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With GrapheneOS, if you power off your pixel phone completely (i.e: Pixel 6), does that make it untrackable until you turn it back on again?

My understanding is that SIM cards don't have your location or GPS, but your location is only known when connecting to a cell-tower.

Since there is no Find My Phone enabled or anything able to be accessed from a cloud, is powering off a phone with GrapheneOS sufficient to prevent tracking?

I've heard taking the battery out makes it untrackable until turned back on, but would that even matter if you fully power off the phone?

    [deleted]
    As far as I'm aware, you don't even need to turn your phone off:

    Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities, which will prevent your phone from being reached from the cellular network and stop your carrier (and anyone impersonating them to you) from tracking the device via the cellular radio. The baseband implements other functionality such as Wi-Fi and GPS functionality, but each of these components is separately sandboxed on the baseband and independent of each other. Enabling airplane mode disables the cellular radio, but Wi-Fi can be re-enabled and used without activating the cellular radio again. This allows using the device as a Wi-Fi only device.

    Airplane mode is the only way to avoid the cellular network tracking your device and works correctly on the devices we support.

      Dumdum this does not protect you against WiFi positioning tracking and further tracking from apps that use network and utilize webview. There are likely even more ways apps can track you without having to use mobile network.

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      Dumdum Thanks for the answer, but airplane mode only does so much. I would assume that powering off a phone completely is a better option as it does nothing, and no programs are running, plus everything is encrypted.

      [deleted] With GrapheneOS, if you power off your pixel phone completely (i.e: Pixel 6), does that make it untrackable until you turn it back on again?

      Yes, it does. If you power it off, it actually powers off all hardware completely. The same cannot be said about all other phone brands, but Pixels running GrapheneOS does power off completely. You do not need to remove the battery, doing so won't gain you anything.

      But, if you put the phone in airplane mode, and disable Wifi and Bluetooth, you can't be tracked even if you leave the phone powered on. Those switches actually power off the corresponding hardware components. At least GrapheneOS developers claim that, and I assume they know what they are talking about here. But if you don't need your phone, powering it off completely is of course the safest option.

        ryrona

        At that point, what’s to be gained by leaving it on?

        A communication device which can’t communicate isn’t very useful.

        Will someone educate me?

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          ryrona Thanks for the answer :)