Sensitive information in the About screen


Question

Which of the following information from the About screen (Settings -> System -> About) is considered sensitive and shouldn't be shared publicly?




  • IMEI

  • IP address

  • Wi-Fi MAC address

  • Bluetooth address

  • Build number


Answer

I am no security expert, but here are what I have gathered. I urges you to read the source links and visit our sister site Information Security to get more detailed information.


I have listed them from the higest to lowest risk.


IP


From Can your IP address give away your identity to hackers, stalkers and cybercrooks?:



Andrew Lee, CEO of London Trust Media, Inc./PrivateInternetAccess.com (a VPN service that protects users' privacy and identity), says linking users to their IP address is not simple, but it can be done. Many email providers, some IRC networks, extreme tracking sites, poorly configured forums and design flaws in applications such as Skype and AOL (among others) have disclosed users' identities along with their IP addresses.


He adds that email providers have been known to leak IP addresses to advertisers, market researchers, and other such agencies and some emails (like those from mailing lists) are indexed by Google. "Thus, the IP becomes searchable," Lee says. "Programs such as skypegrab.info (now inactive), which reveals users' personal data are developed every day by programmers across the globe. Extreme tracking sites link IPs to Google searches and make them public. And business websites including, but not limited to, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. — in addition to ad targeting companies — already have your personal info linked to your IP address in their databases. Anyone with access to those databases, including those with legitimate or illegitimate access (such as hackers), can obtain any and all of that information."



IMEI


About the IMEI, this answer states that:



Knowledge of the IMEI and/or IMSI of some user does not give extra ways to break into the communications of that user; they are not secret values.


However...


There may be a slight privacy concern about IMEI and IMSI, in that they allow to "track" user habits:



  • An application could generate a random unique identifier each time it is installed on a phone. However, by using the IMEI, the application can tell whether it is re-installed on a given phone; it can also be used to cross-reference the table of known installed application instances with cell phone locations obtained through passive radio listening from some base station.



MAC Address


From this answer:



Disclosing the MAC address in itself shouldn't be a problem. MAC addresses are already quite predictable, easily sniffable, and any form of authentication dependent on them is inherently weak and shouldn't be relied upon.


MAC addresses are almost always only used "internally" (between you and your immediate gateway). They really don't make it to the outside world and thus cannot be used to connect back to you, locate you, or otherwise cause you any direct harm.


The disclosure can be linked to your real identity since it might be possible to track you using data collected from WiFi networks, or it can be used to falsify a device's MAC address to gain access to some service (mostly some networks) on which your MAC address is white-listed.


Personally, I wouldn't really worry about it. However, when it's not inconvenient, I usually try to redact any irrelevant information when asking for help or sharing anything.



The Bluetooth address and build number are low on the list of risks.


Sources:


Can your IP address give away your identity to hackers, stalkers and cybercrooks?


What is the risk of leaking IMEI / IMSI numbers over a network


Is it dangerous to post my MAC address publicly?


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