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Milan Airport WiFi sends your MAC address to advertisers and trackers

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

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consent is not needed for quite a bit of electronic marketing. It is for setting cookies, which is probably going on here to facilitate the marketing, so your point stands, but it's a breach of the ePrivacy Directive not GDPR so fines are lower. No excuse though.

For the marketing itself consent isn't needed, but for collecting/processing personal data for marketing I'm pretty confident it is. Why wouldn't that fall under GDPR?

Perhaps they are not storing the personally identifiable data (unclear whether the MAC addresses are logged on-site), but are merely passing it on to advertisers for their own use. Neat loophole if that is the case.

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

#53
post #36
post #33

https://github.com/feross/SpoofMAC

Does this work with OSX? Its 5 years since the last update...

Had this alias for years and it still works:

    alias random-mac='openssl rand -hex 6 | sed '\''s/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'\'' | xargs sudo ifconfig en0 ether'

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

#54
post #42

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).

The MAC randomization only applies to probes it sends for known networks when not connected. Once you are connected, it uses the real MAC. iPhone also still sends the device name to the DHCP server when requesting an IP, so if you haven't changed it, it is broadcasting " 's iPhone" to the network.

"iPhone also still sends the device name to the DHCP server when requesting an IP, so if you haven't changed it, it is broadcasting "'s iPhone" to the network."

My iphone has no idea what my first (or last) name is, but I still find it irksome that I cannot change my SSID nor can I hide it.

There is no reason I should be advertising the existence of my phone to everyone in (radio) earshot ...

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

#55

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…

ifconfig is a part of net-tools package, last release of which was in 2001 hence it's deprecated in any major distro since 2013. Unless you're running RHEL6 or something that old, you shouldn't use it.

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

#56
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this work with OSX? Its 5 years since the last update...

Had this alias for years and it still works: alias random-mac='openssl rand -hex 6 | sed '\''s/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'\'' | xargs sudo ifconfig en0 ether'

Awesome, so does that change the permanent mac address that comes with the laptop, and it is forever gone? Or does it somehow "reset" when you restart, and you rerun this command multiple times

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

#57

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).

Android 10 also randomizes MAC addresses when probing, as a client, and as a AP/Hotspot: https://source.android.com/devices/tech/connect/wifi-mac-ran...

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

#58
post #35
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

could your just push it down a layer, maybe 802.1x or something?

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

#59
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had this alias for years and it still works: alias random-mac='openssl rand -hex 6 | sed '\''s/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'\'' | xargs sudo ifconfig en0 ether'

Awesome, so does that change the permanent mac address that comes with the laptop, and it is forever gone? Or does it somehow "reset" when you restart, and you rerun this command multiple times

It resets when you turn the NIC on and off, I believe.

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

#60
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…

You are arguing that mac addresses are not unique, however that doesn't mean it doesn't match/combine your data extremely well.
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