Yes. Even when your phone is powered down, some models still ping cell towers. If it pings one, they know your distance to the tower. If it pings two, both towers know your distance, and the overlapping circles would reveal two positions coordinates, one of which you were at. With some contextual information, it’s easy to know/prove which one you were at.
If it pings 3 towers, your exact location, and unique identifying information sucha as your phone’s IMEI is revealed. So don’t bring a cell.
Corporates are even bold enough to brand this as a nice to have feature, they call it “find my device” I think? But we can totally trust them to keep this data absolutely private and secure ! /s
Samsung actually offers e2e encryption for location data using a pin code but unfortunately it’s disabled by default for some reason. also only available for phones, not other pingable devices like wireless earbuds
Well, e2e encryption doesn’t give you any guaranty if the encryption and communication protocols are proprietary and you didn’t set the encryption key(s) all by yourself. Samsung could very well have the private keys to decrypt the data and give it to anyone they wish.
I don’t think that’s really the concern - I think OP was thinking of general metadata that can cause authorities to identify who was there, where exactly and when, and who was also with them - this is power authoritarians wishes they had for a thousands of years, and here we are…
Yes. Even when your phone is powered down, some models still ping cell towers. If it pings one, they know your distance to the tower. If it pings two, both towers know your distance, and the overlapping circles would reveal two positions coordinates, one of which you were at. With some contextual information, it’s easy to know/prove which one you were at.
If it pings 3 towers, your exact location, and unique identifying information sucha as your phone’s IMEI is revealed. So don’t bring a cell.
Corporates are even bold enough to brand this as a nice to have feature, they call it “find my device” I think? But we can totally trust them to keep this data absolutely private and secure ! /s
Samsung actually offers e2e encryption for location data using a pin code but unfortunately it’s disabled by default for some reason. also only available for phones, not other pingable devices like wireless earbuds
Well, e2e encryption doesn’t give you any guaranty if the encryption and communication protocols are proprietary and you didn’t set the encryption key(s) all by yourself. Samsung could very well have the private keys to decrypt the data and give it to anyone they wish.
it’s symmetrical encryption so the pin code is the private key, (or er, the key’s derived from it)
but also Samsung still gets the network address of the repotting device which can be used to get approximate location
Yeah I know of triangulation. Just didn’t know if that was the concern.
I don’t think that’s really the concern - I think OP was thinking of general metadata that can cause authorities to identify who was there, where exactly and when, and who was also with them - this is power authoritarians wishes they had for a thousands of years, and here we are…
Absolutely. Just look at all the shit available to them:
https://www.uscellular.com/content/dam/uscc-static/assets/pdfs/LERGv1.0.pdf