London Bans Recycling Bins That Track Phones

judgecorp writes "In a swift response to a media storm, the City of London has closed down a trial of recycling bins which track the phones of pedestrians. Renew provides recycling bins funded by digital advertising, and has been told to stop a trial where bins tracked phones. Although the CEO of Renew claims there was no intention to breach privacy, his own marketing material says otherwise."

Re:No prosecution?

[sinij]

>>>Why no criminal investigation, or at least massive fine?


Likely because phone is actively broadcasting information in the public space. If I go out shouting my Social Security number, others are not liable for overhearing it or even writing it down.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[cusco]

IIRC, the address space available for MAC addresses allows something like 1000 devices for each square foot of land area on Earth, so there isn't much chance of collision. Having said that, AC is wrong. DHCP reservations (used on many, many networks for hardware that needs to maintain the same IP address) require MAC addresses that do not change. Many manufacturers have sniffer programs that are needed to do installations and service on their hardware, which sniff the set of MAC addresses assigned to their company. There are lots of other reasons that MAC addresses are linked to a piece of hardware.

The issue here isn't that MAC addresses are unique, it's that users aren't bright enough or are too lazy to turn off wi-fi detection when they're not using it.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[icebike]

And there is no reason a MAC address should not randomize itself in between network connections.

No reason other than that the MAC address exists to uniquely identify the device connecting to the network. You seem to have missed the point of the MAC address. Some networks lock down access by MAC address as it is supposed to identify specific devices.

Your phone knows its real Mac, and the mac of the routers it has connected to before.
All it need do is use the same mac for any router it has seen before, or use its REAL mac when you request
a connection to any router.

Routers you don't CHOOSE TO connect to, have no valid reason to know your mac.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[icebike]

With your question, you've touched the heart of the problem.

Lazy software designers (those working for wifi chip designers) are sending mac addresses even while they are not associated with any network.
Some say that these only occur when you have previously associated with a hidden SSID network, but that is not the only case, and most
modern chip sets send a mac address all the time for no reason at all.

Its not part of the standard to broadcast your mac unless you are a router. But since the advent of ad-hoc networks, there are a lot
phones that broadcast it all the time looking to join an adhoc network. Furthermore, bluetooth also broadcasts its mac all the time
and often bluetooth and wifi are built into the same chip.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[fullmetal55]

because it's easier to change DNS entries in a DHCP Server than going around to 100+ individual devices to change the DNS entries when a DNS server dies. and since DHCP hands out more than just an IP, it makes sense to use reservations. thats why every DHCP server I've ever seen allows for reservations.

There are many other things that DHCP can hand out as well, DNS is simply an example. other issues are default gateway changes, subnet mask changes, voip server changes, Dynamic DNS updating. which are all fine on a handful of devices to manage that as static, but once you get into 100s, or 1000s, reservations make a lot more sense.