I’ve been chatting with Lumo about privacy options on an ongoing basis. And while it is helpful it makes a LOT of mistakes. In the process I learned a lot of things.
I learned about setting my DNS to CloudFlare or Quad9 DNS. And I feel dismayed this isn’t more public knowledge. This is not a critic of this site but all sites, forums and newspapers. Changing DNS is so easy and basic I’m just wondering why it’s not talked about more. All most articles mention is using an ad blocker. So glad to have that.
I also learned I should opt out my wifi network names from Google, Apple and Microsoft by appending _nomap and _optout to them at the end. They should also be set to hidden if possible. Have you heard of this tactic to secure wifi networks. Do you this for your own wifi networks? I’m sure many of you will say you only connect using ethernet and fair point. I am not able to do that now.
Lumo also suggested I purchase a brand new router. I recently moved and I changed my last name before I did that. Lumo says my BSSID is unchangeable and can be tracked no matter what I do so it’s better for me to simply purchase a new router. It said to change my wifi network names since they are likely in public databases. Buying a new router sounds like an extreme option so I’m wondering what you think. Are BSSIDs really a big deal? I argue with Lumo a lot. Sometimes the reasons it gives are far fetched or slim possibilities so just wondering what you think. I know devices in general can be tracked but if changing a router protects them all I would go for that. What do you think?
I want to prevent private info out of hands of low life data brokers especially the ones that public private info for sale to average people. I am doing everything I can to mitigate that.
this is actually counter productive, as supplicants then need to broadcast it to see if it s available, vs just passively listening for it. this causes that broadcast to occur in areas where it isn’t likely to actually exist which can cause it to become a fingerprint for when you’re not near it.
security by obscurity is 1000% useless without other layers of security backing it up.
first check to see if your current router is compatible with openwrt
bssid and ssid are both changable
in context of wifi privacy, you are far better off simply getting a trustworthy router (software) and setting it wpa3 only with a strong password than you are playing games with the ssid
@anon8419412 already defeated the main argument, but I can stack on top of it and say that Wi-Fi monitoring tools are very accessible and cheap, starting from USB monitor-mode adapters around $20-40 USD to the infamous (in security circles) WiFi Pineapple series:
Unless perhaps you run your own DNS server like I do, I am not sure this buys you much privacy. Your previous DNS provider may have been your ISP and now Cloudflare, a company that controls much of the Internet, is logging your DNS requests instead. Even running your own DNS isn’t a silver bullet; after all, DNS requests are sent in cleartext. One thing that it buys you (in some countries) is evasion of ISP-enforced censorship.
Instead, I filter ports 53 and 853, and blacklist the IPs of known public DNS servers. This is intended to prevent devices or programs from circumventing my own DNS with domain blacklists.
According to my research, _optoutwas a Windows 10 specific thing and has been deprecated anyways. You only need to worry about _nomap. I mean, there might be others I’m not aware of, but of the two you listed that’s the only one.
One thing worth considering is that doing stuff like adding _nomap makes you stand out to a dedicated attacker. Like in theory, say you have a bored teenager or hacker in your building, if they see that SSID they’ll know what it means and know that you value your privacy and/or are a bit tech savvy and that might make you stand out. In my personal opinion, the odds of this are seriously low. Even if someone else saw it, they probably have better things to do than hack me out of sheer boredom or curiosity, and the bigger/much more likely threat is the privacy invasion from Google and/or Apple. So for me, I’m willing to stand out because the odds that anyone cares are near zero while the odds that someone is gonna come over with an iPhone or Googled Android and use our guest WiFi is basically 100%.
Personally speaking, in my threat model:
I trust my existing security features just fine (aka “if some bored teen hacker starts trying to crack my WiFi, I’m using good passwords and modern protocols and I encrypt most of my stuff at the device level anyways so I’m not super worried about it”).
I think it’s way more likely that the cops are gonna stick a van down the street (which I don’t think is likely, tbh) rather than I’m gonna happen to move in next door to Elliot Alderson, who additionally would have to decide that I’m interesting enough to do more than just go “oh wow, a _nomap SSID. That guy must work in tech or something” and then move on with his day.
That said, if you don’t trust your neighbors or have some valid, realistic reason to think you might stand out in a bad way, that’s worth thinking about.
I’d treat _nomap as a small housekeeping step, not as Wi‑Fi security. It may reduce some location-database exposure, but the basics matter much more: WPA2/WPA3, a strong Wi‑Fi password, router firmware updates, and a separate guest network for visitors/IoT if your router supports it. I would not hide the SSID; it tends to make devices shout the network name around more, which is the opposite of what most people want.