China loathes AirDrop so much it's publicized an old flaw in Apple's P2P protocol

In June 2023 China made a typically bombastic announcement: operators of short-distance ad hoc networks must ensure they run according to proper socialist principles, and ensure all users divulge their real-world identities. The announcement targeted techs like running Wi-Fi hotspots from smartphones and Apple's AirDrop, as …

[DS999]

AirDrop is a weird thing

I can see how it can be useful for people living under a repressive government to share things. By default it only works with someone in your contacts list, so anonymity is irrelevant, but it has an option to enable it to anyone within range. But I can't imagine too many people use that way, as women have reported getting random dick pics in subways and so forth. So even if someone chooses to use it that way the sender having an expectation of perfect privacy is probably not a good thing - outside of the potential use for people living under a repressive government.

Not sure why Apple even allowed for use outside one's contact list. I really doubt they were thinking about people living without freedom of speech, they were probably thinking "younger people might find it a fun way to share memes anonymously at bars" and not understanding how anything "social" eventually devolves to dick pics if there are no limits and no accountability.

[Dinanziame]

Re: AirDrop is a weird thing

I can only assume that somebody wanted to increase engagement numbers. People with such goals don't care if the "engagement" consists in Spam or people angrily yelling at their device.

[TechnicalVault]

Tap to drop makes AirDrop saner

They don't need to be in your contact list if you tap the top of their phone on yours. It's not entirely clear to me why Apple didn't add this feature in the first place though, it's the killer feature for this kind of transfer.

If you remember the late 2000s we used to Bluetooth stuff to each other all the time. Then the iPhone came along which didn't support that (because the record companies didn't like it) and AirDrop is the return of an old idea.

[MrDamage]

Re: Tap to drop makes AirDrop saner

>> Then the iPhone came along which didn't support that (because the record companies didn't like it)

More to do with them needing a selling point for the iPhone 2, than anything else.

[O RLY]

Re: Tap to drop makes AirDrop saner

The iPhone 2 being entirely nonexistent is a bigger barrier to sales, methinks.

[DS999]

Re: Tap to drop makes AirDrop saner

They don't need to be in your contact list if you tap the top of their phone on yours

That's for exchanging contacts, and you have to OK transmitting them before anything is sent. So even if a stranger walks up to you and taps your phone (which must be unlocked) nothing will happen unless you OK it, and that can be disabled if you are worried you might click OK by accident if that happens.

[Dave559]

Re: AirDrop is a weird thing

But you shouldn't need to know who someone is, or have them in your contact list, in order to beam files to each other. It should just be like scribbling a note on a piece of paper and handing it over to the intended recipient.

In the olden days, before Apple invented the interwebs, it was pretty commonplace to share your contact card, or a photo, etc, with another friend's phone just by using ordinary Bluetooth.

Alice enables Bluetooth on her phone, Bob enables Bluetooth on his phone.

Alice selects "Send file to [Bob's phone's name]",

Bob then gets a requester that "[Alice's phone's name] wants to send a [contact card|photo|file|whatever] to you: Accept | Refuse".

If either of you see other nearby phones with Bluetooth active (Chad, Mallory, etc), obviously you wouldn't select that phone for sending to or permit for receiving from.

Transfer the file, switch off Bluetooth again.

It should go without saying that if you get a connection request from a device that you don't recognise or weren't expecting, you should refuse it.

Nowadays Bluetooth is often mostly/always on for other things such as headphones, but the general principle should still apply. For starters, you have to be within 10 m of each other to actually beam a file, and if you are unlucky enough to have a sad perv wannabe-abuser somewhere nearby, a sensible interface would have the requester include an option "Refuse all requests from this device for 1 hour" (or similar) so that they couldn't just try to repeatedly harrass you by pinging your phone again and again until you accept their pathetic dick pic.

It's sadly typical Apple that they had to go and overcomplicate things by making AirDrop some horrible Bluetooth+WiFi lashup, and thereby making it impossible to beam files outside the walled garden (which I'm sure was exactly their intention, but also a sign of monopoly abuse).

[DS999]

Re: AirDrop is a weird thing

And you can enable anonymous AirDrop for a 10 minute period to handle that use case (yes, that change everyone was fretting about Apple caving to China on was made worldwide)

Why are Android users so concerned with Apple's "walled garden"? Have you EVER needed to send someone a file who would not tell you either their phone number (for SMS) or email address (for email) or other information (for Facebook, WhatsApp, Signal, etc.) so some sort of anonymous in person bluetooth file exchange is the only way?

I have never encountered that, and if I did I would assume they don't really need whatever file they want from me. I would do the same if they were an iPhone user, because I haven't ever used AirDrop to exchange a file and don't see that it would be worth my time to enable it just so an overly paranoid person could get whatever file they want from me.

[Dave559]

Re: AirDrop is a weird thing

The thing that was especially great about beaming files to each other by Bluetooth was that you didn't need to know each others' phone numbers (etc); not for paranoid reasons, just for the sheer practicality and simplicity: it solves the bootstrapping problem.

It rather defeats the whole purpose of beaming your contact card to a new friend (or new business contact) when you meet, if one of you has to tell the other their phone number or email address (etc) first (with all the laborious spelling out and double checking that this inevitably involves)! Yes, it maybe only saves a minute or two, but it's still a minute saved.

(Also, for all my sins (or perhaps lack thereof - how many apples do I have to eat?!), I do live within the walled garden: I'd just prefer that it had rather better gardeners sometimes, especially ones that won't stop you from sharing cuttings with people who live outside the garden…)

[iron]

Re: AirDrop is a weird thing

Having someone in your contact list does not tell the Chinese government their identity and that anonymity is very relevant to them.

[DS999]

Re: AirDrop is a weird thing

Depends on how AirDrop figures out who is who. If it needs a phone number to identify the other iPhone then there isn't any true anonymity.

[Zibob]

Its probably intentionally insecure

They knew it was anyway, and didn't fix it. I would wager its because they knew it would annoy China. I mean they bow to things as simple as removing the Taiwanese flag from the emoji keyboard.

So I would assets this was known and they had the chance to fix it but didn't for "reasons"

Otherwise, why not fix it. They are always on about their privacy and safety of the platform, this would be another feather for that.

[RedGreen925]

All that cowtowing to the murdering bastards in China has really paid off for Apple, perhaps they can find some place else to get their lax environmental standards and slave labour to exploit....