- If you turn off Bluetooth on an iPhone through the Control Center interface, it doesn’t actually turn Bluetooth off.
- The Bluetooth and Wi-Fi controls in CC only disconnect devices from those services. The services are still on.
- To really turn them off, you need to go into the Settings app directly.
The annual hacker convention known as Def Con wrapped up last week. Interestingly, a lot of the folks at this convention had iPhones. Hacker Jae Bochs decided to have a little fun with this and used a hacked-together piece of kit worth about $70 to send custom alerts to iPhone users as they wandered the floor (via TechCrunch). These alerts exploited Bluetooth LE services that are designed to be always on so iPhones can communicate with other iPhones. Although Bochs was doing this “to have a laugh,” they admit the system could be used for nefarious purposes, even possibly getting a user’s password.
One of the alerts Bochs sent was to nudge people to turn off Bluetooth on their iPhones. The alert specified that you can’t do this through Control Center. The toggle you’ll find there doesn’t actually turn Bluetooth (or Wi-Fi) off.