I can only say “thanks goddess”. Apple and Google tracks BSSIDs to fill their own maps. I don’t want to be a product when I don’t even use Google crap, just because all housemates use Google crap.
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Maybe I’m wrong, but if only 1 company randomize the bssid of a wifi network, it’s not going to disrupt location tracking because it uses the 10-20 others unique wifi around you to find you.
Also, I’m not sure if changing bssid will word reliably on all client devices, they will have to test, and thst’s why they will do staged rollup.
Also do know that there is not only google and apple that retrieve wifi and position to correlate them together. Applications probably do that too.
what would work would be if we sent out excisting combinations to fuzz the system, but that would also only help on mass scale eventually.
Good idea.
We could implement that in the phones themselves. The end result is that the data collection company would need to differentiate between false and true ssids one way or another.
A different approach on a phone would be to restrict the names and bssids of wifi netwrok that an application can see. Ie restricting the visible list.
Normally is is not needed, but applications request this permission to be able to locate a user wothout asking for the location permission.
In this plan, the operating system would ask the user which wifi network to share with the application.
For iot application that want to see networks and connect to a different network, the user could simply select the device temporary wifi network.
For application like wifi scanner (check signal strenght and other info), the user could select all networks.
This may nit restrict google or apple data collection, but would restruct collection for apps.
This is why i recommendation people to check the special apps permission called wifi control
Settings/Apps/Special app access/WiFi control and disable this for all apps
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