"To avoid data collection from Soofa signs, they would either need to turn off their phone’s wifi detection and Bluetooth or avoid the signs as a whole."
These should be defaults.
Android has options to WiFi scanning off. Does OSX?
These should be defaults.
Android has options to WiFi scanning off. Does OSX?
But that doesn't actually work. Saying that as an iPhone user who keeps turning Bluetooth off in the Settings app, but it doesn't stick. It's always on again a day or so later (the next time I check).
So either iOS is buggy in this regards, or it's not actually possible to turn Bluetooth off permanently. :(
It's not buggy, it's covering for the 90% of people out there that forget they turn it off and then helplessly wonder why things are not working.
The fact that I can’t then add the shortcut to the control center is just insult to injury. The shortcuts widgets don’t cut it.
While I’m ranting, the fact that a simple shortcut that uses system default apps (Recognize music and then opens Notes to paste the title and artist) requires me to enter a passcode to run – with the Allow Running When Locked setting on – makes me doubt settings in iOS mean anything.
e.g (just one example) turning WiFi completely off degrades the ability to geofence, one's automations may be delayed or non-functional and one would be bewildered as to why. Turning WiFi off one day, forgetting about it, then having apparently unrelated things not work the next day is hard to diagnose.
There's a next-day trigger for sure for the WiFi disconnect+no-auto-reconnect ("disable WiFi" in the support page†) but I must admit that I don't know what's the exact trigger - if any - for the master WiFi switch in Settings.app ("turn WiFi off" in the support page†) to be turned back on. Next day? After a software update (e.g an automated nightly one)? Exiting hotspot mode? As you suggested, a bug? Nothing and it's people forgetting they have turned it back on "temporarily"? The support page† doesn't say anything about it.
Should one desire to enforce WiFi off as a policy, the shortcut can act as a safety net around all these cases, the tool is available to help automatically enforce the policy, and I don't think it's helpful to sit and hold one's breath til one turns blue because it shouldn't do what it's doing, refusing the opportunity to get control back.
I agree that Shortcuts is awfully limited, sometimes inexplicably so. I mean, picking up a random wallpaper from a Photo album every X hours should be entirely doable, yet there's just no way to do it.
† https://support.apple.com/en-us/102412
EDIT: I have tried the hotspot thing.
- set iOS WiFi off
- request hotspot connection from another device
- iOS WiFi turns on
- if no known autojoin AP is in range
- iOS WiFi turns on
- hotspot connection succeeds
- upon hotspot disconnect iOS WiFI stays on (BUG #1: should restore WiFi off)
- if a known autojoin AP is in range
- iOS WiFi turns on
- iOS WiFi connects to AP (BUG #2.a: should not connect to AP)
- hotspot connection fails (BUG #2.b: caused by #2.a?)
- WiFi stays on, connected to AP (NOT BUG: consequence of #2.a)
- (optional) re-request hotspot connection
- iOS WiFi disconnects from AP
- hotspot connection succeeds
- upon hotspot disconnect iOS WiFI stays on (NOT BUG: consequence of #2.a, which caused WiFi state == on at second hotspot-request-time)
- iOS WiFi eventually joins AP
Especially if you're relying on something to be in the state you (literally) configured it to be in, and it turns out the software makers "know better than you". :/
That said:
- data collection ranges from minimised to eliminated by features like MAC randomisation
- battery impact of WiFi + BT on but disconnected is a rounding error