alt Hacker News> This can be turned off, since implementation.
Not by users. The new thing is that Apple allows users to disable this feature. Hopefully they still detect emergency calls on the phone and enable it unconditionally for those.
Replies
KellyCriterion • yesterday at 8:23 PM
Note sure: In my country exactly this feature is used by police & state enforcement to find locatin, because this "ping" message is not forwarded from the modem to the OS, so the OS is not aware of any of these messages
AlexanderYamanu • yesterday at 6:57 PM
yeah, there always was. It's a service code, like getting your imei. But it was a weird long one, and manufacturer dependent. Now UI switches are created for it apparantly. Can't find it anywhere on the internet though. I don't work there anymore, so can't look it up.
I believe they're talking about this feature (https://support.google.com/android/answer/9319337?sjid=18079...).
This is a system you can disable as a user, but it's not the on-modem feature discussed in the article.