Wi-Fi internet connectivity and privacy: Hiding your tracks on the wireless Internet

Internet privacy is a serious concern nowadays. Users' activity leaves a vast digital footprint, communications are not always properly secured and location can be easily tracked. In this paper we focus on this last point, which is mainly caused by the use of IEEE Layer-2 immutable addresses. Randomization of the addresses used at Layer-2 is a simple, but promising, solution to mitigate the location privacy issues. We experimentally evaluate this approach, by first assessing the existing support of address randomization by the different operating systems, and then conducting several trials during two IETF and one IEEE 802 standards meetings. Based on the obtained results we can conclude that address randomization is a feasible solution to the Layer-2 privacy problem, but there needs to be other mechanisms used at higher layers to make the most benefit from it and minimize the service disruptions it may cause. As a conclusion of the paper and future steps, we discuss the possibility of using a context-based Layer-2 address randomization scheme that can be enabled with privacy features at higher layers.