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Couldn’t this easily be proven by monitoring transmission power from the device? There are all sorts of people who go on vacation and use the switch to avoid ro
by adamomada 2y ago
Couldn’t this easily be proven by monitoring transmission power from the device? There are all sorts of people who go on vacation and use the switch to avoid roaming charges. It would be plainly obvious to those people that their supposedly offline phone went online when they look at their bill. Or is there some secret apn bypass?
- Zigurd 2y agoDepending on how careful you are and what equipment you've got on hand, you might be able to detect that going on, but I think "easily" is a stretch. If there is a secret involved in this it would be undocumented commands sent by the network to phones that then interpret them as commands to connect to the network, plus baseband processors the periodically look for such commands. They don't radiate, so very little power is used, but they should be entirely dormant.
- ranger_danger 2y agoI ask this all the time but have yet to find anyone that has actually measured it. According to Snowden, basebands are still powered and operational even when the main application OS (android/ios/etc.) are shut down. And a non-removable battery sure doesn't help that. Plus, he also says that the baseband often has its own separate connections to the GPS, microphone and camera and can operate them without the application OS involved. If the baseband is still powered, I can only assume it is simply sending (or responding to) periodic commands that do not require network authorization, which could possibly still let the network know where you are even without involving any roaming charges.