EFF asks Apple for an option to cut 2G in iOS as in Android | iGeneration

“Apple must also integrate this function, for the safety of its customers”, implores the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) after having congratulated Google for adding an option to disable 2G connections in Android 12”.

In the settings of the latest Google system, an option allows you to block, at the level of the smartphone modem, any possibility of communicating in 2G, except in the context of emergency calls. A security measure explains the EFF, because this communication protocol was born at a time – 1991 – when the questions of hacking and the need to encrypt data were not as significant as today. Then over time flaws were discovered in this protocol which covers the old GPRS and EDGE still offered in some places with very low coverage.

The EFF sees two main problems in continuing to use 2G communications:

These "antenna simulators" can even force a phone to downgrade its 4G connection to a 2G swap and take advantage of remaining flaws that had been patched with the advent of 3G and subsequent standards.

Google having modified Android to give users manual control, EFF hopes the same from Apple (and Samsung, which does not offer this switch in all its phones). However, the usage status of 2G varies between operators and countries. For some this connection mode has been turned off (this is the case in the United States), it is also well underway in Asia, while in Europe many will not do so until December 2025.

In France no schedule has yet been decided and an article in Liberation last summer summarized the position of several telecom players where the wait is in order.

Within Arcep, the preference was to deactivate 3G rather than 2G: “many of our fellow citizens still use 2G to connect to the network, as well as the Internet of Things which works on 2G” . The French Telecoms Federation – which represents the operators – indicated for its part that no extinction of either of the two networks was yet on the program.

At Bouygues the question did not arise either for the moment. Orange, on the other hand, considered the idea of ​​deactivating 2G by 2025 to be relevant for the general public (2G being used by equipment such as alarms, electricity meters or elevators). In order to simplify the layering of networks in service. But this was a hypothesis formulated at European level, not specifically for France.