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The question is simple: can my mobile carrier company found out the IP assigned to my WiFi adapter, either in airplane mode or with mobile data ON?

In case my question is not clear enough, I'm going to propose these scenarios:

Scenario A

  1. I activate Airplane mode on my phone.
  2. I connect to a WiFi network.
  3. Can the mobile carrier know the IP that's being used to connect to the Internet and hence the ISP account, as well?

Scenario B

  1. Data is ON (Airplane mode is OFF).
  2. I connect to a WiFi network.
  3. Can the mobile carrier know the IP that's being used to connect to the Internet and hence the ISP account, as well?

Thanks.

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  • If you are connecting to your carriers services through WiFi, like WiFi calling, then yes of course they can. If you are not connecting to any of your carriers services, then not to my knowledge. I would imagine if you are using (for example) an AT&T branded phone that some of the AT&T specific apps could contact their services in the background over WiFi and they could know your IP as well. I highly doubt they would care though, guess I am not sure the real purpose of your issues.
    – acejavelin
    Commented Mar 12, 2018 at 20:43
  • If they can do A then they can do B.
    – HackSlash
    Commented Mar 12, 2018 at 20:47

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The answer is that your mobile carrier could do anything. Many devices come with carrier provided customization to the OS as well as uninstallable Apps.

If they wanted to log IP addresses of all interfaces that would be trivial. In Scenario A they would have to store the log locally and upload it later.

The only way to be sure this is not happening is to install a clean version of Android with no carrier modifcations and then not allow carrier apps to be loaded.

The real question is: Who is your mobile carrier? What phone do you have? Does that device have carrier spyware? Is that carrier using said spyware to collect IP addresses of all interfaces?

As you can see there are many factors here and the only people who would know are employees of your mobile carrier.

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  • Note that typically baseband processor has RAM access and firmware flashable by the carrier, but not by the user, so their level of access is mostly limited by their will (and laws, contracts, subpoenas..).
    – Ivan
    Commented Mar 12, 2018 at 20:50

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