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Comment by makeitsuckless | Hacker News Reader

There's something very off about this story, especially since it doesn't even attempt to mention obvious scenarios like "what if I have WiFi turned off?".

If iOS would actually try to find WiFi networks with WiFi turned off, that would be a much bigger story than some exploitable vulnerability. This whole story smells of sensationalism over facts.

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Not necessarily. Android has an option (which is on by default) where Wi-Fi off really means off except for location assistance. If iOS has something similar and the issue even affects that passive scanning, it could be a deeper problem. I wouldn't say that's likely, but it is possible.

I don't actually know how iOS deals with this, but judging by the fact that iOS says "turning on wifi will improve location accuracy" when wifi is off makes me think it's really off for all purposes.

Do you have any source for this?

I'm pretty sure wifi needs to be on for location assistance (Google Maps complains about this all the time).

http://imgur.com/fIFCLNi

From 4.3 you can have Wifi "off" but still allow location through WiFi.

Just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I wasn't aware that this was the case on Android. I've now turned my WiFi "completely" off.

But it always asks about doing that while setting up the phone.

The fact that they call catastrophic people that are not able to use their iphone speaks about sensationalism.

If this lead to a way to grab information from the phoen that would be more damaging, than a simply a denial of use in a delimited area.

Pretty sure it relies on iOS connecting to a wifi network, see comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9425926

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