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."

Comments

Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[sinij]

Removing bins will not fix underlying protocol implementation problem. This has to be treated as any other vulnerability and patched, so it is not possible.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[ackthpt]

It is astonishing how few people seem to understand that.

Rather like war-driving in reverse. How times change.

Re:Removing bins will not fix underlying problem

[mspohr]

There is something I don't understand here.
If I have my WiFi turned on and it is set to automatically connect to "known" access points but not set to connect to random unknown access points, why would it broadcast my MAC?
I can understand that it will listen for a "known" access point and when it finds one, send the MAC to connect and that is fine.
However, why would it broadcast my MAC if it has no intention of connecting?

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]

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.