Re: Shutdown vs. Restart

On Sun, 23 Mar 2025 12:13:09 +0000, Andy Burns wrote :

Note that "trackers" take advantage of some of those low-power states.

 For android devices, I'm not aware of "auxilliary" devices collecting data when the phone is off.

Thanks Andy for that clarification, as I'm not the expert on this. You and Arno know more about it than I do. I'm just guessing how it works.
Looking it up, it seems only the newest devices do what I said.
 *Android 15's Find My Device could let you find your Pixel 8 when it's turned off *
 <https://www.zdnet.com/article/android-15s-find-my-device-could-let-you-find-your-pixel-8-when-its-turned-off/>
  "When Android devices are powered off, the Bluetooth turns off as well,
   meaning a device can't be located by Find My Device or help find
   other devices. An upcoming Powered Off Finding feature would let
   the device store beacons in the Bluetooth controller's memory.
   That way, even if the device isn't turned on, it can still see
   and be seen by other devices."
Two-way would be an interesting legal issue, as I remember looooong ago,
some TLA bugged the Motorola phones of mobsters, as I recall. Let me look
that one up to be sure of how they did the communication FROM the phone.
Ah, found it! Although it seems the phones were just "inactive", which is
different from being turned off. To flesh out that case before U.S.
District Judge Lewis Kaplan, apparently the FBI remotely activated the
microphones on the cell phones of Genovese crime family members in New
York, effectively turning the seemingly inactive phones into listening
devices. They flashed the firmware of Nextel, Motorola Razr, and certain
Samsung models which all were susceptible to this technique.  But that's NOT the same thing as listening when the phone appears to be
turned off. In that case, the phone was just not being used at the time.
<https://www.zdnet.com/article/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/>
<https://www.rcrwireless.com/20061216/archived-articles/roving-bugs#:~:text=Government%20investigators%20were%20able%20to,least%20as%20far%20as%20the>

One of the final acts before the main SoC shuts down is to compute the contents of some bluetooth beacons, which will be transmitted by the "auxilliary" device while the phone as a whole is "off", to participate in google's "find my device" network.

You said it better'n I did in that I think what you're saying is "some"
stuff can still "transmit" when the phone "appears" to be turned off.
 *How we built the new Find My Device network*
 <https://security.googleblog.com/2024/04/find-my-device-network-security-privacy-protections.html>
I don't have a modern phone (mine is from 2021) but I think the "Find My
Device" network (which I do not participate in, as you can expect), relies
partly on BLE beacons, which, I think, "can" (in some newer phones?) emit
well after the phone "appears" to be turned off.
 *Do Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) use phone data and battery?*
 <https://www.pointr.tech/blog/bluetooth-low-energy-ble-use-phone-data-battery#:~:text=The%20difference%20between%20a%20beacon,the%20case%20of%20BLE)%20before>
It's complicated, but since I'm stuck on Android 13, I won't worry. :)
 *Find My Device can locate your Google Pixel 9 even when it's powered off*
 <https://www.androidpolice.com/find-my-device-google-pixel-9/>
So I'll start worrying with Android 15 and the Pixel 9 leading the way.
 *Pixel 9 series supports Find My Device's ability to locate switched-off devices*
 <https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-9-find-my-switched-off-3473133/>