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Russell Brandom reports that a new feature in iOS 8 is set to cause havoc for location trackers, and score a major win for privacy: When iOS 8 devices look for a connection, iOS 8 will randomize their MAC address, effectively disguising any trace of the real device until it decides to connect to a network. Why are iPhones checking out Wi-Fi networks in disguise? Because there's an entire industry devoted to tracking customers through that signal. Shops from Nordstrom's to JC Penney have tried out a system that automatically logs any phone within Wi-Fi range, giving stores a complete record of who walked into the shop and when. But any phone using iOS 8 will be invisible to the process, potentially calling the whole system into question. "Now that Apple has embraced MAC spoofing, the practice of Wi-Fi sniffing may stop working entirely," says Brandom. "The result is a privacy win for Apple users and a major blow against data marketing and all it took was an automatic update."
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:29PM
If they played fair, the spoofed addresses really are random and there is no way for Apple to track them either.
Being of marginal value, Apple might actually have weighed the PR value of customer privacy higher than the value of passing tracking info to marketers.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday June 11 2014, @05:15PM
Oh, come on, Joe, even YOU don't believe that. Apple has access to far more than a wifi mac address. (And so do the stores using this tracking technology). Phones leak their IMEI, MEID, and ICCID over the air to any and all adjacent towers and any off the shelf femtocells installed for the "customer's convienence".
Apple isn't about to play fair. This protects and extends their walled garden. Your phone will still connect to your iCloud account and a dozen social networks, and many of those are not encrypted.
If you own the wifi network, you can data mine all of that traffic that goes over that network, with nothing more than a seemingly innocuous piece of fine print on the connection page.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.