via Apple
If you’ve been on social media over the past few days, you may have gotten a dire warning about iOS 17’s new “NameDrop” feature. According to the post, it’s a “dangerous” new feature that allows someone to get your photo, name, and contact information straight from your phone, just by touching their phone to yours! It then warns you that you should turn the feature off immediately.
The process they recommend basically turns off all touch to send features, including those used by AirDrop. However, that’s not even the worst part about the whole thing. The “dangerous” feature? It requires your permission to work every time, and you have to initiate sending contact information. You can never take information, only send it or receive it. The feature requires confirmation every time.
So, how does NameDrop really work, and, if you’re still not sold, how do you turn it off? I’ll reluctantly walk you through the latter, but you probably should learn about the feature first.
What is NameDrop?
via Apple
In iOS 17, Apple introduced a new feature, NameDrop. NameDrop allows users to touch the tops of their iPhones together to share contact information with each other using AirDrop technology, initiated by NFC. The point your phone towards the person’s phone you want to share contact information with. Put the top of your phone over the top of theirs, or just near enough that you’ll see an animation and the NameDrop options appear on the screen. Choose what you’d like to share with them, your contact card, for example, and which information from that contact you’d like to share. Then, send it. To cancel, just pull your device away or lock it. You can read more about it on Apple’s support site.
Can You Turn it Off?
I mean, sure. But that will also turn off any AirDrop sharing that you can initialize by just holding your unlocked phone near someone else’s unlocked phone. It’s a handy feature. But, if you want to turn it off, go into Settings > General > AirDrop. There you’ll see a setting that can change how you can initialize an AirDrop exchange. Under “Start Sharing By” you’ll find the “Bringing Devices Together” option enabled. Turn it off, and it’ll disable this handy NameDrop feature.
Is NameDrop Dangerous? Can People Steal My Information?
Despite reports like the one below? No.
screenshot via City of Chester Police Department Facebook page
You’re more worried about someone passing you on the street with an iPhone stealing your contact data than the data brokers online selling it to millions? That’s disappointing, but I can see how a singular thief is easier to imagine and worry about than all the data gatherers you should worry about, like Meta, TikTok, Google, OpenAI, and anyone else gobbling up data online.
As you might have guessed from the introduction, you have nothing to worry about with NameDrop. You have to verify every part of this process, and keep the devices near each other the entire time. A data thief would have to put their device near your phone, unlock your phone from in your pocket somehow, tap to share your contact data, select the items they want to share, and keep their phone near your phone until the data has been sent.
In other words, it’s impossible.
So don’t buy into the fear mongering. NameDrop is just a cool new feature that’ll help you share contact information quickly. Useful at work events or meeting someone cute at a bar. Not so useful for stealing people’s personal data. If you want to steal people’s personal data, start a social network. As Mark Zuckerberg said about Facebook, “people just submitted it… they ‘trust me’ … dumb fucks.”