Location Privacy and Changes in WiFi Probe Request Based Connection Protocols Usage Through Years

Dagelić, Ante; Perković, Toni; Čagalj, Mario

doi:10.23919/splitech.2019.8783167

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…In an additional evaluation, we found that the average amount of probe requests sent per unique MAC address was 4.8. This is, again, a legitimate decline in comparison to the capture by Dagelić [6] et al in 2014 (24.1), 2015 (29.2) and 2017 (6.1) respectively, but is, again, higher than their 2018 count (2.6). For packages including SSIDs, the average amount of probe requests sent per MAC address was 11.2, which confirms that these are likely older devices of which less employ MAC address randomisation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 58%

“…In 2019, Dagelić et al [6] observe the occurrence of SSIDs in probe requests at a music festival between 2014 and 2018 and present how easy devices are trackable via probe requests if the devices are fingerprintable. Over the years, the number of MAC addresses they observe increases while the number of SSIDs decreases.…”

Section: Differences Between Android and Ios Versionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Probing for Passwords -- Privacy Implications of SSIDs in Probe Requests

McDougall,

Burkert,

Demmler

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Probe requests help mobile devices discover active Wi-Fi networks. They often contain a multitude of data that can be used to identify and track devices and thereby their users. The past years have been a cat-and-mouse game of improving fingerprinting and introducing countermeasures against fingerprinting. This paper analyses the content of probe requests sent by mobile devices and operating systems in a field experiment. In it, we discover that users (probably by accident) input a wealth of data into the SSID field and find passwords, e-mail addresses, names and holiday locations. With these findings we underline that probe requests should be considered sensitive data and be well protected. To preserve user privacy, we suggest and evaluate a privacy-friendly hash-based construction of probe requests and improved user controls.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Section: Differences Between Android and Ios Versionsmentioning

confidence: 99%