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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Google should follow Apple's lead and spoof the phone's mac address while wifi scanning to prevent this kind of tracking.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ios-8-mac-address-randomization,...

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Is no one else in the least bit cynical about the timing of MAC randomisation from Apple? Release iBeacon, then shut off an approach others could use to build a competing system.

Realistically, MACs were invented for one purpose (which they still serve) but many other purposes piggy-backed over the years. This is typical for many technical artifacts. Now that we have realized what we want, that we were getting from MACs, albeit poorly, we can build exactly that. Or Apple can, anyway.

This is how our network systems evolve!

I'm moderately cynical about Apple's motivations. I think they've done it because it helps them make money, not for any altruistic reason. Having this feature helps Apple sell iPhones to us, and the iBeacon platform to advertisers.

I don't think that makes a difference though, because Bluetooth LE beacons (iBeacons) are better in this respect - regardless of Apple's motivations.

If your Alice's iPhone senses Bob's iBeacon then no information is revealed to Bob about Alice - an iBeacon can't receive, they're transmit only [1]. It's only once Alice installs Bob's app that Bob can get an indication that Alice is near one of his iBeacons.

1. http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/03/ibeacon-basics.html#_iaW3P0

> I think they've done it because it helps them make money, not for any altruistic reason.

These are not orthogonal concepts.

You're right, I should have said: altruism was a secondary concern.

Isn't iBeacon a transmit-only technology? So there's no way for the iBeacon to log nearby devices. Then it's two completely different types of systems; one can auto-track users and the other cannot.

I don't think Apple does this, but if the iBeacon transmitter device sends an ID to identify itself, the iOS device could log and send the event to a web server by itself.

If it is the operating system you are worried about, there are other things (like continuous GPS and wifi BSSID logging) that would be more effective for tracking a user's location world-wide all the time.

I'm cynical about the "timing" in another way. that if an AP captures a sequence of the "random" addresses an institution can subpena whatever unique seed was assigned to each iDevice to feed whatever PRNG is shuffling the MAC addresses

That said, I am deeply cynical toward Apple's motivations.

It's very very possible, although may need some changes to wpa_supplicant to happen.

Anyone know if Apple patented this?

There is an Android app that will do this for you, if you have root. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.p...

Aha! What would we do without Chainfire?

This is really something that needs to be baked-in at OS level though. I hope Google catches up.

Edit: Star this issue - http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=71084

If they did... This is one patent that should be openly, freely licensed in the public interest.

This feature alone would be enough for me to switch full-time to an iPhone 6 from my Nexus 5.

If you think you'll have more privacy with iPhones... you'll be disappointed.

I'd have more privacy without a phone, but we all make tradeoffs. In this case, iOS offers distinct advantages not yet advertised in Android or Windows Phone. Of course, my privacy depends on many factors, including the apps I choose to use. But Apple's clear improvements to location tracking, with popups to further allow background location checking both enhances privacy and battery life. I'll still leak data like crazy, but at least the NSA won't have quite as much context, and non-NSA players like advertisers, lesser still.

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