You could say that Geolocation is the same as a building address, but
MAC is the same as an apartment number. I can't think of a legitimate
reason for an app/business to want my apartment number if it already
knows my building. But you mentioned that you could think of some
reasons - I was wondering what those might be?
On 11/3/13 8:15 PM, Paul Theriault wrote:
I have been thinking about what security & privacy risks are associated with
allowing 3rd party apps to access the WiFi manager API. One property this API
exposes is the MAC address of the wifi adapter. At first glance, exposing the MAC
address would seem to be a very significant privacy risk because a) its guaranteed
to be globally unique, and b) the user has no easy way to change or cycle this
identifier. Currently the API is certified only (only Mozilla and partner apps can
get access to this API) but there is a desire to open this up for various
legitimate use cases (improved geolocation accuracy via wifi scanning for example).
How important is it to never allow disclosure of the MAC address to 3rd party
apps ? Am I overlooking other factors which mean the work in restricting access
to the MAC is not such a valuable control ?
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