An AirDrop flaw means that doing nothing more than opening an iOS or macOS sharing pane within Wi-Fi range of a stranger can enable them to see your phone number and email address. You do not have to initiate an AirDrop transfer to be at risk.

The security researchers who discovered the vulnerability say that they disclosed it to Apple way back in May 2019, but the company still hasn’t provided a fix to the 1.5 billion affected devices …



The issue had been partially identified in earlier research, but in that case only partial phone numbers were revealed and a database was required to fill in the blanks. This latest paper says that complete data can be obtained any time anyone opens a share sheet, no matter which option they then select.

Researchers at Germany’s Technische Universitat Darmstadt said that the problem is a combination of two issues. First, to offer the “Contacts only” option for AirDrop, Apple devices need to silently request personal data from all devices within range.