OTTAWA - This morning, in an unscheduled press statement, the Prime Minister's Office has said that Prime Minister Mark Carney has turned off geolocation services for all his electronic devices "for no particular reason whatsoever".
Even if you turn off your phone, there is a lower-level operating system that is still connecting to cell phone towers. You either have to take the battery out, or leave your phone at home.
Baseband processors could hypothetically remain energized and pull a list of nearby base stations, but it’s not possible for it to be transmitting without you knowing (the battery drain would be extremely obvious). I have also never heard of this happening, nor can I find an example of this being documented behavior, nor can I find an example of someone enabling this functionality while the device has been powered off.
What can happen is something like the subversion of the power-off state to be simply an implementation of the OS’s standby state - this is extremely difficult in any modern mobile OS (again I can’t find examples of this being demonstrated without arbitrary code execution) but is the method rumored to be employed by the various security groups.
If you’re being targeted by a group on the level of (ex:) the mossad, having a phone at all is a liability, even if the battery has been removed. If you’re not the target of a security group, turning off your phone is a great way of preserving your privacy.
(Also, fun little side note, depending on your region leaving your phone at home won’t do anything to prevent your location be tracked. Whee!)
To turn off your phone’s geolocation, turn off your phone.
Even if you turn off your phone, there is a lower-level operating system that is still connecting to cell phone towers. You either have to take the battery out, or leave your phone at home.
Try doing a search for “baseband processor”.
RF-blocking bags can also solve this problem.
Not… exactly.
Baseband processors could hypothetically remain energized and pull a list of nearby base stations, but it’s not possible for it to be transmitting without you knowing (the battery drain would be extremely obvious). I have also never heard of this happening, nor can I find an example of this being documented behavior, nor can I find an example of someone enabling this functionality while the device has been powered off.
What can happen is something like the subversion of the power-off state to be simply an implementation of the OS’s standby state - this is extremely difficult in any modern mobile OS (again I can’t find examples of this being demonstrated without arbitrary code execution) but is the method rumored to be employed by the various security groups.
If you’re being targeted by a group on the level of (ex:) the mossad, having a phone at all is a liability, even if the battery has been removed. If you’re not the target of a security group, turning off your phone is a great way of preserving your privacy.
(Also, fun little side note, depending on your region leaving your phone at home won’t do anything to prevent your location be tracked. Whee!)
Phone seems too risky, let’s switch to pagers instead, what could possibly go wrong?
You can put it in a faraday cage
Or just don’t have one.