Chinese police have tool to identify AirDrop users

Chinese police have a tool that can track phone numbers and email addresses of Apple AirDrop users. This way, people who use Airdrop to communicate with each other anonymously could still be identified.

According to a local branch of the Beijing police the tool can be used to retrieve the algorithmically hashed data of registered AirDrop users. This concerns the name of the iOS device, the telephone number and the email address of the user. The police are said to have used the software in more than 850 files, although it is not clear whether people have already been arrested using the tool.

Police believe that the AirDrop functionality is being used by some individuals to spread inappropriate information in public places. It is not clear what exactly this information means. Because AirDrop does not use the internet, this information flow could not be adequately investigated.

Apple slightly adjusted the operation of AirDrop at the end of 2022, making it no longer possible to share AirDrop files with everyone indefinitely. There was a ten minute time limit for this function. The company first did this in China via the Chinese version of iOS 16.1.1 and later worldwide via iOS 16.2. Apple then stated that it wanted to prevent unwanted file sharing. Bloomberg news agency then noted that the AirDrop functionality in iOS devices was often used during the 2019 street protests in Hong Kong.