Let’s say, I sit down in a mall, open my laptop and connect to a secured mobile hotspot. Then I do it again next week after a reboot. What information would a nearby shop or a passive malicious hacker be able to find about my device? Does my device send out identifying information before joining, like a MAC address? Is this persistent, or randomized?
I intentionally haven’t specified a distro, so if something only applies to some network managers, give some details.
Bonus points: what about Android phones?
On iOS and most androids, your Mac address is only scrambled per network. So when you connect to the same network again, your device will use the same Mac address. This generally isn’t an issue if you’re using a private wifi network, or any network where the password isn’t public, but for public wifi it makes it much easier to identify you.
Thanks for the addition! Edited to make it more clear: there part also referred only to the time before you’ve connected.
And track you, Cisco has had the ability to track MAC addresses over their APs on a map for 2 decades now.
Also track you over multiple networks- most only care about the SSID- so if you’ve ever connected to “eduroam” you can be tracked across multiple campuses.
Specifically for eduroam, I assume you can be tracked anyways, since you have to authenticate with your personal credentials, right?