Airplane Mode Is a Lie — Google’s Still Tracking You

Two identical phones. No SIM cards. No Wi-Fi. One in airplane mode, one not.
We carried them around Washington D.C. — past the Capitol, a hospital, a school, and a cathedral — believing they were offline.

When we got back, both phones secretly dumped hundreds of kilobytes of location data to Google — down to the exact second of every stop, every movement, even barometric readings.

Airplane mode didn’t save us.
Google tracked us the whole time.
The truth? Your phone is never really “off the grid.”