What price for free wi-fi? | Hacker News Reader

What price for free wi-fi?

bbc.co.uk

16 pointsaDevilInMe11 comments

If we accept that nothing is free, then we have to ask what the best way to pay for the so-called free product. In my mind it's either some sort of usage data, or it's via taxes.

I would guess in almost every case, the purpose of free wifi is not to do any sort of tracking, it's just to get you in the door. I know that I've picked hotels and other establishments based on the availability of free wifi.

Yes, though this is now becoming an expectation. I haven't done much business travel in the past few years, but now that it's ramping up again I notice how important the free wifi is.

A lot of "free" on the internet is ad sponsored. That doesn't really fit your two categories.

True. I was thinking more in the context of wifi. You're right though.

Is there any technical reason our Mobiles have to broadcast the MAC address?

Could we simply disable MAC address broadcasting?

iOS8 randomises the MAC address to avoid tracking like this: http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/19/why-ios-8s-mac-address-ran...

Yep, so glad that this feature exists. Hope everyone else follows suit.

Have nothing against collecting data of people which choose to join the network, accept T&Cs etc but bulk connection of people passing by is not cool.

I doubt it will be long before this randomization is of no real protection against systems employed by the likes of the NSA and similar. If they can figure it out then a private company could as well and market the managing of free wi-fi services to localities and such all under the guise of better understanding your customers, or worse protection from bad people.

This previous story should pretty much end the idea that even randomizing your Mac address matters https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8094134

Isn't Apple leading the beacon tech though?

iOS 8 randomizes MAC addresses while scanning. (I believe it returns to the device default MAC address when choosing to connect, though.)

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/09/mac-address-random...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com