Apple re-enables Bluetooth on every OS update on purpose

lapcatsoftware.com

18 points·giuliomagnifico··9 comments

How else can they location track you with location services disabled?

Apple cannot ‘location track you’ using Bluetooth. How do you imagine that’d work?

Not claiming they do it, but it seems quite possible to triangulate a coarse location via Bluetooth using other phones with their location services enabled. I tinkered with something similar in college, just using little BLE beacons intended for this kind of thing instead of phones.

Yeah, next he'll be telling us he's getting stalked by "tracking chips" from Apple that use Bluetooth. How ridiculous, right? /s

This is not new or secret.

first result on Google https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/14/opinion/bluet...

That’s third parties, not Apple, tracking people in a way that was blocked by Apple years ago. Apple devices rotate their Bluetooth MAC address regularly so they cannot be identified from the beacons.

Seems pretty obvious why, no need for such a click bait reaction. Keyboards and mouses connect via Bluetooth and accidentally turning these off can basically lock you out of your machine.

I like this approach and agree with it.

Presumably a user who has gone out of their way to "permanently" turn off that connectivity doesn't need that connectivity to access their devices.

Edit: Also, I went into this awhile ago on another topic, but what is "click-bait" about this? How would you suggest the author titles this blog post about Apple re-enabling Bluetooth on OS update, other than titling it "Apple re-enables Bluetooth on every OS update on purpose"? Is the "on purpose" part the click-bait part?

And on a laptop?

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