I mean, it’s an anti-theft feature that you have to explicitly opt into using for it to do anything. And if it could be defeated by shutting the phone off, how many articles would we get dunking on Apple for overlooking such an obvious trick?
(and before anyone jumps in with “but but but what if someone hacks my iPhone now I can’t trust it when it says it’s off”, the article itself – which you should read – addresses that argument)
As far as I can tell from having read it multiple times, the article doesn’t claim that other phones are constantly monitoring for the pings when powered off. Rather, it’s that a phone which has “Find My” enabled, and which is reported lost, can ping out even when powered off.
And the article has even been updated to mention that some of its assumptions about how this works were incorrect. This has been added:
Edit after this was discussed on Twitter: The fact that the AOP can control Bluetooth power does not necessarily mean that the AOP is on while the iPhone is “off”. I assumed that this is the case, but there are also other means to do this, such as the power controller according to @marcan42. The power controller connects to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC, and more. Also, NFC in an iPhone supports running without iOS for the express card feature.
Finally, I’m a bit baffled by how much furor there is over this. The idea that Bluetooth-enabled devices are “never really off” is not really new. For many years, I’ve used devices on a daily basis that can “power off” but instantly wake up again over Bluetooth, and it’s been an advertised feature of those devices that you can do it, despite the fact that it requires some part of the device to never completely shut down.
Creepy.
I guess you could always remove the battery… oh wait.
I mean, it’s an anti-theft feature that you have to explicitly opt into using for it to do anything. And if it could be defeated by shutting the phone off, how many articles would we get dunking on Apple for overlooking such an obvious trick?
(and before anyone jumps in with “but but but what if someone hacks my iPhone now I can’t trust it when it says it’s off”, the article itself – which you should read – addresses that argument)
Correct me if I’m wrong but… doesn’t it use other iphones in the area to locate yours?
Did these iphones also opt in to staying on with radios active while supposedly being off?
As far as I can tell from having read it multiple times, the article doesn’t claim that other phones are constantly monitoring for the pings when powered off. Rather, it’s that a phone which has “Find My” enabled, and which is reported lost, can ping out even when powered off.
And the article has even been updated to mention that some of its assumptions about how this works were incorrect. This has been added:
Finally, I’m a bit baffled by how much furor there is over this. The idea that Bluetooth-enabled devices are “never really off” is not really new. For many years, I’ve used devices on a daily basis that can “power off” but instantly wake up again over Bluetooth, and it’s been an advertised feature of those devices that you can do it, despite the fact that it requires some part of the device to never completely shut down.
[Comment from banned user removed]
Not particularly creepy - the find my network is private, even apple can’t find a specific device using the information that’s available