this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
291 points (99.0% liked)

Android

19882 readers
164 users here now

The new home of /r/Android on Lemmy and the Fediverse!

Android news, reviews, tips, and discussions about rooting, tutorials, and apps.

🔗Universal Link: !android@lemdro.id


💡Content Philosophy:

Content which benefits the community (news, rumours, and discussions) is generally allowed and is valued over content which benefits only the individual (technical questions, help buying/selling, rants, self-promotion, etc.) which will be removed if it's in violation of the rules.


Support, technical, or app related questions belong in: !askandroid@lemdro.id

For fresh communities, lemmy apps, and instance updates: !lemdroid@lemdro.id

💬Matrix Chat

💬Telegram channels / chats

📰Our communities below


Rules

  1. Stay on topic: All posts should be related to the Android OS or ecosystem.

  2. No support questions, recommendation requests, rants, or bug reports: Posts must benefit the community rather than the individual. Please post to !askandroid@lemdro.id.

  3. Describe images/videos, no memes: Please include a text description when sharing images or videos. Post memes to !androidmemes@lemdro.id.

  4. No self-promotion spam: Active community members can post their apps if they answer any questions in the comments. Please do not post links to your own website, YouTube, blog content, or communities.

  5. No reposts or rehosted content: Share only the original source of an article, unless it's not available in English or requires logging in (like Twitter). Avoid reposting the same topic from other sources.

  6. No editorializing titles: You can add the author or website's name if helpful, but keep article titles unchanged.

  7. No piracy or unverified APKs: Do not share links or direct people to pirated content or unverified APKs, which may contain malicious code.

  8. No unauthorized polls, bots, or giveaways: Do not create polls, use bots, or organize giveaways without first contacting mods for approval.

  9. No offensive or low-effort content: Don't post offensive or unhelpful content. Keep it civil and friendly!

  10. No affiliate links: Posting affiliate links is not allowed.

Quick Links

Our Communities

Lemmy App List

Chat and More


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 4 days ago

That actually isn't a way to prove anything, unfortunately.

A powered off or "powered off" phone wouldn't need to transmit anything. It would be just waking one of the receivers periodically (or even the NFC could be hit by some radio energy as a trigger) to listen for the "secret" activation code. Listening for radio energy doesn't generate any.

If the phone was "powered off" - tracing power draw between battery/phone would probably show something, but likely, the phone's power draw while off is always constant if this were the case and it isn't a new state the phone goes into.

Even if the phone was being used as an offline bug, the user would still not know because it can record audio/whatever and store it internally without ever transmitting. It'd likely be rigged up to just transmit the next time the user "turns it on" - so they'd be unaware, as the transmission would look like normal traffic.

The only case where it would be traceable from a radio perspective is if it were being used as an online bug, which means it would already have to have been put in the online bug state, which means someone has a reason to monitor you.

I mean shoot, if one really wants to go full tinfoil hat, recording audio to temporary storage at voice quality could go on for days with a phone "powered off" - periodically dumped to somewhere in flash. Hours of conversation could be fit in megabytes. The phone could just always be recording while turned off for every user, and when turned back on, that audio file is sent through the ML processor to convert to text, and then compress the text, further reducing the size. That data could be transmitted during normal usage as voice or compressed data, or just stored in the phone as compressed data for years.

Every phone could be doing this right now, and could have been doing this for a decade, although on-device text transcription is a relatively new feature.

Then, let us go next level: phone recycling/exchange processes also harvest IMEI+that compressed data before being shipped off for resale in the event it was never transmitted. Finally, we know why the NSA has the Utah data center.

I keep asking them to send me copies of recordings of old phone calls, but they never humor me.

DISCLAIMER: This is all non-serious but based on what is technically possible right now.