For the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations, it's a very good thing and is ideal behavior. It is only in conspiratorial "but what if nation states are tracking me" noise that this is cast as a bad thing.

And for those people, you can turn that setting off. It even warns you about it on the power off screen. If you don't trust the setting to actually turn off, then you shouldn't trust anything about the phone and should smash it up with a hammer.

The find my implementation is designed to be completely anonymous.

As in apple cannot find your phone, it requires your credentials which iirc includes iCloud account and device unlock code.

People who attended the 06Jan rally and were not even on the Capitol grounds had their phones tracked. Some of them got a SWAT visit in the wee hours weeks later.

It’s not so far fetched.

I’ll also mention that Ćhina will find this new feature very helpful and are no doubt grateful.

Right, exactly. It's a phone. It's gonna be tracked anyway. This feature is not moving the needle when it comes to how easily you are tracked by a nation state, but it does move the needle when it comes to "finding your lost/stolen phone that is powered off".

I personally just think it has a harmful effect on the metaphor of being "off". For the longest time, a device being 'off' was synonymous with being unplugged or unpowered, rendered fully nonfunctional. We worked really hard to build the metaphor of 'sleeping' devices to compliment this, and I think letting Find My run while a device is sleeping is perfectly fine. I worry for the end user though, who now has to tabulate the capabilities of their device in their head every time they power off.

Big GDP nation states have teams harvesting 0-days around the clock and can go above the law to insider negotiate or bruteforce backdoors for this 'always on' functionality I'd imagine (what company can say no to the highest levels of government interference?), regardless of if it is offered to the public or not as a new 'feature' for their benefit.

Maybe you don't want to be tracked sometimes, and you expect turning off your device to turn it off.

> you expect turning off your device to turn it off.

When you turn your phone off there is a message that states:

    iPhone Findable After Power Off >

Tapping that shows an alert with a description:

    iPhone Remains Findable After Power Off
    
    Find my helps you locate this iPhone when it is lost or stolen, even after power off

    The location is visible in Find My on your other devices and to people in Family Sharing you share location with.

    You can temporarily turn off Find My network and it will resume when this iPhone is turned on again

    [OK] [Temporarily Turn Off Finding]

Seems very clear about setting expectations about exactly what your phone will be doing when you turn it "off".

Mine has no such message, and I'm on iOS 15. I just tested it. Any idea why?

It's only supported on iPhone 11, 12, and 13 series.

I have iPhone 11. But anyway I figured it out. The message does not show unless you have bluetooth turned on.

I don’t think all devices support it. My iPhone XS doesn’t show the message, and under the find my toggle it says “Participating in the Find My network let’s you locate your phone even when it’s offline”, rather than when it’s off.

Head to the "Find My" section in the settings, click into "Find My iPhone", and see if "Find My network" is on or off.

If it's off, you won't get the disclaimer, because it's not active.

That setting is enabled for me on iOS 15, and yet I have no such message on the power off screen.

slide to power off, Emergency SOS, Cancel

That's it. Nothing appears after I turn it off either.

Interesting. I'm on 15.1 beta, so perhaps there's a difference. Is it possible the "Find My network" isn't supported on some phones?

Look at the text under "Slide to power off"...

Exactly. For example, when you're a phone thief.

Won't phone thieves just have some faraday bags to pop their winnings into?

Dedicated ones, yes, but their numbers have declined significantly now that the phones can be activation locked.

Opportunistic ones likely won't have such a thing. My wife's phone was once stolen by someone at a hospital lab... after they'd checked in their kid. It was a fairly easy job for the cops to track that down.

You can remotely brick it. The minute that the thief tries to do anything with the device, it's functionally useless. It needs to be online to be reactived, and if the device is marked stolen, it won't activate.

okay, your phone was stolen and you have location. What next?

The likelihood of the local PD deploying resources to recover your $xxx device is extremely low (non-existent), so will you chase down your thief and confront that stranger? Do you have a weapon that you're prepared to use if the bad guy threatens you with one?

All you have gained is the illusion of safety, while more data is siphoned off your device, even while it is off.

Or you're an activist attending a protest.

It’s almost strictly better to leave your phone home in that sort of circumstance though. Your phone looks like you stayed home all day, and you don’t need to worry about things like whether any information gets sent out despite being “off”.

Ideally yes. However, people need to communicate and coordinate. Even arranging transportation may be an issue without a phone.

Sure, but if you really want to, you can communicate and coordinate. I know it might sound old and all, but before the mobile phones and pagers, people managed to communicate and coordinate. Admittedly it is not as easy, but it is possible.

It might actually be a good thing to try, and to step back without a mobile phone and unclutter our current model of communication and coordination. It would likely involve more commitments (e.g. "we said that we would meet at that space and time") and less distraction.

If you're communicating and coordinating while out at this protest then you're being tracked, Find My isn't moving the needle...

You can use your phone to get a ride to a restaurant-heavy district 15 blocks away from the protest, turn your phone off, and walk.

You can use your phone while traveling 1-2 hours to a big city, and then turn it off.

I think you would have to leave your phone home a lot more often than on days you don’t want to be nailed to where you are.

Imagine a case where evidence puts you near a protest or crime scene while your phone is home. That’s coincidence, but if your phone also was home only at the three days three similar events happened, it becomes circumstantial evidence.

Most of the time protests in America only start involving law breaking, riot police and mass arrests after the sun goes down. I’d never endorse perjury, but an argument of “I decided to spend the evening inside” seems like it ought to be pretty reasonable for most people.

Every phone talks to cell towers, and they always track and log your location.

Or the target of a malicious actor.

Ah the ol' innocent people have nothing to hide argument. Been used by bad faith actors for centuries.

Think of the children!

A more reasonable, good-faith understanding would also account for people who don't want to be tracked. I keep GPS and any location tracking on with all my devices because I don't want them to have any more data on me than I can avoid.

The original commenter was proposing that there's multiple perspectives. The replies were all completely ignoring this and adding nothing substantive to the discussion, so I thought a short jokey reply would suffice.

To be serious though: there's a lack of acknowledgement of the functional benefits of tracking by those advocating for control and privacy in this particular instance. The fact is as long as Apple's closed walled-garden is offering actual value to users (FindMyPhone works, and works well, for the common use-case most "consumers" experience day-to-day), while open alternatives are actively sticking their head in the sand around features like this, then closed solutions will prevail.

What's needed is proper discourse on the challenges of e.g. providing practical asset management features that bad actors cannot easily overcome, while at the same time ensuring full user control over their own device and privacy. This is a real world challenge without easy answers: "just turn it all off all the time" is an easy answer, and a cop-out.

If we want to provide quality solutions to e.g. activists, those solutions need to be mature and practical.

You cannot be tracked using the Find My network. No one but you can track your phone or tags.

Yes, exactly this. Imagine à reporter going through an unfriendly country’s airport.

then their location is known anyway

What situation are you going, "I don't want big tech to be tracking me right now"?

Given the prevalence of geofence warrants nowadays, I don’t think the situation needs to be especially nefarious in nature. Perhaps you don’t want to be scrutinized just because you and 370 others were within 300 yards of a crime occurring?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/16/geofence-war...

My understanding is the power off tracking uses NFC. This is encrypted. If Apple’s documentation is to be believed, the location information cannot be decrypted by law enforcement.

Every situation, but I was trying to frame it more softly because I was expecting a large percentage of these comments to say "I don't just not mind being tracked, I want it now!" and similar thoughts.

The Find My network is designed to not allow Apple to track you using it.

What situation are you happy to let your location data be sold? Will you give the rest of us your location data?

All of them.

Then leave the phone at home. Because knowing which cell a cellular phone is in, is how it works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking

Or use a case that functions as a Faraday cage.

I've found iPhones way too fickle to trust them to stay off. If you plug in a charger or tap the power button they power back on. If you don't want to be tracked turn off your phone and put it in a faraday bag.

I would expect tapping the power button would turn most devices with a power button on. With respect to charging it, for most users that's probably the correct behavior. There are 2 reasons people seem to turn off (not just airplane mode or disabling some things) their phones:

1. To preserve a low battery or because the battery has died.

2. To fully disable the device.

(1) is by far the most common of the two. In that case, once it's charging then turning back on automatically is the desired behavior. In the case of (2), if you have a strong motivation (avoiding detection, for instance) then you'd presumably have done a bit of research or noticed that this happens and make deliberate choices around how you use and charge the device.

> I would expect tapping the power button would turn most devices with a power button on.

I believe I was thinking of my older phone. Tapping the home button, perhaps even the volume buttons, would turn it back on. On my Xs, I have to hold down the power button for a few seconds before it would turn on. I find this a bit more reliable if I want my phone to be off for awhile.

Off should mean off. Sleeping means that it can be woken up, woken up means that it microphones can be turned on and etc.

You should be able to turn off the screen without putting it in sleep mode, but it should still display the microphone light.

No. A device thats "off" should be "off" 100% of the time. When the device wakes it realizes it's been stolen, only then should it reach for home. This behavior can/will only be exploited by hostile nations and other bad actors.

You’re both correct, but Apple is optimizing for the majority with their ‘Find My’ network, where the majority don’t have a threat model which includes exploitation of a target by a nation state actor.

It’s a toggle in Settings to turn off this functionality for those who want the surface area reduction, or an RF shielded bag if you don’t trust the toggle ;)

I guess that's why it's an option, with (IMHO) a reasonable default of being enabled.

It's a useless feature against theft if it can just be turned off the thief.

Most devices never “wake up” after being stolen. Apple’s activation lock means that most stolen iPhone are only good for parts.

If your threat model includes nation state actors, then you should probably be putting electronics in faraday bags if you don’t want to be tracked. For everyone else, the design of the Find My network provides significant protection against misuse.

Then turn it off. Personally I’d like it on.

If YOU want that option, that's fine. However, why force everyone to use this? From the comments is seems Apple is pretty aggressive with it and you can only turn it off temporarily.

It's only on if the 'Find My' feature is enabled, and then it can be disabled.

Since when did something being a default setting become something being 'forced' upon users?

It's not "forced" on you at all. You can disable it with one setting change.

Because most customers do want this feature. It’s not being “forced,” it’s just a default.