Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 342 posts

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#221

Post by briandear »

userbinator wrote: post #22

In other words, the WiFi actually has 3 states: Off, Idle/disassociated/disconnected, and Connected/Associated. Most people have experienced all 3 states, but it seems Apple is under the impression that users are too stupid to know the difference between them... The Wi-Fi will turn back full-on if you drive or walk to a new location. And both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will turn back on at 5:00 AM. This is not clearly expla…

Use Siri. Or use airplane mode. This isn’t that hard.

What’s the use case where you want to completely kill WiFi but not Bluetooth for “security?” If I am in a security sensitive environment, I use airplane mode. That’s it’s purpose: to completely shut down all radios.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#223

Post by sigjuice »

josteink wrote: post #218
sigjuice wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you get on a plane, enabling Airplane Mode should turn off all the radios on an iPhone or iPad. You say flight mode doesn't work , so is this no longer the case?

I believe flight mode actually works, but people with wifi-only devices have been conditioned to believe disabling wifi is sufficient. And with Apple now being inconsistent about what a on/off toggle actually does... It's hard to tell what toggling flight-mode actually results in. And if I were in the airline business, I would take an issue with that.

I am actually quite surprised by this and to me it looks like people are just overcomplicating things. You get on a plane, you turn on Airplane Mode. Simple. It would never ever occur to me in a million years to turn on Airplane Mode on my phone, but then go ahead and just turn off the wifi on my iPad. Also, isn't Bluetooth also supposed to be off, which Airplane Mode would take care of?

EDIT: This is what Airplane Mode looks like https://i.imgur.com/mEMYdL6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4L3uZmm.jpg

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#224

Post by simonh »

beedogs wrote: post #183
jonahx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. It is in an attempt to resolve the real loss of money... Naked apologism. So unthoughtful, and delivered with such a righteous tone. If this was their intention, they could have implemented the feature honestly, informing users about what was happening, and offering a clear choice, such as an immediate popup, between "turn off for this location" and "turn off completely." That would have been fine. But the exis…

> Naked apologism. So unthoughtful, and delivered with such a righteous tone. And, of course, voted up to the very top of the comments section here, as usual. The Apple apologists here are a bit of a plague.

Disagreeing with you makes someone part of a plague. Got it. Reasoned argument failed to convince everyone everywhere, so now let's impugn their humanity. I'm sure that will work!

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#225

Post by lloeki »

golangnews wrote: post #212
Terretta wrote: post #6

> In an attempt to keep you connected to Apple devices and services, iOS 11 compromises users' security. No. It is in an attempt to resolve the real loss of money experienced by everyday users who turn off WiFi when it’s flakey and then forget to turn it back on, costing them cash on their cellular data plan. (And the very real frustration when things don’t work they expect to work, and they don’t know why.) Meanwhil…

You can't use 3D touch to turn off wifi. According to Apple you have go into settings to do so. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208086 The problems with this change are: It is surprising - grey buttons usually mean disabled permanently, not disabled except for some uses or for some indeterminate length of time. It changes established behaviour without a clear warning to the user. It is inconsistent - disabling blue…

> You can't use 3D touch to turn off wifi. According to Apple you have go into settings to do so.

Indeed, the detailed block of controls does not present the three possible states to the user. In the same zoomed in block, the Airdrop toggle does. Conversely, going to Settings is binary and allows only for On/Off, not that very practical Disconnect state. The difference between Off and Disconnected is a light bar across the icon, which is inconsistently not the case for the Off state of Mobile Data and Airplane mode.

The "dumbed down" UI concerns are valid, yet the intersection between security minded folks that will proactively act to disable WiFi/BT upon a security advisory and the ones who won’t know the difference between the two ways to toggle that is close to zero. To me it looks like people are up in arms without even defining the personas and threat models. Get real, this feature is downright awesome and the slight UI hiccup is certainly no ShellShock.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#226

Post by simonh »

mtgx wrote: post #199
beedogs wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Naked apologism. So unthoughtful, and delivered with such a righteous tone. And, of course, voted up to the very top of the comments section here, as usual. The Apple apologists here are a bit of a plague.

I thought Apple fanboism was a dying breed around here. I guess I was wrong.

More clarification, it's a plague of fanbois bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood. Engage in reasoned debate? Agree to disagree? Wonder if there's a point to their opinion at all? Nope, maybe we should drive them out of the neighbourhood into a ghetto somewhere else so Hackernews can be nice and pure instead.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#227

Post by golangnews »

lloeki wrote: post #225
golangnews wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use 3D touch to turn off wifi. According to Apple you have go into settings to do so. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208086 The problems with this change are: It is surprising - grey buttons usually mean disabled permanently, not disabled except for some uses or for some indeterminate length of time. It changes established behaviour without a clear warning to the user. It is inconsistent - disabling blue…

> You can't use 3D touch to turn off wifi. According to Apple you have go into settings to do so. Indeed, the detailed block of controls does not present the three possible states to the user. In the same zoomed in block, the Airdrop toggle does. Conversely, going to Settings is binary and allows only for On/Off, not that very practical Disconnect state. The difference between Off and Disconnected is a light bar acro…

I agree it's not a huge security vulnerability, just bad design by Apple.

There are also a few other reasons for disabling wifi - battery life, tracking, debugging connections, and of course security as well (not in response to specific vulnerabilities, but on the principle of less attack surface being safer).

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#228

Post by lumisota »

golangnews wrote: post #212
Terretta wrote: post #6

> In an attempt to keep you connected to Apple devices and services, iOS 11 compromises users' security. No. It is in an attempt to resolve the real loss of money experienced by everyday users who turn off WiFi when it’s flakey and then forget to turn it back on, costing them cash on their cellular data plan. (And the very real frustration when things don’t work they expect to work, and they don’t know why.) Meanwhil…

You can't use 3D touch to turn off wifi. According to Apple you have go into settings to do so. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208086 The problems with this change are: It is surprising - grey buttons usually mean disabled permanently, not disabled except for some uses or for some indeterminate length of time. It changes established behaviour without a clear warning to the user. It is inconsistent - disabling blue…

You can 3D Touch the Settings icon to jump to the WiFi settings.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#229

Post by lloeki »

egypturnash wrote: post #54
MBCook wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS communicated. If you just pull up control center and tap the button is says “Disconnected from ‘WiFiNetwork’”. If you expand the panel with 3D Touch or a long press under the WiFi icon it either says WiFiName or Not Connected. On the other hand the cellular radio says Off if you toggle it. This isn’t completely hidden. The information is there. And I agree with the other posters that this is a far better settin…

I have a phone that is 3D Touch capable and I never use 3D Touch at all . In fact I mostly avoid using it; it's Those Useless Options That Sometimes Pop Up If I Press Too hard On A Thing. It's on par with OSX's "some menu items change if you hold down alt while they're open" behavior. Aggressively obscured.

Then turn it off (Settings, General, Accessibility)

Although lacking discoverability, I personally find it very quick, useful and natural in a couple of use cases: acting on notifications, keyboard cursor movement and selection, (sadly defunct) app switching, on Apple Music track listings.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#230

Post by helloindia »

Terretta wrote: post #6

> In an attempt to keep you connected to Apple devices and services, iOS 11 compromises users' security. No. It is in an attempt to resolve the real loss of money experienced by everyday users who turn off WiFi when it’s flakey and then forget to turn it back on, costing them cash on their cellular data plan. (And the very real frustration when things don’t work they expect to work, and they don’t know why.) Meanwhil…

For users with flakey wifi, there is wifi-assist, where the phone uses cellular data along with wifi.
Post reply on HN