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Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

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Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#101

Post by RF_Savage »

pugworthy wrote: post #91
pugworthy wrote: post #19

There are some battery draining tricks you can do with Bluetooth apps on a phone to drain the device batteries. Essentially if you did a ton of device queries to every BLE device visible, you could drain the batteries of every device in range. Transmission is probably a heavier battery drain so just making them talk to your phone creates drain. It’s a single device example, but in a bar once I was showing a co-worker…

Another thing that's basically a real security hole/opportunity with BLE sniffing is to record the unique IDs of all the BLE devices you can see, along with geo-location data. Do this enough places and over time, and you get a map of what devices are where and at what time, with the assumption that the devices are probably linked to people. Expand that to a government placing little innocuous BLE sniffers all over th…

I'm pretty sure this has been done for years and is one of the reasons why the truly paranoid always keep bluetooth turned off.

Creating a BLE based cop detector would be a neat way to sign up for harassment and surprice traffic stops. Unfortunately it would likely also work for identifying other groups.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#103

Post by cobertos »

least wrote: post #98
bgro wrote: post #95

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works... My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for…

It does provide a benefit to you. You get to use the Find My network to help locate any missing devices you have and in exchange your devices also work as a node in the Find My network to help other people locate their devices. You can disable this by disabling Find My.

But that's the point OP is trying to make. It's an opt-out feature, and only once you know it's an issue and continuously making sure you're never opted back in.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#104

Post by dwighttk »

bgro wrote: post #95

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works... My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for…

You can turn cellular data off in iOS.

If you have 100MB a month it would probably be smart to turn it off until you are ready to check email or whatever and there is no Wi-Fi.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#105

Post by RF_Savage »

redleader55 wrote: post #35
picture wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a neat demo. Out of curiosity, what software/hardware did you use to see and ping nearby BLE devices?

You can do this easily with an Android phone. These are the apps I use: Lightblue nRFConnect BLE Scanner

Thanks! nRFConnect looks like a legitimately usefull tool for debugging and fiddling with BLE devices.

The nRF51 and nRF52 OTA firmware upgrades also look usefull, has anybody done something arduino like with this?

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#106

Post by wnevets »

bgro wrote: post #95

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works... My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for…

> My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for example, and it's using like 500 MB a year of cell data. So the cumulative data it uses per year is about half of that plan's budget.

I remember just a year or so ago everyone (this is hyperbole obviously) was freaking out at the idea of Amazon's Sidewalk using MEGAbytes of THEIR internet. Its kinda amusing how those concerns are rarely brought up for Apple products.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#107

Post by hu3 »

Aerroon wrote: post #40

I was under the impression that having Bluetooth enabled at all was a security risk. Do people actually use Bluetooth?

It's popular. But I keep it disabled as much as possible.

Cables are more reliable, dont disconnect, dont have delays or hiccups and require no battery.

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#108

Post by [deleted] »

dwighttk wrote: post #104
bgro wrote: post #95

This was a concern I had since day 0. I have been asking about things like this and been talked down to constantly as if I don't know how bluetooth works... My other concern was if these are hijacking your data plan. Maybe it's not that significant amount if you have a huge plan but like Ting for example gives you 100MB of data usage each month on their basic plan. That's MEGAbytes. I checked my system clock app for…

You can turn cellular data off in iOS. If you have 100MB a month it would probably be smart to turn it off until you are ready to check email or whatever and there is no Wi-Fi.

[deleted]

Re: Apple AirTags draining battery of devices close by

#109

Post by calvinmorrison »

Nextgrid wrote: post #4

An annoyance that is driving me away from the Apple ecosystem is the lack of choice when it comes to these new features - they are forced onto you with no way to disable them and sometimes radically modify the behavior of the device you purchased and may make it unsuitable for the original purpose you bought it for. I'm still using an iPhone and plan to get the new SE (and only because of Touch ID is back - Face ID w…

Vendor lock in means vendor upgrades. The last time I used google maps (maybe 6 years ago?) you couldn't have any history of your recent destinations if you also turned of google search history...

Now I run CalyxOS, haven't used google maps in a long time, and maybe i'm worse for not knowing about speed traps or the fastest route, but... I feel fine.

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