Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 64 posts

Re: Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers

#32

Post by jayalpha »

jolmg wrote: post #29
jayalpha wrote: post #24

macchanger Also extends time limites wifi. Or use my gypsy code import random import os mac='' os.system('/etc/init.d/networking stop') os.system('ifconfig wlan1 down') os.system('ifconfig eth1 down') os.system('ifconfig wlp8s0 down') os.system('ifconfig wlp7s0 down') for i in range(0,3): __r=random.randint(16, 256) __mac=mac+":"+str(hex(r))[2:] mac="00:07:E9"+mac print mac os.system('/etc/init.d/networking stop') os…

You need to indent the code by at least 2 spaces so it doesn't collapse into a paragraph like that. Also, that script isn't really portable. Not everyone has those interface names nor /etc/init.d/networking.

It is gypsy code and works for me. Use macchanger instead of adopt the script for your purposes.

Re: Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers

#34

Post by s5ma6n »

RKearney wrote: post #12
s5ma6n wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since MAC address ranges are allocated to certain manufacturers, it is a simple way to track your device type. Additionally, all MAC addresses are unique so it is the easiest way to match/combine your data from different trackers.

> Additionally, all MAC addresses are unique so it is the easiest way to match/combine your data from different trackers. This is not true. While it's intended for MAC addresses to be unique, there are plenty of instances where manufacturers re-use MACs when they run out instead of registering more. Additionally, there is no issue with multiple devices having the same MAC address as long as they're never on the same…

As far as I know, IEEE is quite strict in this matter but I just searched for it now and have seen a couple of cases where people ran into duplicate MAC addresses.

I would assume this is a rare occurrence and if not, it should still be okay to sometimes run into address collisions for advertising purposes.

Thanks for the info.

Re: Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers

#35

Post by angott »

Gaelan wrote: post #7
ComputerGuru wrote: post #6

iPhones randomize the MAC address when connecting to hotspots (on a per-ssid basis, I think?). Other platforms do too (Windows 10 now has an option to do that automatically as well, but I can’t recall if it is enabled by default).

IIRC (this is old and might have been wrong in the first place) iOS randomizes when it’s searching for networks but not when it’s connected to one.

It’s not a bad idea. A randomized IP address at each connection would break many things on quite a few networks (IP-MAC static assignments, for instance).

Re: Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers

#37

Post by jolmg »

jayalpha wrote: post #32
jolmg wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to indent the code by at least 2 spaces so it doesn't collapse into a paragraph like that. Also, that script isn't really portable. Not everyone has those interface names nor /etc/init.d/networking.

It is gypsy code and works for me. Use macchanger instead of adopt the script for your purposes.

What is "gypsy code"? I first thought you were referring to a library or some kind of platform, but that doesn't seem to be it. The only definition I find of gypsy is that of the people. Maybe you're saying that it was written by a Gypsy, but I don't know why that'd be of interest.

Re: Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers

#39

Post by oil25 »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #21

What I'm more worried about are probe requests, because sometimes I forget to turn off the wifi. Do you know whether the MAC address, or other identifying data, is sent in this case?

MAC address of your radio, plus the BSSID of every wireless network you've ever connected to and saved.
Post reply on HN