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Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

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Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#191

Post by mikeash »

mindslight wrote: post #187
mikeash wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison between willingly assigned and transmitted MAC addresses and death camp tattoos is utterly absurd, both because it unnecessarily pulls Nazis into the conversation, and because they have no useful parallels purely from a technical point of view.

Calling them "willingly" transmitted is a bit of a stretch, given that people don't have much choice to turn just them off and defaults are a powerful thing. The useful parallel is the general inventorying and tracking of people. Luckily we don't have the rest of totalitarianism (yet), but this cornerstone is well laid due to naive designers. BTW you were the one who brought up the subject of Nazis.

Right, when you said "People with an identifier number tattooed on their arm" you weren't even thinking of Nazi concentration camp victims. Sure. Pull the other one.

Every router I've ever seen has a pretty clear setup option for creating a hidden network. I agree that defaults are powerful, but they don't make it any less "willing," they merely expose people's indifference.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#192

Post by mindslight »

simoncion wrote: post #190
mindslight wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, for purposes of this comment I only need to address the situation where WPA2 is currently used (the majority of private APs). Second, I'm one person taking a few minutes to write a HN comment, not a design committee. Simple protocol: The AP and client have shared secret K (similar to the present WPA2 key). We define the identity of a network as this secret key. The AP can change "BSSID" every hour, while broad…

> An interested client runs through their database of known private networks, checking if the broadcaster is any they know. That solves the problem for clients that have connected to that AP before. [0] How do you propose to solve the problem for clients that have never interacted with that AP before? [0] It probably actually doesn't , but I won't distract you with why at the moment. :)

As I said originally, just change the BSSID periodically. The network name is the network identity, and people deal with collisions just fine. Also, this is back to the case of non-WPA2 (otherwise the user would have to enter the secret K anyway, merely changing the process slightly).

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#193

Post by Houshalter »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #172
ghshephard wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The findmyfriends feature on my iPhone has been 100% accurate in identifying where my friends are. If I had a child who went missing, and findmyfriends showed that they were in a house, I would absolutely hope that the police would go to the house and rescue my child. I would also hope that the police would have enough sense to prevent any occupants from the house from going into the house and potentially destroying/…

The findmyfriends feature on my iPhone has been 100% accurate in identifying where my friends are My wife and I use Find My Friends quite often to keep track of our children. I've used it for years, so I'm quite familiar with it. Our experience is quite the opposite of "100% accurate". I provided more detail in this other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10950107 Edit: just looked up the USA version of "pro…

What percent of the time is the location totally wrong? Greater than 50% of the time? If not then it's totally justified.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#194

Post by Houshalter »

qq66 wrote: post #188
ghshephard wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The findmyfriends feature on my iPhone has been 100% accurate in identifying where my friends are. If I had a child who went missing, and findmyfriends showed that they were in a house, I would absolutely hope that the police would go to the house and rescue my child. I would also hope that the police would have enough sense to prevent any occupants from the house from going into the house and potentially destroying/…

There are a lot of things that are justifiable to rescue a possibly kidnapped child that are not justifiable to rescue a possibly stolen iPhone.

They were searching for a possibly kidnapped child so what is your point?

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#195

Post by simoncion »

mindslight wrote: post #192
simoncion wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An interested client runs through their database of known private networks, checking if the broadcaster is any they know. That solves the problem for clients that have connected to that AP before. [0] How do you propose to solve the problem for clients that have never interacted with that AP before? [0] It probably actually doesn't , but I won't distract you with why at the moment. :)

As I said originally, just change the BSSID periodically. The network name is the network identity, and people deal with collisions just fine. Also, this is back to the case of non-WPA2 (otherwise the user would have to enter the secret K anyway, merely changing the process slightly).

> Also, this is back to the case of non-WPA2...

Okay, I'm a little confused, please bear with me.

Are you designing two half systems, one of which periodically changes BSSID but provides no other anonymity protection, and the other which hashes the BSSID with the WPA2 PSK?

Or are you designing one system with a rotating BSSID that transmits -in cleartext- the BSSID and the hashed BSSID?

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#196

Post by mindslight »

mikeash wrote: post #191
mindslight wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling them "willingly" transmitted is a bit of a stretch, given that people don't have much choice to turn just them off and defaults are a powerful thing. The useful parallel is the general inventorying and tracking of people. Luckily we don't have the rest of totalitarianism (yet), but this cornerstone is well laid due to naive designers. BTW you were the one who brought up the subject of Nazis.

Right, when you said "People with an identifier number tattooed on their arm" you weren't even thinking of Nazi concentration camp victims. Sure. Pull the other one. Every router I've ever seen has a pretty clear setup option for creating a hidden network. I agree that defaults are powerful, but they don't make it any less "willing," they merely expose people's indifference.

Actually I was thinking of prisoners of the Japanese in WWII. As I said, the Nazis were hardly the only ones to number prisoners, and I suspect the phenomenon has more to do with technology than with the supreme evil tidily ascribed to losers of wars.

I'm making a general point about identifiers and protocols. The same thing applies to client MACs, which are obviously being used to track phone users with wifi on. Obviously MAC addresses can be cycled, but that takes active diligence. If the protocol had simply been designed to eschew and hide such identifiers in the first place, the entire issue wouldn't even exist.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#197

Post by mindslight »

simoncion wrote: post #195
mindslight wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said originally, just change the BSSID periodically. The network name is the network identity, and people deal with collisions just fine. Also, this is back to the case of non-WPA2 (otherwise the user would have to enter the secret K anyway, merely changing the process slightly).

> Also, this is back to the case of non-WPA2... Okay, I'm a little confused, please bear with me. Are you designing two half systems, one of which periodically changes BSSID but provides no other anonymity protection, and the other which hashes the BSSID with the WPA2 PSK? Or are you designing one system with a rotating BSSID that transmits -in cleartext- the BSSID and the hashed BSSID?

I'm pointing out existence certificates of each independent property. View them as two systems, or assume they can be merged into one system.

It's obviously impossible to have a publicly-available network that hides its existence to the public (while a private network can obviously hide its existence to the public completely), so each problem will obviously have different ideal solutions.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#198

Post by nommm-nommm »

qq66 wrote: post #188
ghshephard wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The findmyfriends feature on my iPhone has been 100% accurate in identifying where my friends are. If I had a child who went missing, and findmyfriends showed that they were in a house, I would absolutely hope that the police would go to the house and rescue my child. I would also hope that the police would have enough sense to prevent any occupants from the house from going into the house and potentially destroying/…

There are a lot of things that are justifiable to rescue a possibly kidnapped child that are not justifiable to rescue a possibly stolen iPhone.

They were looking for a missing child.

"And sometimes, it’s not just a phone that’s missing, but a person. In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. "

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#199

Post by simoncion »

mindslight wrote: post #196
mikeash wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, when you said "People with an identifier number tattooed on their arm" you weren't even thinking of Nazi concentration camp victims. Sure. Pull the other one. Every router I've ever seen has a pretty clear setup option for creating a hidden network. I agree that defaults are powerful, but they don't make it any less "willing," they merely expose people's indifference.

Actually I was thinking of prisoners of the Japanese in WWII. As I said, the Nazis were hardly the only ones to number prisoners, and I suspect the phenomenon has more to do with technology than with the supreme evil tidily ascribed to losers of wars. I'm making a general point about identifiers and protocols. The same thing applies to client MACs, which are obviously being used to track phone users with wifi on. Obv…

> Actually I was thinking of prisoners of the Japanese in WWII.

I've never heard of this, and have family that served in the Pacific during WWII. I'm also having difficulty discovering any sources that mention the practice, let alone reliable ones.

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