 0-days around the clock and can go above the law to insider negotiate or bruteforce backdoors for this 'always on' functionality I'd imagine (what company can say no to the highest levels of government interference?), regardless of if it is offered to the public or not as a new 'feature' for their benefit.
  - SilverRed 5y ago
    And for those people, you can turn that setting off. It even warns you about it on the power off screen. If you don't trust the setting to actually turn off, then you shouldn't trust anything about the phone and should smash it up with a hammer.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    People who attended the 06Jan rally and were not even on the Capitol grounds had their phones tracked. Some of them got a SWAT visit in the wee hours weeks later. It’s not so far fetched. I’ll also mention that Ćhina will find this new feature very helpful and are no doubt grateful.
    - fastball 5y ago
chewmieser 5y ago
Apple is very clear that this is how things work now. They even give you a dialog prompt now to inform you of this change the first time you try to shut your device off - https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-find-your-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-fi... I'm not sure why this is presented as some new thing, or a gotcha or whatever this is. We've known about it for months... And IMO, it's a positive change although it does sound a little weird.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Yeah, there's a reasonably visible message "warning" you of this, which has a prompt to turn it off. I actually thought this was very old, added a year or so ago. I guess it got delayed? I've had two phones stolen (right out of my hands) that were immediately shut down and sim cards ejected to prevent them from being tracked. While I'm sure this feature wouldn't help me get back a phone, I hope it does deter this. Edit: I think this was announced back in 2019 WWWDC https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluetooth/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet... ?
  - AniseAbyss 5y ago
    The police in my country wouldn't even bother to check, they have rapists and drug dealers to deal with.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Police in the US don't investigate any but very expensive property crime against individuals, either. And I don't actually know that they investigate very expensive property crime—I just assume they do. Certainly mid-five-figures of theft from multiple locations by one crew with tons of video evidence isn't enough to get them interested, beyond taking the report. ... unless your country is the US, in which case, yeah, true.
    - roywiggins 5y ago
      Your police investigate rapes? Ours don't. https://www.wnyc.org/story/nypd-misled-public-about-response-metoo-report/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/nypd-misled-public-about-response...
calyth2018 5y ago
Not exactly new. The old BlackBerries allows you to "turn off" the device and have the alarm wake you up. It basically drops into a low power mode. It was easy to make a phone dead. You yanked out the batteries.
- easton 5y ago
  The old BlackBerrys didn’t even do a full OS startup unless you did a battery pull, I think the “clean” shutdown just hibernated it at best.
- KirillPanov 5y ago
  This is a feature of any device with a battery-backed real time clock (RTC). All x86 machines have this feature. Pretty much anything with a clock that doesn't need resetting every time you turn it on can do this. An RTC chip is just a super low-power counter, and it costs almost nothing to toss in a wake-time comparator, so all of them do. When you set the wake-time alarm the host CPU really does power down 100% -- right after it sets the RTC chip's wake-time registers. This is a long, long, long way from a microcontroller. It's not Turing-complete and has only a few dozen bits of storage for the counter. They're also manufactured on incredibly ancient fabrication processes (like 350nm until very recently) for lowest possible leakage.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN I never used it, but remember it from BIOS settings.
hyperstar 5y ago
wtf?! is this true of 5s as well?
- pfranz 5y ago
  I think there's a hardware component required. Unless it's only in a beta OS, I have and Xs and I see a different wording for that setting. Mine omits "and powered off."
  - hyperstar 5y ago
    Why? wouldn't it just be a matter of activating a low-power mode and turning off the screen? It's been said a long time that this is done by certain malwares.
    - pfranz 5y ago
      I found an article that specifies phone models and explains why[1]. It's iPhone 11 and 12 because it requires a UWB/U1 chip. This thread (via Craig Federighi)[2] asserts UWB isn't the part that's used, but those phones have a newer Bluetooth chipset. [1] https://beebom.com/how-find-lost-iphone-turned-off-erased/ https://beebom.com/how-find-lost-iphone-turned-off-erased/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/otcn02/iphone_remains_findable_after_power_off_has/h6veidf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/otcn02/iphone_rema...
    - avianlyric 5y ago
      Your hardware needs a low-power mode to activate, before you can activate it. All of the iPhone “off” features, like express transit cards and find my use dedicated low power hardware that seems to be capable of running the feature without an active CPU telling it what to do.
todd3834 5y ago
This article has me wondering if I’ve ever turned my phone off besides restarting it or the battery died. I’m sure I have but I bet it is very uncommon. That being said, if it were off and lost, this feature would be amazing. Apple is very transparent about it and also allows you to disable it as far as I remember. The OP has a follow up tweet that iOS 15 made their phone hot during charging. Kind of feels like they might just not be having a good time with their new iPhone or is trying a little too hard to capture some Apple outrage attention. There are better things in the ecosystem to complain about in my opinion but to each their own.
- dawnerd 5y ago
  The heat part is especially weird considering androids also go scorched earth when fast or wireless charging. It’s just got phones work currently. And their point about losing 15%, after an update all phones are going to do reinfecting. My Samsung flip drops battery like crazy when not doing anything too. Phones are one of those grass isn’t greener things.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  > trying a little too hard to capture some Apple outrage attention. Exactly the vibe I got.
- rjh29 5y ago
  There is an obvious trend on HN turning against Apple since the image hash stuff. Search 'Apple' in the last month and you'll see stories about Apple screwing over blind people, copying other people's ideas, screwing over employees, removing apps from the app store, disabling FaceID if you try to change the screen etc. From my POV (a non-Apple user) they have not changed, they have always been pretty anti-consumer. But even I can see that most of these stories have a clear agenda and are exaggerated to capture the current anti-Apple outrage sentiment. That kind of discussion doesn't do anyone any favours.
  - MerelyMortal 5y ago
    It's helping show people that "they have always been pretty anti-consumer".
kosasbest 5y ago
An iPhone Remains Findable After Power Off ... except when you put it in a Faraday bag when not using it
jareklupinski 5y ago
it definitely could have been worded better: "You iPhone continues to report its location to Apple when it is powered off" or something seems software has gone back to extremely hostile user-facing strings, after about a decade of "oopsie doopsie our system had a crashie"
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > You iPhone continues to report its location to Apple when it is powered off" or something This statement wouldn’t be true. The iPhone broadcasts crypto keys over Bluetooth, which other I devices use to encrypt the detected location and upload to Apple. But the only thing capable of decrypting those encrypted payloads is other devices attached to the same iCloud Keychain. So Apple has no idea where your phone is, and there’s also no guarantee that a location will ever be uploaded.
draw_down 5y ago
What use would this be if a thief could just power off the device?
mrtksn 5y ago
It's NOT an iOS 15 feature. I have an iPhone without a SIM card that I use as a test device and it happen that yesterday I left it in my backpack, together with an AirTag in the car. Shortly after I walked off, I got the AirTag notification as expected(the left behind notification). What I did not expect though, was to see the test iPhone also having an up to date location in the Find My app. That iPhone has no network connection, so I assumed that somehow it must have connected to my daily iPhone's hot spot. And today, I learn that iPhones are capable of sending location even when turned off. So I checked the Find My setting, it's right there on iOS 14.4.2 on iPhone 7. It's pretty cool, very aggressive tracking. Maybe we need clothes with faraday cage pockets for occasions when we don't like to be tracked.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  It doesn't connect to your iPhone's hot spot, but your daily iPhone is able to detect the other iPhone's presence just like it detects AirTags and logs that info.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    Yes but apparently other iPhones can also detect it and send the location just like with the AirTag even if the iPhone is turned off. That was a surprise.
    - elzbardico 5y ago
      That’s the whole point of the feature: being able to track a phone that has been turned off. If you’re afraid of FBI, CIA or Mossad tracking you with this feature, you can disable this on settings
      - mrtksn 5y ago
        Nope, I'm happy to be tracked. I actually enabled Google Maps to track me all the time because I would like to be able to look back at Google Timeline[0] and see where I have been at particular time in the past. Since a few years, I'm in Turkey and I know that in this country the GSM operators track your location constantly and keep the records indefinitely. How do I know that? Well, in Turkey every SIM card is tied to a proven identity(ID scan is required even for pre-paid SIMs) and getting the GSM signal records to prove whereabouts of someone at particular time has become a standard practice on criminal cases. Everyone is well aware of being tracked by the govt. With Apple and Google, I at least get something out of it. [0]: https://timeline.google.com/ https://timeline.google.com/
tartoran 5y ago
Wonder what else it does or reports to the homebase. Why stop at location data? It’s weird how it the surveillance apparatus creeps up slowly and gets accepted without much protest. It’s just like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot
elzbardico 5y ago
Well, unless you’re living under a rock this has been exhaustively discussed when this feature was launched.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  I click every global tracking network link out there and am on HN daily and often more time than I perhaps should. This is the first I hear of it. Yeah I really need to get out from under this rock and spend more time on HN.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    Well, what you want me to say?
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      "Oh, maybe it's not as much common knowledge as I thought."
renewiltord 5y ago
Great feature. Love it. Got the notification when I first turned off my iPhone 13.
zzyzxd 5y ago
To use this feature, you have to turn on Find My Network in settings (it is on by default), turning it on also means the device will report other nearby Find My devices like AirTags. I like to have my phone findable after power off, but I am still not sure whether I want my phone to report other devices.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Out of interest, what’s your concern with your phone reporting the location of other devices?
  - zzyzxd 5y ago
    You can extract a lot of information by knowing how frequent an AirTag has been approached by random iPhones. For instance, if I toss an AirTag into my neighbor's yard, I can get some idea on when they leave/return back to the house by monitoring the AirTag's update timestamps. I can later use this data to build their activity patterns and whatnot. I understand that Apple has some mechanism to mitigate this, like "reporting stranger's airtags in frequent accessed locations", but unless it is proven to be reliable, I can't trust it.
- fastball 5y ago
  So... you want to get the benefits of Find My without actually giving back to the network?
  - zzyzxd 5y ago
    Yes. I also consume a lot of websites and block their ads at the same time. This is selfish, but it is the way I mitigate risks.
    - fastball 5y ago
      This is how you get a Tragedy of the Commons, and I'm happy Apple doesn't allow that kind of anti-social behavior when it comes to Find My.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CalRobert 5y ago
Phones can be used to eavesdrop even if turned off, as revealed in court proceedings against the Genovese family in the mid-2000's. Called "roving bugs" I think. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2006/12/8343/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2006/12/8343/
bernardv 5y ago
One day Apple will sell a stylish iHammer to securely power off the damn thing.
thepasswordis 5y ago
This is awesome, and is a cool enough feature to actually make me upgrade. Love it.
Animats 5y ago
But if they actually turned off power, they'd lose track of where you are. They'd lose the tracking information needed for marketing. Can't have that. Does "airplane mode" still shut off all transmitters?
- gtirloni 5y ago
  Do you have any evidence that location tracking actually works when the phone is turned off (even with the Find My Phone feature enabled)?
- steve_avery 5y ago
  Airplane mode definitely does not disable Bluetooth - especially if you are using airpods or other Bluetooth headsets. BT radio will stay on so you can keep listening through the flight. WiFi is also able to be toggled on while airplane mode is enabled. The only thing that airplane mode does is ostensibly turn off the mobile network connectivity
- fastball 5y ago
  The data is encrypted with your iCloud Keychain. Apple doesn't have access to it.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
> Ford flipped the switch which he saw was now marked "Mode Execute Ready" instead of the now old-fashioned "Access Standby" which had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged "Off". - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- darknavi 5y ago
  Don't give Boeing any more ideas.
numpad0 5y ago
This kind of behavior is needed for: - Public transit and digital IDs. It sucks when phone dies and you can’t get out of a station or show your driver’s license. - Power management. Power buttons on modern phones are digitally controlled by a microcontroller because actually switching main power by those buttons can glitch the phone. - Firmware updates. Phone has to be able to handle USB connection to accept new firmware. - (probably more) It’s nothing new. Just that it does wireless too now.
- zootboy 5y ago
  There's nothing that requires a microcontroller to be active during power-down to handle the issues you describe: For transit passes and IDs, there need to be non-phone-based ways of handling that issue. It's equally possible to lose / have your phone stolen. Talk to the station agent, or have the police look up your license by name / address. There's no need for a continuously-running microcontroller to read the power button. It's perfectly possible to have the power button feed power directly from the battery to a bootstrap power management IC, which then takes over supplying power to the main processor. USB connections supply power, so it's easy to implement having the presence of power on the USB port boot the phone.
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    > For transit passes It’s interesting, here in the U.K. you have a legal obligation to present a valid ticket upon demand for any train you travel on. Failure to do so for any reason (including my phone died, or I dropped the ticket) is a criminal offence (and I mean criminal, not civil) punishable by a prison sentence. Some ticket conductors at the end of a long shift hearing endless excuses about why someone doesn’t have a valid ticket really aren’t interested in negotiating. They’re quite happy to enforce the law, and make your life a living hell in the process. Personally I much prefer it if the transit pass on my phone keeps working after it dies. The alternative is very… inconvenient.
    - fy20 5y ago
      Meh this sounds like scare mongering. If someone is tired at the end of a long shift, what do you think they are going to want to do more? a) spend 15 minutes writing up a ticket, and possibly waiting for the police to arrive before handing you over to them b) take you to the back office and let you sit for 5 minutes while your phone charges Nobody is going to send you to prison for the first offence of not having a ticket (a physical ticket could be lost or damaged to a point where it is unreadable too). They would probably issue a fine, but you could appeal that. Buying a digital ticket you'd have a digital paper trail showing you bought it - which you wouldn't if you bought a paper ticket.
sudosysgen 5y ago
If someone steals your phone all they have to do so you won't find it is to wrap it in aluminium foil.
- katbyte 5y ago
  and keep it wrapped till they get to their hideout which is in a faraday cage and then proceed to wipe it and bypass the activation lock. it's another hassel for thieves which imho is a good thing. Might as well argue "why lock you door when all someone needs is a bump key!"
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Except they don't. Thieves don't know how change the ESN of a phone or how to bypass an iCloud Lock. They have fences that either sell the phones for parts or bypass the security features. It's how it works for a few years already now. The only difference is now instead of turning off the phones they'll put it in a metallized plastic bag.
    - katbyte 5y ago
      Sure, either way it’s another deterrent. Also huh you finally gave me a reason why apple may be locking its hardware components now.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        But it's really not. They already have to find a fence beforehand, what does it change if the fence gives you a procedure for turning it off without the password or if they just give you a bag? Thieves and fences always figure out how to bypass the component lockdowns.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  It's just another barrier. With enough hassle, people will move to stealing other easier things. When find my was released, phone theft went down massively. Not every criminal wants to make the jump from just grabbing a phone off the table, to having an RF blocking bag, transporting to an RF proof room, and then pulling the phone to bits to sell for pennies since the parts don't work properly when swapped in to another phone.
rad_gruchalski 5y ago
So does my car. And?
kevinventullo 5y ago
“You think you really know what's going on? They passing laws where they can run up in your own home Cameras on your laptop, TV and your iPhone The battery don't come out, that means it's always on” - B.o.B., “Paper Route”, 2013 One might call him a conspiracy theory rapper. He once got in a Twitter feud with Neil deGrasse Tyson on whether the earth was flat.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fastball 5y ago
  He is literally a flat-earther. Saying he "might" be a conspiracy theorist is giving him way more leeway than deserved.
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    Definitely. What I meant is that one might label his genre as “conspiracy theory rap”.
- dx034 5y ago
  But they didn't pass laws, people wanted it. No government encouraged people to buy smart speakers, consumers bought them because they liked the convenience.
rootusrootus 5y ago
That's handy. And I am glad that it tells you when you power down, so there are no surprises.
lmilcin 5y ago
Per my understanding this has nothing to do with actual security. I think nobody steals smartphones anymore for the smartphone itself. Mainly because they are either getting locked or are easily tracked. That is poor business. What is happening in practice is thieves take sim card out of the phone and try to use it to steal from the owner as much as possible. Log in to bank account, reset passwords on social accounts and ransom money, etc.
- sigjuice 5y ago
  eSIMs should help avoid this scenario, right?
EastOfTruth 5y ago
Everytime I will hear Apple talking about being pro-privacy, I will keep laughing.
ajconway 5y ago
As stated in https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ Apple (or any other third parties) cannot access the actual location data in the Find My network directly. It is supposed to be only decryptable by your other devices. That is if you trust Apple to design and implement everything correctly.
pornel 5y ago
I hoped for some analysts of how it's implemented (there's probably a lot of clever low power-pings and cryptography involved), but the linked Twitter thread is purely "WTF? Get off my lawn!"
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  If you read down the thread a bit (I’m the author) you’ll see that it’s (probably) implemented by caching cryptographic beacons on the UWB chipset. It’s not documented by Apple, however, which is the reason my thread is a little critical. I think it should be.
mrits 5y ago
Apple is part of a global conspiracy that is making it harder and harder to get away with murder.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  But also harder to get away with protests.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Or large scale dissent in general. No apps related to the largest current event that challenge the dominant narratives are alllwrd in the App Store at all.
  - kevinsundar 5y ago
    Why does this make it harder to get away with protests?
literallyaduck 5y ago
"The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. . . The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely." - 1984. It is best to treat electronics as always on and always recording and transmitting everything.
unstatusthequo 5y ago
If you really don’t want it found after turn off, get a nice Faraday bag.
irjustin 5y ago
On a related, note Alarms still work even when the phone is "powered off". I get it because it's saved me once or twice. Nothing serious just reminders for various things. Overall net helpful from my view.
- Nition 5y ago
  Is that new in iOS 15? They never used to - it was something I missed when switching from the Nokia ecosystem (Symbian/Meego) to iOS. It's nice for turning your phone off at night but still using it as an alarm clock. Edit: Just tested it. Sadly it still doesn't work. iOS 15 on an iPhone SE (2016).
  - sgerenser 5y ago
    Yeah I’d be really surprised if alarms worked while the phone is powered off.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  Until the alarm on your “powered off” iOS 15 phone goes off in the middle of the chamber music concert. I don’t understand why the “silent” switch doesn’t mean “completely silent”.
  - heavenlyblue 5y ago
    Why would you set an alarm for the middle of chamber music concert?
- sysihyk 5y ago
  It is Real Time Clock (RTC) chip just as found in ATX motherboards since like 1997, very primitive and low powered, so it can't spy on you, just provides autonomous time source. Power-on alarm(s) is RTC's feature as well, merely comparing preset alarm time register(s) with current time register.
unobatbayar 5y ago
Also, has anyone noticed when the battery goes 0% it's actually not 0% inside?
joering2 5y ago
His next tweet is interesting. > In other news I updated my phone to iOS 15 and put it down to charge last night. When I woke up it was hot, and my battery has gone from 100% to 15% since 7:30am. I gotta get off this ecosystem. I mean, if you have tends of thousands of photos you accumulated over the years. I bet scan of these against CP lib will take some time and battery.
- fastball 5y ago
  Apple delayed plans to roll out CSAM scanning, so that is not included in iOS 15. You are partially right though, in that the likely explanation for this extra power consumption is re-indexing content / rebuilding local neural networks, which use a lot of power (for a day or so, and then they're finished). So rather than scanning your photos for CP, more likely it's scanning your photos for text or similar as part of the new Live Text feature.
drummer 5y ago
Why does Green use an iphone? Some people never learn.
Causality1 5y ago
Aren't there situations where strict control of electromagnetic emissions is required? Labs, scientific equipment, military sensor work etc?
- judge2020 5y ago
  Maybe, but at that point they would bin everyone's phone in a locker/stored in some controlled room. Also, FMI doesn't work if you have the phone but bluetooth is turned off (as in, turned off in settings; control center only disabled connecting existing devices, but keeps BT on).
olliej 5y ago
This is being bizarrely (intentionally?) treated as "apple knows where your phone is. The only person who can find your "findable" device is you. The find my network is anonymous - even apple cannot find an arbitrary device on it. A malicious agent with a full compromise of apple's networks cannot find your device. Apple cannot be compelled to provide the information because again, apple does not have the ability to. The TLDR: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ The actual technical details: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-sec6cbc80fd0/1/web/1 https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-se...
xony 5y ago
Feature ,not a bug
uncoder0 5y ago
This is probably my last iPhone and I'll just switch to a dumb phone after this because I can't deal with 'features' like this I can't turn off.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
I manage mobile devices and Macs for work.. And I really love this. I was having a discussion yesterday about a stolen MacBook Pro. We sent a wipe command and security was concerned that the command never arrived. I explained that it's extremely unlikely to ever arrive because it means the thief is either pretty dumb (connecting the device to a wired ethernet which gives him no benefit while it's locked) or extremely smart (managing to crack the password) but incredibly dumb at the same time (connecting to WiFi after logging in). Because we disable the guest login which Apple uses as "bait" for lost Macs. Also, all of this applies only if the Mac was sleeping at boot time, otherwise FileVault blocks it from even booting up at all. Meaning no comms to us in any scenario. However, this AirTag functionality would be amazing for Mac. We could send a wipe command to it even when it's off. The thief could obviously block it with a metal-lined bag but it would move the scenario to something where the thief actively has to do something to make the wipe work, to something where they actively have to do something to prevent the wipe from working. So, as an enterprise device manager I love this. However I'm a big privacy advocate as well, and in that scope it's pretty terrible, obviously. However, if it can be switched off (and ideally defaults to off) I'm fine with it.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
Battery issue is probably the on device "CSAM"/Surveillence scanning. Their new range has 11% bigger battery capacity if I remember the apple reveal a few weeks ago, and I wonder was it due to the onboard scanning of everything on your phone.

321 points by chetangoti 5y ago

Umm, isn’t this, like maybe, a good thing? If I want my very expensive iPhone found, I want it found whether it is on or off. If people are worried about being tracked maybe they should carry around a device that is always broadcasting radio signals to third party towers.

krageon 5y ago
Maybe you don't want to be tracked sometimes, and you expect turning off your device to turn it off.
- lucideer 5y ago
  Exactly. For example, when you're a phone thief.
  - tdy_err 5y ago
    Or the target of a malicious actor.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    Or you're an activist attending a protest.
    - NineStarPoint 5y ago
      It’s almost strictly better to leave your phone home in that sort of circumstance though. Your phone looks like you stayed home all day, and you don’t need to worry about things like whether any information gets sent out despite being “off”.
      - Someone 5y ago
        I think you would have to leave your phone home a lot more often than on days you don’t want to be nailed to where you are. Imagine a case where evidence puts you near a protest or crime scene while your phone is home. That’s coincidence, but if your phone also was home only at the three days three similar events happened, it becomes circumstantial evidence.
        jdavis703 5y ago
        Most of the time protests in America only start involving law breaking, riot police and mass arrests after the sun goes down. I’d never endorse perjury, but an argument of “I decided to spend the evening inside” seems like it ought to be pretty reasonable for most people.
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        Ideally yes. However, people need to communicate and coordinate. Even arranging transportation may be an issue without a phone.
        llsf 5y ago
        Sure, but if you really want to, you can communicate and coordinate. I know it might sound old and all, but before the mobile phones and pagers, people managed to communicate and coordinate. Admittedly it is not as easy, but it is possible. It might actually be a good thing to try, and to step back without a mobile phone and unclutter our current model of communication and coordination. It would likely involve more commitments (e.g. "we said that we would meet at that space and time") and less distraction.
        fastball 5y ago
        If you're communicating and coordinating while out at this protest then you're being tracked, Find My isn't moving the needle...
        yencabulator 5y ago
    - user-the-name 5y ago
      Every phone talks to cell towers, and they always track and log your location.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    Think of the children! A more reasonable, good-faith understanding would also account for people who don't want to be tracked. I keep GPS and any location tracking on with all my devices because I don't want them to have any more data on me than I can avoid.
    - lucideer 5y ago
      The original commenter was proposing that there's multiple perspectives. The replies were all completely ignoring this and adding nothing substantive to the discussion, so I thought a short jokey reply would suffice. To be serious though: there's a lack of acknowledgement of the functional benefits of tracking by those advocating for control and privacy in this particular instance. The fact is as long as Apple's closed walled-garden is offering actual value to users (FindMyPhone works, and works well, for the common use-case most "consumers" experience day-to-day), while open alternatives are actively sticking their head in the sand around features like this, then closed solutions will prevail. What's needed is proper discourse on the challenges of e.g. providing practical asset management features that bad actors cannot easily overcome, while at the same time ensuring full user control over their own device and privacy. This is a real world challenge without easy answers: "just turn it all off all the time" is an easy answer, and a cop-out. If we want to provide quality solutions to e.g. activists, those solutions need to be mature and practical.
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    Ah the ol' innocent people have nothing to hide argument. Been used by bad faith actors for centuries.
  - bowmessage 5y ago
    Won't phone thieves just have some faraday bags to pop their winnings into?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Dedicated ones, yes, but their numbers have declined significantly now that the phones can be activation locked. Opportunistic ones likely won't have such a thing. My wife's phone was once stolen by someone at a hospital lab... after they'd checked in their kid. It was a fairly easy job for the cops to track that down.
    - sbuk 5y ago
      You can remotely brick it. The minute that the thief tries to do anything with the device, it's functionally useless. It needs to be online to be reactived, and if the device is marked stolen, it won't activate.
  - propogandist 5y ago
    okay, your phone was stolen and you have location. What next? The likelihood of the local PD deploying resources to recover your $xxx device is extremely low (non-existent), so will you chase down your thief and confront that stranger? Do you have a weapon that you're prepared to use if the bad guy threatens you with one? All you have gained is the illusion of safety, while more data is siphoned off your device, even while it is off.
- amimrroboto 5y ago
  What situation are you going, "I don't want big tech to be tracking me right now"?
  - nixgeek 5y ago
    Given the prevalence of geofence warrants nowadays, I don’t think the situation needs to be especially nefarious in nature. Perhaps you don’t want to be scrutinized just because you and 370 others were within 300 yards of a crime occurring? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/16/geofence-warrants-reverse-search-warrants-police-google https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/16/geofence-war...
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      My understanding is the power off tracking uses NFC. This is encrypted. If Apple’s documentation is to be believed, the location information cannot be decrypted by law enforcement.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    What situation are you happy to let your location data be sold? Will you give the rest of us your location data?
  - contravariant 5y ago
    All of them.
    - Terretta 5y ago
      Then leave the phone at home. Because knowing which cell a cellular phone is in, is how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking
    - poo-yie 5y ago
      Or use a case that functions as a Faraday cage.
  - 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  > you expect turning off your device to turn it off. When you turn your phone off there is a message that states: iPhone Findable After Power Off > Tapping that shows an alert with a description: iPhone Remains Findable After Power Off Find my helps you locate this iPhone when it is lost or stolen, even after power off The location is visible in Find My on your other devices and to people in Family Sharing you share location with. You can temporarily turn off Find My network and it will resume when this iPhone is turned on again [OK] [Temporarily Turn Off Finding] Seems very clear about setting expectations about exactly what your phone will be doing when you turn it "off".
  - OneLeggedCat 5y ago
    Mine has no such message, and I'm on iOS 15. I just tested it. Any idea why?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Head to the "Find My" section in the settings, click into "Find My iPhone", and see if "Find My network" is on or off. If it's off, you won't get the disclaimer, because it's not active.
      - TillE 5y ago
        That setting is enabled for me on iOS 15, and yet I have no such message on the power off screen. slide to power off, Emergency SOS, Cancel That's it. Nothing appears after I turn it off either.
        ceejayoz 5y ago
        Interesting. I'm on 15.1 beta, so perhaps there's a difference. Is it possible the "Find My network" isn't supported on some phones?
        sbuk 5y ago
        Look at the text under "Slide to power off"...
- pfranz 5y ago
  I've found iPhones way too fickle to trust them to stay off. If you plug in a charger or tap the power button they power back on. If you don't want to be tracked turn off your phone and put it in a faraday bag.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    I would expect tapping the power button would turn most devices with a power button on. With respect to charging it, for most users that's probably the correct behavior. There are 2 reasons people seem to turn off (not just airplane mode or disabling some things) their phones: 1. To preserve a low battery or because the battery has died. 2. To fully disable the device. (1) is by far the most common of the two. In that case, once it's charging then turning back on automatically is the desired behavior. In the case of (2), if you have a strong motivation (avoiding detection, for instance) then you'd presumably have done a bit of research or noticed that this happens and make deliberate choices around how you use and charge the device.
    - pfranz 5y ago
      > I would expect tapping the power button would turn most devices with a power button on. I believe I was thinking of my older phone. Tapping the home button, perhaps even the volume buttons, would turn it back on. On my Xs, I have to hold down the power button for a few seconds before it would turn on. I find this a bit more reliable if I want my phone to be off for awhile.
- riddleronroof 5y ago
  Yes, exactly this. Imagine à reporter going through an unfriendly country’s airport.
  - Tagbert 5y ago
    then their location is known anyway
- Aaargh20318 5y ago
  You cannot be tracked using the Find My network. No one but you can track your phone or tags.
exabrial 5y ago
No. A device thats "off" should be "off" 100% of the time. When the device wakes it realizes it's been stolen, only then should it reach for home. This behavior can/will only be exploited by hostile nations and other bad actors.
- nixgeek 5y ago
  You’re both correct, but Apple is optimizing for the majority with their ‘Find My’ network, where the majority don’t have a threat model which includes exploitation of a target by a nation state actor. It’s a toggle in Settings to turn off this functionality for those who want the surface area reduction, or an RF shielded bag if you don’t trust the toggle ;)
- ubercow13 5y ago
  Then turn it off. Personally I’d like it on.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  I guess that's why it's an option, with (IMHO) a reasonable default of being enabled. It's a useless feature against theft if it can just be turned off the thief.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Most devices never “wake up” after being stolen. Apple’s activation lock means that most stolen iPhone are only good for parts. If your threat model includes nation state actors, then you should probably be putting electronics in faraday bags if you don’t want to be tracked. For everyone else, the design of the Find My network provides significant protection against misuse.
AndrewThrowaway 5y ago
Off should mean off. Sleeping means that it can be woken up, woken up means that it microphones can be turned on and etc.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  You should be able to turn off the screen without putting it in sleep mode, but it should still display the microphone light.
arthur_sav 5y ago
If YOU want that option, that's fine. However, why force everyone to use this? From the comments is seems Apple is pretty aggressive with it and you can only turn it off temporarily.
- otterley 5y ago
  Because most customers do want this feature. It’s not being “forced,” it’s just a default.
- satysin 5y ago
  It's not "forced" on you at all. You can disable it with one setting change.
- sbuk 5y ago
  It's only on if the 'Find My' feature is enabled, and then it can be disabled.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  Since when did something being a default setting become something being 'forced' upon users?
defaultname 5y ago
For the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations, it's a very good thing and is ideal behavior. It is only in conspiratorial "but what if nation states are tracking me" noise that this is cast as a bad thing.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I personally just think it has a harmful effect on the metaphor of being "off". For the longest time, a device being 'off' was synonymous with being unplugged or unpowered, rendered fully nonfunctional. We worked really hard to build the metaphor of 'sleeping' devices to compliment this, and I think letting Find My run while a device is sleeping is perfectly fine. I worry for the end user though, who now has to tabulate the capabilities of their device in their head every time they power off.
- sizzle 5y ago
  Big GDP nation states have teams harvesting 0-days around the clock and can go above the law to insider negotiate or bruteforce backdoors for this 'always on' functionality I'd imagine (what company can say no to the highest levels of government interference?), regardless of if it is offered to the public or not as a new 'feature' for their benefit.
- SilverRed 5y ago
  And for those people, you can turn that setting off. It even warns you about it on the power off screen. If you don't trust the setting to actually turn off, then you shouldn't trust anything about the phone and should smash it up with a hammer.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  People who attended the 06Jan rally and were not even on the Capitol grounds had their phones tracked. Some of them got a SWAT visit in the wee hours weeks later. It’s not so far fetched. I’ll also mention that Ćhina will find this new feature very helpful and are no doubt grateful.
  - fastball 5y ago

chewmieser 5y ago

Apple is very clear that this is how things work now. They even give you a dialog prompt now to inform you of this change the first time you try to shut your device off - https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-find-your-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-fi... I'm not sure why this is presented as some new thing, or a gotcha or whatever this is. We've known about it for months... And IMO, it's a positive change although it does sound a little weird.

madeofpalk 5y ago
Yeah, there's a reasonably visible message "warning" you of this, which has a prompt to turn it off. I actually thought this was very old, added a year or so ago. I guess it got delayed? I've had two phones stolen (right out of my hands) that were immediately shut down and sim cards ejected to prevent them from being tracked. While I'm sure this feature wouldn't help me get back a phone, I hope it does deter this. Edit: I think this was announced back in 2019 WWWDC https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluetooth/ https://www.wired.com/story/apple-find-my-cryptography-bluet... ?
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  The police in my country wouldn't even bother to check, they have rapists and drug dealers to deal with.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Police in the US don't investigate any but very expensive property crime against individuals, either. And I don't actually know that they investigate very expensive property crime—I just assume they do. Certainly mid-five-figures of theft from multiple locations by one crew with tons of video evidence isn't enough to get them interested, beyond taking the report. ... unless your country is the US, in which case, yeah, true.
  - roywiggins 5y ago
    Your police investigate rapes? Ours don't. https://www.wnyc.org/story/nypd-misled-public-about-response-metoo-report/ https://www.wnyc.org/story/nypd-misled-public-about-response...

calyth2018 5y ago

Not exactly new. The old BlackBerries allows you to "turn off" the device and have the alarm wake you up. It basically drops into a low power mode. It was easy to make a phone dead. You yanked out the batteries.

easton 5y ago
The old BlackBerrys didn’t even do a full OS startup unless you did a battery pull, I think the “clean” shutdown just hibernated it at best.
KirillPanov 5y ago
This is a feature of any device with a battery-backed real time clock (RTC). All x86 machines have this feature. Pretty much anything with a clock that doesn't need resetting every time you turn it on can do this. An RTC chip is just a super low-power counter, and it costs almost nothing to toss in a wake-time comparator, so all of them do. When you set the wake-time alarm the host CPU really does power down 100% -- right after it sets the RTC chip's wake-time registers. This is a long, long, long way from a microcontroller. It's not Turing-complete and has only a few dozen bits of storage for the counter. They're also manufactured on incredibly ancient fabrication processes (like 350nm until very recently) for lowest possible leakage.
perl4ever 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN I never used it, but remember it from BIOS settings.

hyperstar 5y ago

wtf?! is this true of 5s as well?

pfranz 5y ago
I think there's a hardware component required. Unless it's only in a beta OS, I have and Xs and I see a different wording for that setting. Mine omits "and powered off."
- hyperstar 5y ago
  Why? wouldn't it just be a matter of activating a low-power mode and turning off the screen? It's been said a long time that this is done by certain malwares.
  - pfranz 5y ago
    I found an article that specifies phone models and explains why[1]. It's iPhone 11 and 12 because it requires a UWB/U1 chip. This thread (via Craig Federighi)[2] asserts UWB isn't the part that's used, but those phones have a newer Bluetooth chipset. [1] https://beebom.com/how-find-lost-iphone-turned-off-erased/ https://beebom.com/how-find-lost-iphone-turned-off-erased/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/otcn02/iphone_remains_findable_after_power_off_has/h6veidf/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/otcn02/iphone_rema...
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Your hardware needs a low-power mode to activate, before you can activate it. All of the iPhone “off” features, like express transit cards and find my use dedicated low power hardware that seems to be capable of running the feature without an active CPU telling it what to do.

todd3834 5y ago

This article has me wondering if I’ve ever turned my phone off besides restarting it or the battery died. I’m sure I have but I bet it is very uncommon. That being said, if it were off and lost, this feature would be amazing. Apple is very transparent about it and also allows you to disable it as far as I remember. The OP has a follow up tweet that iOS 15 made their phone hot during charging. Kind of feels like they might just not be having a good time with their new iPhone or is trying a little too hard to capture some Apple outrage attention. There are better things in the ecosystem to complain about in my opinion but to each their own.

dawnerd 5y ago
The heat part is especially weird considering androids also go scorched earth when fast or wireless charging. It’s just got phones work currently. And their point about losing 15%, after an update all phones are going to do reinfecting. My Samsung flip drops battery like crazy when not doing anything too. Phones are one of those grass isn’t greener things.
jaywalk 5y ago
> trying a little too hard to capture some Apple outrage attention. Exactly the vibe I got.
rjh29 5y ago
There is an obvious trend on HN turning against Apple since the image hash stuff. Search 'Apple' in the last month and you'll see stories about Apple screwing over blind people, copying other people's ideas, screwing over employees, removing apps from the app store, disabling FaceID if you try to change the screen etc. From my POV (a non-Apple user) they have not changed, they have always been pretty anti-consumer. But even I can see that most of these stories have a clear agenda and are exaggerated to capture the current anti-Apple outrage sentiment. That kind of discussion doesn't do anyone any favours.
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  It's helping show people that "they have always been pretty anti-consumer".

kosasbest 5y ago

An iPhone Remains Findable After Power Off ... except when you put it in a Faraday bag when not using it

jareklupinski 5y ago

it definitely could have been worded better: "You iPhone continues to report its location to Apple when it is powered off" or something seems software has gone back to extremely hostile user-facing strings, after about a decade of "oopsie doopsie our system had a crashie"

avianlyric 5y ago
> You iPhone continues to report its location to Apple when it is powered off" or something This statement wouldn’t be true. The iPhone broadcasts crypto keys over Bluetooth, which other I devices use to encrypt the detected location and upload to Apple. But the only thing capable of decrypting those encrypted payloads is other devices attached to the same iCloud Keychain. So Apple has no idea where your phone is, and there’s also no guarantee that a location will ever be uploaded.

draw_down 5y ago

What use would this be if a thief could just power off the device?

mrtksn 5y ago

It's NOT an iOS 15 feature. I have an iPhone without a SIM card that I use as a test device and it happen that yesterday I left it in my backpack, together with an AirTag in the car. Shortly after I walked off, I got the AirTag notification as expected(the left behind notification). What I did not expect though, was to see the test iPhone also having an up to date location in the Find My app. That iPhone has no network connection, so I assumed that somehow it must have connected to my daily iPhone's hot spot. And today, I learn that iPhones are capable of sending location even when turned off. So I checked the Find My setting, it's right there on iOS 14.4.2 on iPhone 7. It's pretty cool, very aggressive tracking. Maybe we need clothes with faraday cage pockets for occasions when we don't like to be tracked.

jaywalk 5y ago
It doesn't connect to your iPhone's hot spot, but your daily iPhone is able to detect the other iPhone's presence just like it detects AirTags and logs that info.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Yes but apparently other iPhones can also detect it and send the location just like with the AirTag even if the iPhone is turned off. That was a surprise.
  - elzbardico 5y ago
    That’s the whole point of the feature: being able to track a phone that has been turned off. If you’re afraid of FBI, CIA or Mossad tracking you with this feature, you can disable this on settings
    - mrtksn 5y ago
      Nope, I'm happy to be tracked. I actually enabled Google Maps to track me all the time because I would like to be able to look back at Google Timeline[0] and see where I have been at particular time in the past. Since a few years, I'm in Turkey and I know that in this country the GSM operators track your location constantly and keep the records indefinitely. How do I know that? Well, in Turkey every SIM card is tied to a proven identity(ID scan is required even for pre-paid SIMs) and getting the GSM signal records to prove whereabouts of someone at particular time has become a standard practice on criminal cases. Everyone is well aware of being tracked by the govt. With Apple and Google, I at least get something out of it. [0]: https://timeline.google.com/ https://timeline.google.com/

tartoran 5y ago

Wonder what else it does or reports to the homebase. Why stop at location data? It’s weird how it the surveillance apparatus creeps up slowly and gets accepted without much protest. It’s just like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot

elzbardico 5y ago

Well, unless you’re living under a rock this has been exhaustively discussed when this feature was launched.

lucb1e 5y ago
I click every global tracking network link out there and am on HN daily and often more time than I perhaps should. This is the first I hear of it. Yeah I really need to get out from under this rock and spend more time on HN.
- elzbardico 5y ago
  Well, what you want me to say?
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    "Oh, maybe it's not as much common knowledge as I thought."

renewiltord 5y ago

Great feature. Love it. Got the notification when I first turned off my iPhone 13.

zzyzxd 5y ago

To use this feature, you have to turn on Find My Network in settings (it is on by default), turning it on also means the device will report other nearby Find My devices like AirTags. I like to have my phone findable after power off, but I am still not sure whether I want my phone to report other devices.

avianlyric 5y ago
Out of interest, what’s your concern with your phone reporting the location of other devices?
- zzyzxd 5y ago
  You can extract a lot of information by knowing how frequent an AirTag has been approached by random iPhones. For instance, if I toss an AirTag into my neighbor's yard, I can get some idea on when they leave/return back to the house by monitoring the AirTag's update timestamps. I can later use this data to build their activity patterns and whatnot. I understand that Apple has some mechanism to mitigate this, like "reporting stranger's airtags in frequent accessed locations", but unless it is proven to be reliable, I can't trust it.
fastball 5y ago
So... you want to get the benefits of Find My without actually giving back to the network?
- zzyzxd 5y ago
  Yes. I also consume a lot of websites and block their ads at the same time. This is selfish, but it is the way I mitigate risks.
  - fastball 5y ago
    This is how you get a Tragedy of the Commons, and I'm happy Apple doesn't allow that kind of anti-social behavior when it comes to Find My.

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CalRobert 5y ago

Phones can be used to eavesdrop even if turned off, as revealed in court proceedings against the Genovese family in the mid-2000's. Called "roving bugs" I think. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2006/12/8343/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2006/12/8343/

bernardv 5y ago

One day Apple will sell a stylish iHammer to securely power off the damn thing.

thepasswordis 5y ago

This is awesome, and is a cool enough feature to actually make me upgrade. Love it.

Animats 5y ago

But if they actually turned off power, they'd lose track of where you are. They'd lose the tracking information needed for marketing. Can't have that. Does "airplane mode" still shut off all transmitters?

gtirloni 5y ago
Do you have any evidence that location tracking actually works when the phone is turned off (even with the Find My Phone feature enabled)?
steve_avery 5y ago
Airplane mode definitely does not disable Bluetooth - especially if you are using airpods or other Bluetooth headsets. BT radio will stay on so you can keep listening through the flight. WiFi is also able to be toggled on while airplane mode is enabled. The only thing that airplane mode does is ostensibly turn off the mobile network connectivity
fastball 5y ago
The data is encrypted with your iCloud Keychain. Apple doesn't have access to it.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

> Ford flipped the switch which he saw was now marked "Mode Execute Ready" instead of the now old-fashioned "Access Standby" which had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged "Off". - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

darknavi 5y ago
Don't give Boeing any more ideas.

numpad0 5y ago

This kind of behavior is needed for: - Public transit and digital IDs. It sucks when phone dies and you can’t get out of a station or show your driver’s license. - Power management. Power buttons on modern phones are digitally controlled by a microcontroller because actually switching main power by those buttons can glitch the phone. - Firmware updates. Phone has to be able to handle USB connection to accept new firmware. - (probably more) It’s nothing new. Just that it does wireless too now.

zootboy 5y ago
There's nothing that requires a microcontroller to be active during power-down to handle the issues you describe: For transit passes and IDs, there need to be non-phone-based ways of handling that issue. It's equally possible to lose / have your phone stolen. Talk to the station agent, or have the police look up your license by name / address. There's no need for a continuously-running microcontroller to read the power button. It's perfectly possible to have the power button feed power directly from the battery to a bootstrap power management IC, which then takes over supplying power to the main processor. USB connections supply power, so it's easy to implement having the presence of power on the USB port boot the phone.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  > For transit passes It’s interesting, here in the U.K. you have a legal obligation to present a valid ticket upon demand for any train you travel on. Failure to do so for any reason (including my phone died, or I dropped the ticket) is a criminal offence (and I mean criminal, not civil) punishable by a prison sentence. Some ticket conductors at the end of a long shift hearing endless excuses about why someone doesn’t have a valid ticket really aren’t interested in negotiating. They’re quite happy to enforce the law, and make your life a living hell in the process. Personally I much prefer it if the transit pass on my phone keeps working after it dies. The alternative is very… inconvenient.
  - fy20 5y ago
    Meh this sounds like scare mongering. If someone is tired at the end of a long shift, what do you think they are going to want to do more? a) spend 15 minutes writing up a ticket, and possibly waiting for the police to arrive before handing you over to them b) take you to the back office and let you sit for 5 minutes while your phone charges Nobody is going to send you to prison for the first offence of not having a ticket (a physical ticket could be lost or damaged to a point where it is unreadable too). They would probably issue a fine, but you could appeal that. Buying a digital ticket you'd have a digital paper trail showing you bought it - which you wouldn't if you bought a paper ticket.

sudosysgen 5y ago

If someone steals your phone all they have to do so you won't find it is to wrap it in aluminium foil.

katbyte 5y ago
and keep it wrapped till they get to their hideout which is in a faraday cage and then proceed to wipe it and bypass the activation lock. it's another hassel for thieves which imho is a good thing. Might as well argue "why lock you door when all someone needs is a bump key!"
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Except they don't. Thieves don't know how change the ESN of a phone or how to bypass an iCloud Lock. They have fences that either sell the phones for parts or bypass the security features. It's how it works for a few years already now. The only difference is now instead of turning off the phones they'll put it in a metallized plastic bag.
  - katbyte 5y ago
    Sure, either way it’s another deterrent. Also huh you finally gave me a reason why apple may be locking its hardware components now.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      But it's really not. They already have to find a fence beforehand, what does it change if the fence gives you a procedure for turning it off without the password or if they just give you a bag? Thieves and fences always figure out how to bypass the component lockdowns.
SilverRed 5y ago
It's just another barrier. With enough hassle, people will move to stealing other easier things. When find my was released, phone theft went down massively. Not every criminal wants to make the jump from just grabbing a phone off the table, to having an RF blocking bag, transporting to an RF proof room, and then pulling the phone to bits to sell for pennies since the parts don't work properly when swapped in to another phone.

rad_gruchalski 5y ago

So does my car. And?

kevinventullo 5y ago

“You think you really know what's going on? They passing laws where they can run up in your own home Cameras on your laptop, TV and your iPhone The battery don't come out, that means it's always on” - B.o.B., “Paper Route”, 2013 One might call him a conspiracy theory rapper. He once got in a Twitter feud with Neil deGrasse Tyson on whether the earth was flat.

deleted 5y ago
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fastball 5y ago
He is literally a flat-earther. Saying he "might" be a conspiracy theorist is giving him way more leeway than deserved.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  Definitely. What I meant is that one might label his genre as “conspiracy theory rap”.
dx034 5y ago
But they didn't pass laws, people wanted it. No government encouraged people to buy smart speakers, consumers bought them because they liked the convenience.

rootusrootus 5y ago

That's handy. And I am glad that it tells you when you power down, so there are no surprises.

lmilcin 5y ago

Per my understanding this has nothing to do with actual security. I think nobody steals smartphones anymore for the smartphone itself. Mainly because they are either getting locked or are easily tracked. That is poor business. What is happening in practice is thieves take sim card out of the phone and try to use it to steal from the owner as much as possible. Log in to bank account, reset passwords on social accounts and ransom money, etc.

sigjuice 5y ago
eSIMs should help avoid this scenario, right?

EastOfTruth 5y ago

Everytime I will hear Apple talking about being pro-privacy, I will keep laughing.

ajconway 5y ago

As stated in https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ Apple (or any other third parties) cannot access the actual location data in the Find My network directly. It is supposed to be only decryptable by your other devices. That is if you trust Apple to design and implement everything correctly.

pornel 5y ago

I hoped for some analysts of how it's implemented (there's probably a lot of clever low power-pings and cryptography involved), but the linked Twitter thread is purely "WTF? Get off my lawn!"

matthewdgreen 5y ago
If you read down the thread a bit (I’m the author) you’ll see that it’s (probably) implemented by caching cryptographic beacons on the UWB chipset. It’s not documented by Apple, however, which is the reason my thread is a little critical. I think it should be.

mrits 5y ago

Apple is part of a global conspiracy that is making it harder and harder to get away with murder.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
But also harder to get away with protests.
- sneak 5y ago
  Or large scale dissent in general. No apps related to the largest current event that challenge the dominant narratives are alllwrd in the App Store at all.
- kevinsundar 5y ago
  Why does this make it harder to get away with protests?

literallyaduck 5y ago

"The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. . . The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely." - 1984. It is best to treat electronics as always on and always recording and transmitting everything.

unstatusthequo 5y ago

If you really don’t want it found after turn off, get a nice Faraday bag.

irjustin 5y ago

On a related, note Alarms still work even when the phone is "powered off". I get it because it's saved me once or twice. Nothing serious just reminders for various things. Overall net helpful from my view.

Nition 5y ago
Is that new in iOS 15? They never used to - it was something I missed when switching from the Nokia ecosystem (Symbian/Meego) to iOS. It's nice for turning your phone off at night but still using it as an alarm clock. Edit: Just tested it. Sadly it still doesn't work. iOS 15 on an iPhone SE (2016).
- sgerenser 5y ago
  Yeah I’d be really surprised if alarms worked while the phone is powered off.
wrycoder 5y ago
Until the alarm on your “powered off” iOS 15 phone goes off in the middle of the chamber music concert. I don’t understand why the “silent” switch doesn’t mean “completely silent”.
- heavenlyblue 5y ago
  Why would you set an alarm for the middle of chamber music concert?
sysihyk 5y ago
It is Real Time Clock (RTC) chip just as found in ATX motherboards since like 1997, very primitive and low powered, so it can't spy on you, just provides autonomous time source. Power-on alarm(s) is RTC's feature as well, merely comparing preset alarm time register(s) with current time register.

unobatbayar 5y ago

Also, has anyone noticed when the battery goes 0% it's actually not 0% inside?

joering2 5y ago

His next tweet is interesting. > In other news I updated my phone to iOS 15 and put it down to charge last night. When I woke up it was hot, and my battery has gone from 100% to 15% since 7:30am. I gotta get off this ecosystem. I mean, if you have tends of thousands of photos you accumulated over the years. I bet scan of these against CP lib will take some time and battery.

fastball 5y ago
Apple delayed plans to roll out CSAM scanning, so that is not included in iOS 15. You are partially right though, in that the likely explanation for this extra power consumption is re-indexing content / rebuilding local neural networks, which use a lot of power (for a day or so, and then they're finished). So rather than scanning your photos for CP, more likely it's scanning your photos for text or similar as part of the new Live Text feature.

drummer 5y ago

Why does Green use an iphone? Some people never learn.

Causality1 5y ago

Aren't there situations where strict control of electromagnetic emissions is required? Labs, scientific equipment, military sensor work etc?

judge2020 5y ago
Maybe, but at that point they would bin everyone's phone in a locker/stored in some controlled room. Also, FMI doesn't work if you have the phone but bluetooth is turned off (as in, turned off in settings; control center only disabled connecting existing devices, but keeps BT on).

olliej 5y ago

This is being bizarrely (intentionally?) treated as "apple knows where your phone is. The only person who can find your "findable" device is you. The find my network is anonymous - even apple cannot find an arbitrary device on it. A malicious agent with a full compromise of apple's networks cannot find your device. Apple cannot be compelled to provide the information because again, apple does not have the ability to. The TLDR: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/find-my/ The actual technical details: https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-sec6cbc80fd0/1/web/1 https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-se...

xony 5y ago

Feature ,not a bug

uncoder0 5y ago

This is probably my last iPhone and I'll just switch to a dumb phone after this because I can't deal with 'features' like this I can't turn off.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

I manage mobile devices and Macs for work.. And I really love this. I was having a discussion yesterday about a stolen MacBook Pro. We sent a wipe command and security was concerned that the command never arrived. I explained that it's extremely unlikely to ever arrive because it means the thief is either pretty dumb (connecting the device to a wired ethernet which gives him no benefit while it's locked) or extremely smart (managing to crack the password) but incredibly dumb at the same time (connecting to WiFi after logging in). Because we disable the guest login which Apple uses as "bait" for lost Macs. Also, all of this applies only if the Mac was sleeping at boot time, otherwise FileVault blocks it from even booting up at all. Meaning no comms to us in any scenario. However, this AirTag functionality would be amazing for Mac. We could send a wipe command to it even when it's off. The thief could obviously block it with a metal-lined bag but it would move the scenario to something where the thief actively has to do something to make the wipe work, to something where they actively have to do something to prevent the wipe from working. So, as an enterprise device manager I love this. However I'm a big privacy advocate as well, and in that scope it's pretty terrible, obviously. However, if it can be switched off (and ideally defaults to off) I'm fine with it.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

Battery issue is probably the on device "CSAM"/Surveillence scanning. Their new range has 11% bigger battery capacity if I remember the apple reveal a few weeks ago, and I wonder was it due to the onboard scanning of everything on your phone.