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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3950 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Wifi data. If you go near a ground Wifi site, you'll expose your MAC Address to it. It's possible (and sometimes easy) to spoof the MAC address, and probably no one has a database of who owns what MAC address, but it's at least theoretically possible. Not very accurate, only tied to the specific access point you're connecting to (or for corporate-run access points, their auth gateway), most devices won't save this at all.

At least on Android your phone randomizes its MAC when communicating with a hotspot.

Yeah, Android 10+ made that a default on behavior, and iOS 14 did the same. I think both defaults to persisting the same MAC address per-network SSID, though, so there's still some potential for tracking depending on your level of paranoia.

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