If you put them in airplane mode they are no longer permitted to contact cell phone towers by law and it is easy to form confidence the baseband modem is actually off because your battery life is so much better. Or pull out an SDR and prove it if you are extra paranoid. This turns them into wifi tablets.

I started out doing this for a couple years before abandoning mine.

I've been doing this the last year (ish) and my battery lasts so much longer. I suspect my data usage has been slashed as well. I recommend everyone starts using airplane mode. I just wish I could put individual apps in airplane mode so that they wouldn't be able to communicate, even when I was on wifi, unless I specifically allowed it.

You can on Android, using this: https://f-droid.org/it/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/ (it's also on Google's store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.celzero.br... )

Set it as a local proxy to channel all network access through it and you can selectively block any app from accessing any network, or isolate it.

I am not trying to push conspiracy theories here.

But IF its possible for law enforcement to ping your phone when its on standby, dont you think its possible that it can be pinged whilst on airplane mode too?

If you are using it on wifi its game over anyway, hard internet connections are easy to track by law enforcement via ip and ISP. Even if you use a VPN your device is still connected to the wifi and can be pinged.

Not sure why people here are thinking they are more clever than than the smartphone makers.

> But IF its possible for law enforcement to ping your phone when its on standby, dont you think its possible that it can be pinged whilst on airplane mode too?

We do not need to wonder, because this is a physics problem and we have science. Radio waves are easy to measure. There have been plenty of experiments with putting phones in faraday chambers with SDRs proving a phone in airplane mode does not emit any cellular frequencies.

You could prove this yourself with cheap home equipment if you wished.

But also, implementing airplane mode that did not actually disable the baseband modem would be an outright violation of FCC law that would be noticed by curious members of the public if this was widespread.

That said a specific targeted device with backdoored software can just make the airplane mode button do nothing, to your point, so physical switches for the baseband are always best, though few devices support them.

Like I said, you keep ignoring wifi. If you dont want your device to be completely useless, you need to connect it somehow. Both Radio and Wifi are easily trackable, so to circle round to the original point turning off radio tracking on your device and 'turning it into a wifi tablet' does not stop you being tracked.

>so physical switches for the baseband are always best, though few devices support them.

If someone has the motivation to backdoor devices they can do the same with physical switches (that will still talk to software regardless). If anything adding a switch that does nothing is easier.

Easily verified with a multimeter and the most basic of electronics skills. Electronics are not magic.

The same applies to software tho so there really isn't any advantage outside of marketing

Please explain what this means, I can turn my cell phone off. How are they able to ping my phone if it has no power? Or are you saying even when you turn it off there's still some part of it that's energized or something?

The baseband isn’t controlled by you and can wake up without your knowledge.

It’s less clear what is the “art of the possible” vs. practical for people who aren’t actively under surveillance.

ok, that makes more sense. If the battery is dead then the phone can't track me (or if you had a phone with a removable battery - i have an old one I kept that is like that).

No part of the phone is controlled by me. Can we stop getting spooked by the word "baseband" yet? It means the modem chip. The modem chip isn't controlled by me and can wake up without my knowledge. But neither is the wifi chip. Or the bluetooth chip. Or the RAM chip. Or the main CPU (application processor). Or the screen. Any one of these could hold malware.

You are correct and as others have said, the phone can run functions while it looks like its off. This was one of the main reasons manufacturers killed removable batteries. You can put your phone onto standby, but you cannot power it off completely.

There are also conspiracy theories that claim the last 10% of battery is reserved for tracking, so that when your phone says its out of battery and wont turn on, it still has plenty of power left to ping tracking data say once per hour or something. I dont push those theories, but judging by what Snowden released all those years ago I wouldnt be surprised.

Yeah, the battery.