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iPhone remains findable after power off

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Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Ed…

someone can just wrap your phone in aluminum foil, bye bye phone.

And they may, but the effort to steal an iPhone has been increased with this, and the difficulty in recovering a lost (not necessarily stolen) iPhone has been decreased. It's a win for the typical consumer.

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#182

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-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…

> They even give you a dialog prompt now to inform you slightly tangential, I hate being informed of things when I try to do them. I'm in a hurry, I don't want to read all about something now. I wish the dialogs had an "email this to me, willya?" selection, with an opportunity to decide the long term setting that I want.

You made a decision before you had all the information, but you're so busy you don't want to reconsider your decision after learning new information?

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Ed…

The police in my country wouldn't even bother to check, they have rapists and drug dealers to deal with.

Yeah, I'm sure the police wouldn't check either. I'm sure it wouldn't help me get my phone back but (perhaps paradoxically?) I hope it at least is a bit of a deterrent.

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#184
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They even give you a dialog prompt now to inform you slightly tangential, I hate being informed of things when I try to do them. I'm in a hurry, I don't want to read all about something now. I wish the dialogs had an "email this to me, willya?" selection, with an opportunity to decide the long term setting that I want.

You made a decision before you had all the information, but you're so busy you don't want to reconsider your decision after learning new information?

This sounds an awful lot like defences of hundred page EULAs: "So you made a decision not to read it...".

No, it was intentionally designed in a way which discourages reading. In the case of this warning, it's possible that it was unintentionally designed in a way which discourages reading, but regardless the fault lies, at least in part, with the design.

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#185

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-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…

I went to settings where you can toggle Find My Phone. It doesn’t say there that it’ll be findable even after I switched it off.

I went to next screen it doesn’t even say it there.

Then I clicked on “About Find My & Privacy..” it opened a huge T&C kinda thing text screen and I read until 3-4 paragraphs. It doesn’t mention it there either.

So I think it’s a problem and Apple is anything but clear/straightforward about it.

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They even give you a dialog prompt now to inform you slightly tangential, I hate being informed of things when I try to do them. I'm in a hurry, I don't want to read all about something now. I wish the dialogs had an "email this to me, willya?" selection, with an opportunity to decide the long term setting that I want.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter anyway. Unless you are the worlds most wanted criminal and Apple is working with the government to track you down via your turned off iphone. And in that case, you should have done your research to see this anyway. If the average user blows past this message, it has no impact on their life.

Yup. “Nothing to hide!”

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#187
post #145

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!"

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.

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's helping show people that "they have always been pretty anti-consumer".

Almost all of the digs at Apple have been things that apply industry wide and it is an interesting observation. There was one recently worded something like "EU to require Apple to update phones for 7 years" but if you look at the actual proposal, it applies to all phone makers and Apple is the only one anywhere close to compliant to this proposal. Other scandals like Samsung disabling the cameras when unlocking the…

I don't know I feel Apple really got worse than the competition. It started with "You are holding it wrong.", horrible keyboards, "you need to use USB-C for everything, except our iphones come with lighting + old USB cables", to charge your mouse you need to plugin the cable on the bottom etc. That's kind of standard.

Yet, the recent moves: Snitch Software that works against the user with a worldwide localization network + no care about security at all.

I mean after Pegasus hit the news, Apple announced their picture scanning initiative. They didn't acknowledge or try to fix their horrible bounty program (compared to Microsoft and Google) and waited for a non-profit (awesome Citizen Lab) to find and fix their bug ... (a 0 click in iMessage)

That's not industry standard for me.

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They even give you a dialog prompt now to inform you slightly tangential, I hate being informed of things when I try to do them. I'm in a hurry, I don't want to read all about something now. I wish the dialogs had an "email this to me, willya?" selection, with an opportunity to decide the long term setting that I want.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter anyway. Unless you are the worlds most wanted criminal and Apple is working with the government to track you down via your turned off iphone. And in that case, you should have done your research to see this anyway. If the average user blows past this message, it has no impact on their life.

From the referenced tweet thread about someone finding this out for the first time:

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.

"My phone's battery life has suddenly become much worse" sure sounds like a major impact to me.

Re: iPhone remains findable after power off

#190
post #166
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I'm baffled by all of the comments saying that this is great as an anti-theft feature. I don't know where people live that that's the case, but I sure as heck have never known police in the US to give a damn about $1000 property crimes. They don't care about $20000 home robberies and car thefts, even with strong video or other evidence. I can't imagine they're going to start chasing down criminals to get a used…

I was visiting a friend in Switzerland a few years ago, and her bag got stolen right off the back of her chair while we were in a restaurant. (The guy was quick and sneaky; by the time I ran out to the street, he was gone.) The restaurant manager called the police, and over the next 15 minutes we learned that the thief went on to try to rob the wrong person at another restaurant a couple blocks away. The intended vic…

In the US, their actual job is filing the report. Anything that goes beyond that is PR.
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