DJI Mavic privacy / backdoor

[JustinVV]

Here is a pic showing an image taken in flight and synced

 

[Member]

When I sync to Healthy drones its all there, flight paths, locations, all flight data, and a few happy snaps as well.Since this data is straight from the DJI data base I presume they also have all this.

Well of course, if you share something with them voluntarily then they will have it. This thread deals with the data received/sent to them no matter what.

 

[TimesTen]

Smart Phones have used your Location for years and the fact is the "new Internet economy" is based on who you are, how much you make, your GPS coordinates and what you view on the internet via cookies.

Let me give you a example... you are driving down the road listening to Pandora on your smart phone and you drive past your local community college guess what they send you a CC Video Ad based by your GPS coordinates.

1) Location services have been available in the IOS DJI GO app for years and you can toggle it to allow access "While Using the App" or "Never".
2) Every Photo you take with your smart device has the GPS Coordinates embedded in the photo.
3) If you want Privacy you need to be a "BLANK" for all the Max Headroom fans :^) and sell all your smart devices!
4) Pokemon Go... don't get me started about tracking minors?

Your GPS coordinates and private information is FOR SALE!

You are being tracked by Fortune 500 as you read this post.

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-G

 

[MavicPilot]

So, what firmware + DJI GO4 app (iOS and Android off-grid) are folks recommending that will work with the Googles + reduces some of the restrictions?

I accidentally (sort of) a couple of weeks ago because I could not fly via my iPhone 7. It worked via the controller, but the DJI Go app always told me the compass was fu*ked and the firmware MUST be updated. Yeah, I could close the screen to remove the firmware error, but the compass would NOT work and each attempt to fix it showed an electromagnetic error and try again. I tried 5 different locations including a beach. I think I was on .4x branch as I had not updated since maybe Nov of last year.

Once I upgraded the firmware the compass error went away without a re calibrate! So, to me, this tells me they are really trying to force us to upgrade.

I was using an amazon fire phone (android) last year and up until March, but I had a couple of disconnects and I was only 30-40' away. I was running the same FW, until a couple of weeks ago, and never saw these disconnects when on an iOS device (LTE connected). So, again, seeing these traffic hits I wonder if there are some internet hooks that they really want in place and maybe the older FW/Software had issues if it could not call home.

Anyway, sorry about the long posting...

 

[drhoffnung]

* To see if anything would happen in the future, I changed the date to 2020 in the app and everything still worked. But there's still some chance that the 2018/04/05 expiry will be enforced when the GPS reports a date after the expiry. It's very possible that the firmware itself will do some blocking when it sees the GPS time has passed a specific point.
.

My guess would be that after that date, the GPS Almanac Data needs updating - provides predicted positioning of GPS satellites so the application won't have to spend a lot of time hunting the sky.

 

[MarcDS]

Our Mavics are no different. They will soon be linked to hidden viewing by the NSA and a host of others Gov sites(Not counting what might be seen by other govts). I suspect that if you never fly near airports/ harbors and "Areas' of significant interest you will be off their radar. However if you bounce off NFZ's or restricted airspace they will be pinged just like the "key words" they track now on internet chatter.

This is why I do not have a Facebook, Linked In, or any social media acct and do not put anything on the cloud, You Tube, etc.

I will only understand that a drone manufacturer restricts the flight of a drone around NFZs when gun manufacturers will restrict the use of their guns in schools, public buildings, shopping malls, ... Don't tell me it cannot be done. Just build in a GPS chip and Mobile communications in every gun.

I am in the process of deciding which drone I will buy. It will be my first one and I would like good quality video and high safety (obstacle avoidance). DJI was looking as the best choice. But I am not going to spend $1600+ (I live in Indonesia: ridiculously high import taxes) on a drone that maybe next year will not fly where I want to fly.

This very probably the wrong forum for this question, but let me try anyway: What alternative to DJI exists for drone with good video, good obstacle avoidance, high reliability, good customer service and leaving the responsibility of where to fly to the pilot. I surely would appreciate they respect my privacy and do not communicate any private data to their servers.

 

[GadgetGuy]

2) Every Photo you take with your smart device has the GPS Coordinates embedded in the photo.
-G

Not if you turn OFF location services for Photos.
It is toggle-able, but the default is ON.

 

[GadgetGuy]

What alternative to DJI exists for drone with good video, good obstacle avoidance, high reliability, good customer service and leaving the responsibility of where to fly to the pilot. I surely would appreciate they respect my privacy and do not communicate any private data to their servers.

None. That's why we tolerate the issues, and try and find workarounds, as switching brands is worse. DJI makes the best drones at the best price, and has no real competition with your requirements!

 

[MarcDS]

None. That's why we tolerate the issues, and try and find workarounds, as switching brands is worse. DJI makes the best drones at the best price, and has no real competition with your requirements!

Are the firmware of the drone and the Go4 app not being hacked to avoid the restrictions? Is there any information on how to do this?

The only alternative would be to wait 6 months until other drone manufacturers would have improved their drones to the specs of DJI today. Am I too optimistic with 6 months?

 

[GadgetGuy]

Are the firmware of the drone and the Go4 app not being hacked to avoid the restrictions? Is there any information on how to do this?

The only alternative would be to wait 6 months until other drone manufacturers would have improved their drones to the specs of DJI today. Am I too optimistic with 6 months?

Not at the Mavic level. DJI is always 3 steps ahead of the competition, so if you want the best, figure out how to work within the DJI line. Lots of older DJI legacy aircraft are still available used without restrictions, if you are willing to stay well behind the curve.

 

[CaliChris]

Now... I wasn't going to share any of this, but a minute ago when I started working on this, when I launched the app it connected to these:

1) graph.facebook.com

2) astat.bugly.qq.com

3) upgrade.dj2006.net

4) adash.m.taobao.com

5) upgrade.bgcentre.com

6) version.hybrid.api.here.com

7) download.vcdn.nokia.com

8) www.skypixel.com

9) www.djiexplore.com

10) mydjiflight.dji.com

11) statistical-report.djiservice.org

So my approach was to block DNS requests to your list of domains here on my home router which would be used for version/firmware checking, but allow the map downloads. Then I would only use DJI Go 4 when connected to my home VPN on my tablet sending cellular data through my home router. However after blocking DNS requests for each of these I still get the firmware warning, so something seems to be missing. Any idea how it is checking for firmware updates?

 

[Vilco]

Are the firmware of the drone and the Go4 app not being hacked to avoid the restrictions? Is there any information on how to do this?

The only alternative would be to wait 6 months until other drone manufacturers would have improved their drones to the specs of DJI today. Am I too optimistic with 6 months?

There's a guy selling a mod to override the NFZ's just for the Mavic Pro, I read about him on this same forum. Let me see if I can find him... here it is: NFZ mod for Mavic Pro
And here is something else but way related: a guy on this forum got to root his Mavic and gave a lot of info about it then the post disappeared (probably by request from DJI itself):
Rooting the Mavic • r/djimavic

 

[audioguy]

If you are concerned about your activities on your iPhone being tracked, watch this TED Talk on the subject presented by Gary Kovacs. THEN you can be even more concerned. Gary was the Chief Executive Officer of AVG Technologies and has worked for Mozilla Corporation, Adobe, SAP, and IBM, and led Zi Corporation, a mobile text messaging company.

You ARE being watched/tracked

 

[The Mavic Pro]

Already done:

- Used Helium + Carbon to back up the Go4 app + app-data on a non-rooted tablet.......

I guess you are not on IOS 9 or 10 if you have succeeded to backup the whole GO app?
Or maybe you are using Android.

I want to do a backup of the GO app as well and im on IOS 9 but that does not work.
Apparently Apple has changed things from IOS 9 so now the whole app is not backed up but only a small portion of the app?

And if people are correct the backed up apps if even possible would maybe even be device specific and only work on that exect device from where the app was backed up from?

Any info on this?

If somebody has succeeded to backup the whole GO app on IOS 9 or 10 im really interested to hear about that.

 

[sparky1111]

The *.* command is literally transmitting everything from a DOS perspective. This is bad.

 

[CaliChris]

I guess you are not on IOS 9 or 10 if you have succeeded to backup the whole GO app?
Or maybe you are using Android.

I want to do a backup of the GO app as well and im on IOS 9 but that does not work.
Apparently Apple has changed things from IOS 9 so now the whole app is not backed up but only a small portion of the app?

And if people are correct the backed up apps if even possible would maybe even be device specific and only work on that exect device from where the app was backed up from?

Any info on this?

If somebody has succeeded to backup the whole GO app on IOS 9 or 10 im really interested to hear about that.

I have backed up every version of the DJI Go 4 app. I don't see the app being device specific, however the downloaded .ipa is tied to your Appstore account so you need to get your own unless you jailbreak. The cool thing about the Appstore is all previous versions of apps are there, it's not simple though, you basically need to intercept the packets telling the Appstore what app you want and change the ID to the older version.

 

[HFMan]

Not something the common user would even have a clue how to begin doing...

 

[Kilrah]

If somebody has succeeded to backup the whole GO app on IOS 9 or 10 im really interested to hear about that.

Nobody usually does that anymore, but you can download the full ipa with iTunes on a computer. When downloaded from the device itself since iOS9 it's indeed a thinned down version that only includes binaries and resources needed for that particular device and can't be recovered.

 

[CaliChris]

Nobody usually does that anymore, but you can download the full ipa with iTunes on a computer. When downloaded from the device itself since iOS9 it's indeed a thinned down version that only includes binaries and resources needed for that particular device and can't be recovered.

Why would nobody do that? I would think everybody should after DJI's moves with their latest firmware.

I can downgrade to any app version I want, wether the new firmware has a bug or undesired "feature". Next is to block their firmware checking.

 

[Kilrah]

Because since iCloud is a thing iTunes has been less and less required to manage iOS devices, so most people nowadays will have forgotten or will never even have known you can do that. It's not useful for any other app either.