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Going to a Protest? Don't Bring Your Phone Without Doing This First (www.pcmag.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The right to assemble and protest is enshrined in American law, but it can still be dangerous to hit the streets to make your voice heard. Your devices are a treasure trove of information about you, and you may not always know who's collecting that data. Take a few minutes before you go to assess your digital and physical safety. Even if you have nothing to hide, you don't want to accidentally give law enforcement officials any information you didn't intend to share. Follow these tips to lock down your phone before a protest or other peaceful assembly.

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[–] 14 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Modern phones rotate random MAC addresses. For WiFi, capturing SSID probes can be enough to track somebody though (some phones also have some mitigation for that too, like not probing for an SSID after it hasn't been seen for some amount of time). Even when turned off, many phones, including iPhones, turn into BLE beacons similar to AirTags, which can be used to track you.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    almost worthless. I just learned that the android 13 xiaomi phone of a family member broadcasts some of the wifi AP names it knows when scanning for available networks! constantly! why the fuck it does I don't know because neither are hidden networks that would need this, and there's no setting for it

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Are those networks marked as hidden SSID networks? Hidden networks require the client STA to broadcast them to find them.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    they aren't. one of them is an AP from another phone, so I believe that one couldn't even be configured as hidden by accident, because the phone does not offer it. another is one I sometimes use, and it's not hidden either.

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