At this point in time, I’m not willing to use Siri. I don’t want my phone to listen to everything I say, I don’t want Apple to record my real time GPS data in perpetuity, and I don’t want to risk a vulnerability where someone with physical access to my phone can use Siri on my device because of a forced setting change on a future iOS update that I wasn’t diligent enough to catch.
I was excited for Siri Shortcuts because it seems like everything is happening on the device itself without a need to involve Apple Siri servers, and I assumed I could use them manually, without voice activation, and no need to allow Siri itself on my phone.
I was wrong. It appears that the two useful Siri Shortcuts I found, to disable WiFi and Bluetooth, won’t work unless I allow Siri voice access onto my phone. Oddly, another Siri Shortcut I found to track daily weight, still works without allowing Siri voice access.
iOS 11 changed the control center functionality to no longer allow one click disabling of Bluetooth and WiFi modems. Instead, the buttons in control center now only disconnect from any active sessions but keep the modems active. Retail stores have started using sniffing devices to track people based on WiFi and Bluetooth MAC addresses. Hackers have long been using pineapple devices to spoof trusted WiFi networks to man-in-the-middle you and have started using a Stingray-equivalent device for Bluetooth.
I don’t want to leave my house with WiFi and Bluetooth on, but now it’s buried under several clicks to turn it on and off every time I leave and return to my house. I found a Siri Shortcut that turns them off with one click, but it seems not to function unless I allow voice-control to Siri.
Is it possible that the Shortcut itself was written by someone in such a way that it has voice commands built in, so the whole thing fails unless that’s allowed? And if so, I can learn to write my own that will function as a manual button press with Siri voice disabled?
Or is it spaghetti code in Siri Shortcuts whereby depending on the function that the Shortcut is trying to call, there may be an individualized setting to allow it (such as access too the Reminders activity) but if there is no such setting, then it requires all of Siri be turned on to work?
Perhaps there’s a non-Siri method of doing this? I believe Siri shortcuts came to be because of the Workflow app that was purchased by Apple and absorbed into the company. Does that still work or has it been deprecated?
Does anyone know any one click ways to disable WiFi? I’m really shocked this hasn’t been a bigger tech news story that Apple changed this function in iOS11. My cousin is a special agent in the FBI and she is mandated not to have WiFi enabled on her work-issued iPhone when she’s not in a secure government building. She’s been under the impression that the control center disable it, but it doesn’t since iOS10. I imagine the entire FBI is walking around with vulnerable WiFi modems exposed on their issued devices.
Good luck trying to follow a tech-savvy suspect who is able to sniff MAC addresses of nearby Bluetooth and WiFi modems, and he will know you’re onto him. This isn’t spy novel fantasies, I’ve met people building these sniffers at various tech conferences and running them on a daily basis.
