Automatically change wifi and bluetooth MAC address


Question

I recently learned that it's quite easy to track people with their wifi MAC address and Bluetooth address in stores, etc. I was wondering if there are any drawbacks of changing these addresses regularly (eg daily) to prevent such tracking? I was also looking for apps that would do this but couldn't find any.



Is it impossible or problematic or conscious people just turn them on/off all the time and the rest doesn't care?


Answer

Changing / spoofing Bluetooth and WiFI Mac addresses are a concern to those who value their privacy , especially to prevent your location being tracked . Mac address of your WiFi router is a dead give away of your location and since most apps ask for "full network access" they can be used to track your physical location.



Changing these is a good idea if you want to prevent that. Unfortunately, this requires root (AFAIK). If your device is rooted and has installed, Xposed modules Xprivacy Lua for Android 6.0 and above (not Pie) or Xprivacy for earlier versions (both by same developer) are well recommended. There are other Xposed modules too that claim to do this.



Except for a small minority most don't care IMO


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