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European Commission has a "Wifi4EU" initative, provides 93k high-speed private access points across the EU, free of charge. (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751

The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:

Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens

Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (10 children)

To be fair (op seems tech illiterate but he might have a point) you could track MAC addresses. My phone randomise my MAC but maybe every phone doesn't ?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (7 children)

    What will tracking MACs give them? They will now that such and such MAC address connected to such and such WiFi router. What will they do with it? What is the risk here?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

    Your MAC is unique to your *physical" device so there's that, also you could track movement globally. I guess there are other things I'm not thinking about but 2 just on top of my head is clearly 2 too many IMO.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    I get that but what the European Commission would do with this info? They would be able to tell that you visited Berlin in May or that you went to Portugal in June. And... what? They will not sell this data to advertisers because that would be just stupid. Would they share this data with police? For what purpose? Would Ursula von der Leyen use it to track her political opponents? See where they went on holiday? What would be the point?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    If the ability to track citizens doesn't ring a bell for you I have a bridge to sell...

    Of course it will be abused, not by the king of Spain but surely by other more subtle and indirect means. Sometimes it's the paranoia of a leader, look up Stasi in East Germany, they knew loads about their citizens, and they used it in lots of bad ways.

    So freedom of not being tracked is something you shouldn't not want because why allow it in the first place?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    I think you're just confused about the purpose of this scheme. This is not a plan to connect everyone in EU to a WiFi routers controlled by the government. Mobile data plans in Europe are cheap, people don't use public WiFi when they walk around. This is aimed at people that travel abroad and non-EU tourists. Even the tweet says "stay connected wherever your travels take you". If your idea was to use some app to automatically connect to all available public WiFis all the time I agree it's a bad idea. It will leak your precise location to many different actors. But this is not the plan here. It's to offer WiFi when you're traveling. And guess what? Everyone knows already where you travel. You use your ID to checking into a flight, to register at a hotel, in many places you have to inform the police about your stay and pay some fees not to mention that you spend money all the time when you travel. Worrying about connecting to a public WiFi in other country because EU will track your MAC is some tinfoil hat level paranoia, that's it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    My man, you're just digging in aren't you?

    They can track some specific things, how hard is that to understand? No one said Vad Der Leen is going to track your whereabouts, except you trying to decredibilise the fact that they can track you.

    That's it.

    I feel it's you dreaming up a world where it would be useful and forcing that idea upon me and then calling me a security freak and paranoid, I did never say they will do it, I just showed you an example where people did.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Sure, if you're just trying to say that they can technically do something you're right. I just thought that we're discussing if it's safe to use this service or not. The fact that they can technically track you is inconsequential to the security here but you're right, they can do it.

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