• General
  • IMEI and geolocation tracking

I am considering installing Graphene OS.
My biggest concern is being tracked through a SIM or eSIM
Although I can go into Airplane mode, I am worried about what happens if I accidentally disable airplane mode.
A friend of mine showed me Graphene on her phone so I understand the interface.

If I am in airplane mode, and hit Emergency by accident on the lock in screen, will the eSIM automatically connect with the nearest 5G tower?
This would be if no call is made but the emergency button is accidentally pressed.
In some places having an emergency call option is good. The police are friendley. In some repressive places you never want police to be called. I have not found information about whether this button automatically results in 5G tower being connected.
Emergency button is on lock screen and can't be removed?
Grapehene may be the bad choice with repressive government.
No one is knowing a answer?

If eSim not enabled, does still connect with IMEI and location if go into emergency mode to make easy for tracking?

I have answered this in the Matrix chat where this question was also asked, but for the sake of information being accessible, I'll also provide an answer here.

If your phone is in airplane mode and press the "emergency" button on the lockscreen (same thing applies after a reboot and after the first unlock), airplane mode is not disabled. You'd have to dial a number for that to happen, at which point it's not longer an accidental press.

Furthermore, the quick tiles to access Wi-Fi or airplane mode are inaccessible when the phone is locked, and you'd have to authenticate before they can be changed.

In general, yes, if you can make a call and leave airplane mode, you're talking to cell towers; that's how telephony works.

I would recommend reading this section of the FAQ in case you haven't at this point:

https://grapheneos.org/faq#cellular-tracking

    matchboxbananasynergy You'd have to dial a number for that to happen, at which point it's not longer an accidental press.

    This should be investigated. If this is not required by law there should be an option to disable this. It is a privacy issue that could expose the IMEI without the need to open the phone. If this is out of scope because of a conflict with law please provide a source. If there is no conflict with the current law it should be implemented to disable ANY connection to cell towers no matter what.

      Years ago i had a conversation with Daniel about implementing the possibility to change the IMEI of the device. He is of course aware about the privacy impact a non changeable identifier as the IMEI has. But there is nothing we could do about this. Neither the hardware provides the possibility to do that nor the law allows it. With the exception Africa. This is the only continent where it is explicitly allowed.

      We definitely need to investigate if it is regulated by law or any other agreements how airplane mode should behave. Because typing a number, while airplane mode is activated and connecting to a cell tower means the purpose of unlocking the phone is not a complete feature. Anyone could activate the baseband at the moment.

        I highly doubt that this is regulated by law somewhere, but we need to be sure. The feature request should be created like this. "Investigate if emergency calls while not being able to unlock the device must be allowed" later "implement the possibility to disallow emergency calls whiteout unlocking the device"

        Nuttso I live in a western European country and changing your IMEI address is allowed by law (it was outlawed before but now it isn't), in a lot of western countries though its outlawed.

          It would make sense for graphene to allow changing the IMEI with a custom device.

          3 months later

          Hathaway_Noa Srlabs is founded by Karsten Nohl. He is a luminary in the field of mobile security

          By the way did you succeed in disabling the antenna?

            4 months later

            Nuttso hi mate, any possibilities to reach out to you in any ways?

              6 days later

              krayo @nutts0:matrix.org