With regards to the related discourse topic #22 [1] (and my previous
comment here): If this is introduced, what do you think of adjusting the
starting page for F40 in Firefox? Most users tend to first check their
Internet (and related issues) by opening their default browser and check
if it works or if they can use their preferred search engine to search a
solution:
A small bold warning (and maybe a picture or two of how the problem
manifests - e.g., the limited connectivity warning - to capture their
attention) with a hint and a few pictures of which button to pull to
disable the MAC randomization if they are affected negatively could be a
good mitigation without increasing the stuff in the installer.
[1]
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-proposal-wifi-mac-randomization-system-wide/99856/22
On 24/12/2023 11.19, Christopher Klooz wrote:
On 24/12/2023 04.45, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Kevin Kofler via devel writes:
Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Christopher Klooz writes:
>
>> Btw, does anyone know if this (in the practically-same manner) is
really
>> already introduced in Windows, Mac, Android by default? Globally?
This
>
> Most recent Android phones, and iPhones do this by default.
>
> What they do is pin each randomized MAC address per AP. They're not
> randomizing MACs for each connect, but basically generate a
randomized MAC
> for each AP known to the phone.
What is this actually good for? Any AP you connect to can still
track you
this way, and anything further uplink should not get your MAC
address to
begin with anyway (only your IP address).
The ostensible reason for this is that you cannot be tracked by your
fixed MAC across different APs. Yes, your visits to the same AP can
still be tracked by that AP, but that's as far as it goes. And the
reason for using the same MAC with the same AP is to still make it
possible to do MAC address filtering.
The majority of privacy issues when it comes to tracking take place on
higher layers. The providers that are able to collect massive amounts
of information about you have no access to your MAC. E.g., when using
Google services. If a hotel chain can track me throughout its hotels,
it can get more information than otherwise. However, they still get
much less information than most web services that make money with
tracking, especially since most is HTTPS today. There is an advantage
with MAC randomization, but it is a small one, and I am not convinced
if it is worth the efforts: for both developers and the users who have
to handle some issues - or beginners who possibly end up in a "denial
of service" because they have no idea what the problem is and how to
respond (if people get a new notebook, those who use filtering for
whitelists/blacklists or content filters for problematic content, e.g.
if they have kids, will likely understand that something has to be
done, but this proposal is not a case where a new notebook or so is
introduced - thus, non-advanced users might not be able to understand
WHAT to do and thus remain with the issue; some examples are in [1]).
However, if there is a RFC that is already implemented by Apple,
Microsoft and Android, I tend to change my mind and say let's keep
consistency among operating systems: at least if the big three do it,
I expect that vendors of hardware (for home routers and such) will
respond to that also in favor of beginners (hopefully...). In any
case, we then might at least ensure that users experience the issue on
all systems roughly at the same time... That might serve as a small
but existing mitigation.
[1]
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f40-change-proposal-wifi-mac-randomization-system-wide/99856/15
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