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Please explain what this means, I can turn my cell phone off. How are they able to ping my phone if it has no power? Or are you saying even when you turn it off
by Alive-in-2025 9mo ago
Please explain what this means, I can turn my cell phone off. How are they able to ping my phone if it has no power? Or are you saying even when you turn it off there's still some part of it that's energized or something?
- Spooky23 9mo agoThe baseband isn’t controlled by you and can wake up without your knowledge. It’s less clear what is the “art of the possible” vs. practical for people who aren’t actively under surveillance.
- Alive-in-2025 9mo agook, that makes more sense. If the battery is dead then the phone can't track me (or if you had a phone with a removable battery - i have an old one I kept that is like that).
- direwolf20 9mo agoNo part of the phone is controlled by me. Can we stop getting spooked by the word "baseband" yet? It means the modem chip. The modem chip isn't controlled by me and can wake up without my knowledge. But neither is the wifi chip. Or the bluetooth chip. Or the RAM chip. Or the main CPU (application processor). Or the screen. Any one of these could hold malware.
- balamatom 9mo agoYeah, the battery.
- alt227 9mo agoYou are correct and as others have said, the phone can run functions while it looks like its off. This was one of the main reasons manufacturers killed removable batteries. You can put your phone onto standby, but you cannot power it off completely. There are also conspiracy theories that claim the last 10% of battery is reserved for tracking, so that when your phone says its out of battery and wont turn on, it still has plenty of power left to ping tracking data say once per hour or something. I dont push those theories, but judging by what Snowden released all those years ago I wouldnt be surprised.