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Ipad Privacy warning

Wildroverandy
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 122
Thanks: 31
Registered: ‎26-11-2016

Re: Ipad Privacy warning


@Champnet wrote:

@RobPN  Thanks but there dosen’t seem to be an option to randomised the MAC address, and the settings of both iPads are identical.

Although strange this is not causing a problem.

 

** just come across this article, I don’t fully understand but It seem to suggest differences maybe caused by an app using geolocation…

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/security/secb9cb3140c/web 

 


Hmm. Yes, the randomised and private MAC addresses seem to be the same thing. They’re just creating a random address for different WiFi networks.

The geolocation thing could be a possibility I guess, although it’s not mentioned in the ‘private WiFi’ document.

On our personal use systems, it should work like this.

’Private WiFi address’ on - a random MAC address is provided for a particular network. It will be unique, and different to any other network connection. It should not change again, except in certain circumstances - i.e. you ‘forget’ the network and reconnect it, or you don’t use the network for 6 weeks, then it gets a new address. The local IP is allocated by the router (assuming DHCP is used), and should remain the same, but may not depending on any number of factors (in practice it usually remains the same). If it’s going to change, then it’s probably most likely after a reboot (mine never seems to change).

’Private WiFi address’ off - the WiFi just gets the internal MAC address. The DHCP IP address part of that should work the same as above.

That can be on or off on a per network basis, so you can turn it off on your home network, and leave it on for others (it’s on by default anyway when you connect to them).

The IP addresses aren’t being ‘used up’ though, as the old one should be freed up for another device to have allocated to it.

But as you say, if it’s not showing signs of causing problems, just leave it alone. 😀

Andy