EFF Says iOS 11's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Toggles in Control Center Are Misleading and Compromise Security

Hayden Smith said:
...I think we should be more concerned about the health implications given that we may someday find that wireless communications pose a health risk.
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That is absolutely true. Our history is filled with such examples. People used to work directly with asbestos. Lots of people died after years of painting glow-in-the-dark hands on watches. The list goes on and on. We may very well find ourselves in the same boat in 50 years.

Here's another absolutely true statement:

...we may someday find that wireless communications pose NO health risk.

Again, there could be a long list of things we were told would be safe and they turned out to be for the most part. Spoons come to mind as one example. Erasers might also fulfill that requirement.

Pick your poison. I choose not to spend my life worrying about such things. But to be fair, I'm sure I worry about things that haven't occurred to you. Clearly no one knows for sure one way or the other.
 
chucker23n1 said:
It totally does for me. And it does according to Apple, too. Sounds like a bug. (And given that the article is based off iOS 11 b2, I don't even really know what to say.)
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Sorry, didn't catch that. If it's beta software, anything is possible. Why would they announce a flaw. In beta software. Amateurs...
 
I wouldn't be surprised that Apple changes the defaults in iOS 11.1 (probably due late October 2017) to change the behavior of turning off Bluetooth and WiFi in Control Center to truly turning it off. And also go back to iOS 10.x defaults in terms of background activity.
 
PinkyMacGodess said:
Sorry, didn't catch that. If it's beta software, anything is possible. Why would they announce a flaw. In beta software. Amateurs...
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Never mind my assertion — this has been explained:

GoodWheaties said:
The reason your wifi and Bluetooth stay on when Airplane Mode was activated is because in iOS 11 it remembers your previous setting in Airplane Mode. So you must have had it that way the last time you used it. Quite nice personally.
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IOW, if you enter Airplane Mode, then explicitly turn Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth on, leave Airplane Mode, and enter Airplane Mode again, those settings will be saved.
 
They should have bluetooth, wifi, cellular, and airplane mode set so you have the ability to add or remove from control center just like the other apps.
 
Hayden Smith said:
This has potential security implications but I think we should be more concerned about the health implications given that we may someday find that wireless communications pose a health risk. This potential risk could be amplified if your phone or watch is on a nightstand (close to your head) with it's full complement of signals active throughout the night. Perhaps a feature should be added to Do Not Disturb that disables Wi-Fi, Cellular, and Bluetooth when the Do Not Disturb feature is enabled.
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“It’s easy to hear voices in your head. The difficulty is knowing whether they are telling you the truth.” Terrance McKenna
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
EFF always feels the need to define things for everyone, even where they don't understand them. They've turned into a group that does nothing but complain and have given up on actually taking action as they use to.

Apple made this change because it's the intension most users have when they use that functionality. For most, they don't care if it's truly on or off, just that they can disconnect from the current network/device quickly. If you're that paranoid that you need to turn off everything, airplane mode it is.
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Speak for yourself. If I turn something off I want it off.
 
truthertech said:
Yes, they have become the most valuable company in the world and have taken over the market in just about every single area they have chosen to compete because they are designing products that most people find unusable.
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Well if you think usability has improved over the last few years, you really don't understand usability. Apple spends enough on marketing that a lot of users buy with no understanding of the decline. That does not mean the decline in usability is not real. If you recall the horse and buggy manufactures made the best in the industry and the most profits until everyone switched to automobiles. The point is that past success does not predict the future.
 
WTF is Apple doing these days? Bring Forstall back. This is absolute nonsense.

And give us a larger toggle for switching bluetooth headphones/airpods. You misled us about fast-switching. At the very least, give us a stand-alone toggle that sin't buried within another, where we can select our bluetooth headset with one click.
 
TurboPGT! said:
Essential functions of the device. There’s literally no reason to turn them off, ever.
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UMMMMmmmmm.... saving battery life? There's these things called Games you know, and many of them don't require an internet connection. Unfortunately there are some bad apples like Mario Run, but the best games on iOS, FFT:WotL, all main FFs, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, GTA series, Tomb Raider, etc. etc.. don't require an online connection. So if you're gonna game for an hour or more, turning off Wifi does save battery. I can attest to that.
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Renegade72 said:
Nearly useless smartwatch ? I guess you never owned an apple watch...
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lol I'll confess I haven't. I was being cheeky. One of my lovely neighbors, who previously worked in Apple, loves her smartwatch and we've had conversations about it.

What truly bothers me is Apple just obliterating the iPod Nano, a perfectly functional little device (talking Gen 6) with a pedometer and running tracking, complete with calories and NikePlus connection, to sell their Apple Watch which is more than double the cost.
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paradox00 said:
What is challenging, is that seeing the text for the statuses requires a force touch, and having one mode only accessible through settings is not intuitive. Frankly, those should be minor quibbles though. The outrage seems incredibly disproportionate.
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I agree but yeah, not a MAJOR hassle... I guess.
paradox00 said:
Your earlier suggestion that this new functionality somehow degrades the battery sufficiently quicker to be lawsuit worthy was completely unsubstantiated. Maybe the battery requires service seconds or minutes earlier, good luck proving that. Even a couple days would be insignificant. I honestly don't think a study could find a statistically significant difference. Wifi and bluetooth simply don't drain a lot of power relative to everything else, especially if they're not trying to connect.
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Yeah lol, it was an exaggeration, hyperbole. Sorry. As for that last sentence, I would hope so. I'm still now getting used to just turning on Airplane mode when I want to turn off my Wifi. (bluetooth is always turned off on my ipod unless I need it, which is rarely)

EDIT: You know what? I kinda take some of this back. With Wifi toggled "off" to disconnect, the device still uses it to determine location. THAT burns through the battery fast, can you guys really deny it? If you do, how so?
 
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Anyone have a link to Apple's supposed research on this? If its not openly available, it didn't happen--especially with how deceptive (IMO) Tim and his cronies have been the last few years.
 
Hate to break it to ya, they are not. Noone is going to care 3 months from now. Boooo hooo apple took away my abilty to convenatly toggle wifi off/on but not really so my -insert accessory- can always stay connected. Cry me a river. Take your thumb out of your butt and spend two seconds to manually disable it. I think this is a good move. Its not like it keeps you on the same network after you disable it. It knocks you off the network. Go find something else to complain about.
thejadedmonkey said:
I agree, I think Apple really needs to fix it.
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Macintoshrumors said:
Hate to break it to ya, they are not. Noone is going to care 3 months from now. Boooo hooo apple took away my abilty to convenatly toggle wifi off/on but not really so my -insert accessory- can always stay connected. Cry me a river. Take your thumb out of your butt and spend two seconds to manually disable it. I think this is a good move. Its not like it keeps you on the same network after you disable it. It knocks you off the network. Go find something else to complain about.
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As you say, It was convenient before the change, now you have to go through additional steps to reproduce the same result.

Yet people blindly accept this and even worse, defend it!
 
thejtray said:
IMO the main reason was done because the Apple Pencil has to be repaired each time you turn off Bluetooth. It’s a failure in that hardware that results in customers turning off Bluetooth on accident and coming into the Apple Store to complain about the Pencil disconnecting. Garbage in garbage out.
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Why wouldn't Apple use their own radio stack instead of Bluetooth... If the pencil worked with other devices then sure Bluetooth makes sense, but if Apple controls the whole system why bother even using popular standards?
 
Dave.UK said:
As you say, It was convenient before the change, now you have to go through additional steps to reproduce the same result.

Yet people blindly accept this and even worse, defend it!
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At the same time they added useful new functionalities that don't require additional steps as before.

Yet people blindly criticized it.
 
macTW said:
Agreed. If it was always like this, not a problem, but ten years one way to then change it to a compromising style?

When I’ve turned WiFi “off” I’ve found myself connecting to random unprotected networks. That’s a massive security issue.
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I found this too. I turn wifi off and then find my iPhone trying to connect to a previous network. I turned wifi off and don't want it on, thank you Apple.

I would suggest a way around might be, you know, utilising 3D Touch - use that to choose to disconnect from the current wifi network only, or to disconnect Bluetooth except for previously authorised devices (eg. Apple Watch).
 
Renegade72 said:
Such as disconnect from a slow/unwanted network, or from a Bluetooth device without affecting airdrop or Apple watch connectivity.
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Its a solution to a problem for the minority.

For the past 10 years, off has meant off, whether it be WiFi or Bluetooth.

This is Apple taking a step back, rather then one forward.
 
Actually I find it handy that WiFi re-enables itself automatically. The thing is I disable it when WiFi is super slow and I'd rather force my phone to use 4G. But then I forget to re-enable WiFi and I go weeks using up more mobile data than I expected only to realize WiFi was turned off all this time because of that one time I wanted a page to load faster.

Of course I see why this could be a security issue. But I can also see the practical side of it.
 
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