Can mobile phones be tracked when they're switched off?

de0u

KitsuneNoBaka Are you 100% sure that when logic board is powered on baseband chip is surely off?

That degree of certainty would come from hiring an RF engineer to monitor the device with RF test equipment, or hiring a hardware tech (or electrical engineer) to run a phone while open to see which chips receive power when.

Everybody posting questions like this on this forum can pursue personal certainty by hiring an expert. But so far that has not occurred (example example).

Perhaps you can be the person who organizes such an investigation!

GrapheneOS

KitsuneNoBaka We've stated that the cellular radio has transmit and receive disabled in airplane mode, not that it isn't powered. You've made entirely unsubstantiated claims about it including ones we know to be false across the vast majority of devices.

secrec

Blastoidea Wrap both your phone and your head tightly in heavy-duty aluminum foil.

That will only work if the aluminum foil is electrically connected to EARTH GROUND.

secrec

The newer phones are DESIGNED to be tracked-when-off. They do this by maintaining a bluetooth LE beacon. It works much like cheap bluetooth keychain trackers.

DeletedUser127

secrec please state verifiable source for this claim.

GrapheneOS

secrec This has to be explicitly set up by the OS and isn't enabled by default. It's not supported at all by GrapheneOS right now and we don't have it on our roadmap.

secrec

DeletedUser127 https://www.androidauthority.com/find-pixel-8-phone-turned-off-3432235/

Next time you can search it up yourself, right?

GrapheneOS

secrec This isn't something that exists with a GrapheneOS device. Play services is a regular sandboxed app on GrapheneOS without any special access beyond any other regular sandboxed app and can't set up things like this.

secrec

GrapheneOS I never implied that it was.

GOS21606

Very great to hear that off is really off.

Just like my old Nokia 3210 with the battery removed..lol

Blastoidea

I’d like to know how it works with a dead battery. Magic?

“The search giant confirmed that Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro owners can find their phones via the Find My Device network even if the phone is switched off or the battery has died.”

GrapheneOS

Blastoidea It doesn't work if the battery is completely dead or removed. The battery level has to be above a certain bare minimum for the OS to be willing to run or the firmware being willing to boot it to avoid trying to run off inadequate power and potentially causing data corruption.

Blastoidea

GrapheneOS
Thank you for replying.

I guess they should have said “ ….. battery has almost died.”

A little honesty might have been in order there.

Again, thank you.

GrapheneOS

Blastoidea From a user perspective the battery has died, but it hasn't really.

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