iPhone remains findable after power off

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 - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5mac.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;07&#x2F;ios-15-find-my-network-can-find-your-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5mac.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;07&#x2F;ios-15-find-my-network-can-fi...</a><p>I&#x27;m not sure why this is presented as some new thing, or a gotcha or whatever this is. We&#x27;ve known about it for months... And IMO, it&#x27;s a positive change although it does sound a little weird.

&gt; Ford flipped the switch which he saw was now marked &quot;Mode Execute Ready&quot; instead of the now old-fashioned &quot;Access Standby&quot; which had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged &quot;Off&quot;.<p>- Hitchhiker&#x27;s Guide to the Galaxy

This article has me wondering if I’ve ever turned my phone off besides restarting it or the battery died. I’m sure I have but I bet it is very uncommon.<p>That being said, if it were off and lost, this feature would be amazing. Apple is very transparent about it and also allows you to disable it as far as I remember.<p>The OP has a follow up tweet that iOS 15 made their phone hot during charging. Kind of feels like they might just not be having a good time with their new iPhone or is trying a little too hard to capture some Apple outrage attention. There are better things in the ecosystem to complain about in my opinion but to each their own.

Umm, isn’t this, like maybe, a good thing? If I want my very expensive iPhone found, I want it found whether it is on or off.<p>If people are worried about being tracked maybe they should carry around a device that is always broadcasting radio signals to third party towers.

Phones can be used to eavesdrop even if turned off, as revealed in court proceedings against the Genovese family in the mid-2000&#x27;s. Called &quot;roving bugs&quot; I think.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2006&#x2F;12&#x2F;8343&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2006&#x2F;12&#x2F;8343&#x2F;</a>

“You think you really know what&#x27;s going on?<p>They passing laws where they can run up in your own home<p>Cameras on your laptop, TV and your iPhone<p>The battery don&#x27;t come out, that means it&#x27;s always on”<p>- B.o.B., “Paper Route”, 2013<p>One might call him a conspiracy theory rapper. He once got in a Twitter feud with Neil deGrasse Tyson on whether the earth was flat.

As stated in <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;data&#x2F;en&#x2F;find-my&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;data&#x2F;en&#x2F;find-my&#x2F;</a> Apple (or any other third parties) cannot access the actual location data in the Find My network directly. It is supposed to be only decryptable by your other devices.<p>That is if you trust Apple to design and implement everything correctly.

&quot;The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. . . The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.&quot; - 1984.<p>It is best to treat electronics as always on and always recording and transmitting everything.

On a related, note Alarms still work even when the phone is &quot;powered off&quot;.<p>I get it because it&#x27;s saved me once or twice. Nothing serious just reminders for various things. Overall net helpful from my view.

I hoped for some analysts of how it&#x27;s implemented (there&#x27;s probably a lot of clever low power-pings and cryptography involved), but the linked Twitter thread is purely &quot;WTF? Get off my lawn!&quot;

Not exactly new.<p>The old BlackBerries allows you to &quot;turn off&quot; the device and have the alarm wake you up. It basically drops into a low power mode.<p>It was easy to make a phone dead. You yanked out the batteries.

An iPhone Remains Findable After Power Off ... except when you put it in a Faraday bag when not using it

I manage mobile devices and Macs for work.. And I really love this.<p>I was having a discussion yesterday about a stolen MacBook Pro. We sent a wipe command and security was concerned that the command never arrived. I explained that it&#x27;s extremely unlikely to ever arrive because it means the thief is either pretty dumb (connecting the device to a wired ethernet which gives him no benefit while it&#x27;s locked) or extremely smart (managing to crack the password) but incredibly dumb at the same time (connecting to WiFi after logging in). Because we disable the guest login which Apple uses as &quot;bait&quot; for lost Macs.<p>Also, all of this applies only if the Mac was sleeping at boot time, otherwise FileVault blocks it from even booting up at all. Meaning no comms to us in any scenario.<p>However, this AirTag functionality would be amazing for Mac. We could send a wipe command to it even when it&#x27;s off. The thief could obviously block it with a metal-lined bag but it would move the scenario to something where the thief actively has to do something to make the wipe work, to something where they actively have to do something to prevent the wipe from working.<p>So, as an enterprise device manager I love this.<p>However I&#x27;m a big privacy advocate as well, and in that scope it&#x27;s pretty terrible, obviously. However, if it can be switched off (and ideally defaults to off) I&#x27;m fine with it.

Per my understanding this has nothing to do with actual security.<p>I think nobody steals smartphones anymore for the smartphone itself. Mainly because they are either getting locked or are easily tracked. That is poor business.<p>What is happening in practice is thieves take sim card out of the phone and try to use it to steal from the owner as much as possible. Log in to bank account, reset passwords on social accounts and ransom money, etc.

It&#x27;s NOT an iOS 15 feature.<p>I have an iPhone without a SIM card that I use as a test device and it happen that yesterday I left it in my backpack, together with an AirTag in the car. Shortly after I walked off, I got the AirTag notification as expected(the left behind notification). What I did not expect though, was to see the test iPhone also having an up to date location in the Find My app. That iPhone has no network connection, so I assumed that somehow it must have connected to my daily iPhone&#x27;s hot spot.<p>And today, I learn that iPhones are capable of sending location even when turned off. So I checked the Find My setting, it&#x27;s right there on iOS 14.4.2 on iPhone 7.<p>It&#x27;s pretty cool, very aggressive tracking. Maybe we need clothes with faraday cage pockets for occasions when we don&#x27;t like to be tracked.

To use this feature, you have to turn on Find My Network in settings (it is on by default), turning it on also means the device will report other nearby Find My devices like AirTags.<p>I like to have my phone findable after power off, but I am still not sure whether I want my phone to report other devices.

This kind of behavior is needed for:<p>- Public transit and digital IDs. It sucks when phone dies and you can’t get out of a station or show your driver’s license.<p>- Power management. Power buttons on modern phones are digitally controlled by a microcontroller because actually switching main power by those buttons can glitch the phone.<p>- Firmware updates. Phone has to be able to handle USB connection to accept new firmware.<p>- (probably more)<p>It’s nothing new. Just that it does wireless too now.

This is probably my last iPhone and I&#x27;ll just switch to a dumb phone after this because I can&#x27;t deal with &#x27;features&#x27; like this I can&#x27;t turn off.

If someone steals your phone all they have to do so you won&#x27;t find it is to wrap it in aluminium foil.

That&#x27;s handy. And I am glad that it tells you when you power down, so there are no surprises.

Apple is part of a global conspiracy that is making it harder and harder to get away with murder.

His next tweet is interesting.<p>&gt; 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.<p>I mean, if you have tends of thousands of photos you accumulated over the years. I bet scan of these against CP lib will take some time and battery.

it definitely could have been worded better:<p>&quot;You iPhone continues to report its location to Apple when it is powered off&quot; or something<p>seems software has gone back to extremely hostile user-facing strings, after about a decade of &quot;oopsie doopsie our system had a crashie&quot;

Also, has anyone noticed when the battery goes 0% it&#x27;s actually not 0% inside?

This is awesome, and is a cool enough feature to actually make me upgrade. Love it.

If you really don’t want it found after turn off, get a nice Faraday bag.

This is being bizarrely (intentionally?) treated as &quot;apple knows where your phone is.<p>The <i>only</i> person who can find your &quot;findable&quot; device is you.<p>The find my network is anonymous - even apple cannot find an arbitrary device on it. A malicious agent with a full compromise of apple&#x27;s networks cannot find your device. Apple cannot be compelled to provide the information because again, apple does not have the ability to.<p>The TLDR: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;data&#x2F;en&#x2F;find-my&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;legal&#x2F;privacy&#x2F;data&#x2F;en&#x2F;find-my&#x2F;</a><p>The actual technical details: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;security&#x2F;find-my-security-sec6cbc80fd0&#x2F;1&#x2F;web&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.apple.com&#x2F;guide&#x2F;security&#x2F;find-my-security-se...</a>

Why does Green use an iphone? Some people never learn.

Feature ,not a bug

wtf?! is this true of 5s as well?

So does my car. And?

Well, unless you’re living under a rock this has been exhaustively discussed when this feature was launched.

Great feature. Love it. Got the notification when I first turned off my iPhone 13.

Aren&#x27;t there situations where strict control of electromagnetic emissions is required? Labs, scientific equipment, military sensor work etc?

One day Apple will sell a stylish iHammer to securely power off the damn thing.

Wonder what else it does or reports to the homebase. Why stop at location data? It’s weird how it the surveillance apparatus creeps up slowly and gets accepted without much protest. It’s just like the proverbial frog in the boiling pot

But if they actually turned off power, they&#x27;d lose track of where you are. They&#x27;d lose the tracking information needed for marketing. Can&#x27;t have that.<p>Does &quot;airplane mode&quot; still shut off all transmitters?