{"id":1113,"date":"2010-06-06T14:23:05","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T22:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=1113"},"modified":"2010-06-19T23:21:50","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T07:21:50","slug":"mac-addresses-will-be-used-to-reveal-where-you-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=1113","title":{"rendered":"MAC addresses will be used to reveal where you live"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conor has responded<\/a> to my comments on why house\u00a0numbers don't make a good metaphor for MAC addresses.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0writes that when I characterized house number as a “universal identifier”,<\/p>\n

[Kim's argument] “confuses house address<\/strong> with house number<\/strong>. A house number<\/em> is not<\/strong> able to be used as a universal identifier (I presume that there are many houses out there with the number 15, even in the same town, many times even on the same street in the same zip code (where the only difference is the N.W. and S.E. on the end of the street name).<\/p>\n

“Like SSIDs and\u00a0MAC addresses, the house number is only usable as an identifier once you get to the neighborhood and very often only once you get to the street.”<\/p>\n

I like\u00a0Conor's distinction between house number and house address.\u00a0 It's true there are many houses with the number 15, thus the house number is a local identiier, and only becomes universal when combined with the street name, the city, and so on.\u00a0 I hadn't understood that this is what he was trying to say.<\/p>\n

Then Conor continues:<\/p>\n

“I will admit that there are some differences with the\u00a0MAC address because of how basic Ethernet networking was designed. The\u00a0MAC address is designed to be unique (though, those in networking know that this isn't always the case and in fact most devices let you override the mac address anytime you want). So this could be claimed to be some form of a universal identifier. However, it's not at all usable outside of the local neighborhood. There is no way for me to talk to a particular\u00a0MAC address unless I am locally on the same network with that device.”<\/p>\n

Conor is completely right here.\u00a0 In networking as we have known it,\u00a0the MAC address\u00a0is not usable outside the “local network neighborhood”.\u00a0 But that is exactly what this WiFi snooping is about to change.\u00a0\u00a0In fact this is very much\u00a0the core of what I'm talking about.<\/p>\n

MAC addresses will\u00a0be used to\u00a0reveal where you live<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once you have snooped peoples’ MAC addresses, and\u00a0put them into a database linking them\u00a0to “where they live” (literally),\u00a0\u00a0you have\u00a0dramatically changed the way network identifiers work.<\/p>\n

In this new world,\u00a0armed with such a database, if you see\u00a0a MAC address somewhere – anywhere – you can look it up in your database – precisely because it is unique – <\/em>and see where “it lives”.\u00a0\u00a0 When I say, “where it lives”, I\u00a0don't mean what network it belongs to.\u00a0 I mean\u00a0where it is normally located in physical space – as a street address.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Is there some way to opt out of this?\u00a0 No – other than turning everything off.\u00a0 Unfortunately, given the way networks are designed, we have\u00a0no choice but to reveal our MAC address when we use our Wireless.\u00a0 So\u00a0 anyone who is physically near us\u00a0and has access to a linking database\u00a0has access to where we live.\u00a0I'll explore the implications of this going forward.<\/p>\n

Conor concludes,<\/p>\n

“I do believe that a more privacy enabled design of networking would have allowed for scenarios where MAC addresses were more dynamic and thus reducing the universal-ness and persistence of the MAC address itself…”<\/p>\n

We both agree on this.\u00a0 And IPV6 has plenty of options that could make this possible.\u00a0 However, the current infrastructure is the one we live in, and one which\u00a0is sorely in\u00a0need of protections, mores and regulations.\u00a0 The fact that current technology allows the creation\u00a0of Dr. No\u00a0technology like\u00a0that which Google StreetView\u00a0WiFi has laid on the world\u00a0doesn't mean that society should or will.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once you have snooped peoples’ MAC addresses, and put them into a database linking them to a street address, you have dramatically changed the way network identifiers work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,47,11,77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}