Reading this article there is a mention of a new, or at least revised feature called Wi-Fi Rotation. I Have a vague recollection of an issue in the past with changing Wi-Fi addresses in the past. Will necessitate a change is how we may have thing set up, especially for presence?
If you are using one of the "WiFi Presence" solutions successfully, then you must have already disabled the Private WiFi Address feature for your home network. In iOS 17, this feature can be enabled/disabled on a per WiFi SSID level of granularity. I have it disabled for my home network, and make sure my router's DHCP server always assigns my devices with a reserved IP address.
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All this does is periodically create a new private MAC address, instead of keeping the private MAC address the same forever, if private WiFi addressing is configured to be on for a specific SSID.
So as @ogiewon said, this will have no effect on your WiFi presence sensing unless you turn private WiFi addressing on for your SSID at home.
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Isn't this an opt out permission instead of an opt in? (Meaning, do they not default to "private" addresses being on unless the user turns it off?)
My router detects that a private address is in use. I have to tell my family to turn it off everytime they get new phones because it always defaults to on. (Both Android and IOS).
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Yes, private WiFi addressing in iOS defaults to on, and has to be turned off on a per-SSID basis, as far as I know.
In @lcw731’s case, he must have previously turned it off for his SSID at home in order for any kind of WiFi presence-based solution to be functioning correctly with Hubitat, as @ogiewon pointed out above.
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Actually, I dont think im using it for presence at all with the iPhone because I had heard it was an isssue.i primarily use Geofency for presence. That said Im open to the idea (hence why this caught my attention), but when I looked at it (as it is currently implemented, it appeared to me it was either on or off, not on a per SSID basis. How do set per SSID?
I think the rest of us assumed you were already using WiFi presence based on this sentence (at least I did).
The article you linked to will have zero impact on how Hubitat WiFi presence works (or doesn’t).
Because anyone that’s using WiFi presence has already turned off the iOS WiFi private address feature for their SSID where their Hubitat hub is located.
So it doesn’t really matter what changes Apple makes to private addressing in the future.
You might want to read up a bit on what iOS private addressing for WiFi is, and how it works:
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Not quite. It defaults to on for every WiFi SSID. Unless you turn it off for a specific SSID.
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Yep, I assumed the same.
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And the reason I posted my comment is that assumptions kill things. The follow on assumption that Apple (or Android) will not reset the settings for one that they just changed could leave people scratching their heads. At the very least, when they change a setting or feature like that, one should verify the update did not revert their settings. I have been burned on this several times in the past when an upgraded "feature" was reset because they REALLY want you to use it and know better than you how to protect you from yourself.
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Oh yay, more features to feed into privacy paranoia.
Seriously who is tracking people by their MAC? It is only visible on the local network, so unless you are constantly on the same public / shared Wifi who is tracking you? How does this increase privacy or security? Maybe on some very sketchy public open Wifi which has people sniffing open air traffic or something.....
Even apple watches will do this independent of the phone they are attached to, so I had to go into every single apple device in the house and manually turn if off for the home network. I name all known devices on the LAN so I can identify any unknown devices easily.
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I do the same. Nothing comes out of quarantine as a new device until I pull it out. Luckily, my Frewalla alerts me when it detects private mac's so that I can go fix the settings on the device.
There was some talk of national retail establishments and/or hotel chains doing this to track a user in multiple locations if I recall. I have no issue with the use of private/alternate MAC's. I do take issue with it being a more or less hidden setting that you have to know about to disable. Maybe they should do like Microsoft and prompt to ask if it is a home or public network (Probably the ONLY time you will hear me say something Microsoft does as a policy is a good thing)
You are correct, I cannot predict the future and thus cannot rule out the possibility that Apple will overwrite private WiFi addressing settings already in place with this update or an unspecified future update, thus activating MAC address randomization on an SSID for which it was previously turned off.
I can’t think of a time that my iPhone has reverted a specific setting that I changed just because I applied an iOS update. But anything is possible in the future.
Nonetheless, when someone who doesn’t have a detailed understanding of iOS WiFi private addresses and how they work asks the question, “how does this upcoming iOS change affect Hubitat WiFi presence?”
I’ll stand by the tl;dr version of my response, which is “it doesn’t affect Hubitat WiFi presence.”
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I have done that in the past, and to an extent still do. The biggest issue I have currently is that I was using Fing to be notified of new devices, but have run into issues with that recently. I am looking for an alternative that is compatible with wireshark (Fing is not, and that relates to something else i’m starting to work on). Luckily iI have already identified on the router itself, but don’t know of another way to be notified of new devices. Any suggestions?
OK, this got me going down a new rabbit hole of verifying what's on my network. Using Advance IP Scanner, I have something that shows up with an Mac address that leads to a Manufacturer I have never heard of (in this case Arcadyan). I suspect this Might be one of my LG Tv's (but it only shows up once, not for both). How do I confirm it? I tried running the MAC address through mac.lc, but that just took me to the same place. I also have several devices listed only as Espressif, Inc. (I know that they are a Wi-Fi chip manufacturer). How do I figure out what those REALLY are?
A quick web search shows arcadyan frequently an LG TV. I'd see if the IP responds to a ping. If it does, unplug the power and try pinging again. For the few times I've looked at devices on my network, it's been this manual process. There might also be a database of MAC addresses out there (the first three hexadecimal sets).
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I hate to sound really dense, and maybe I'm tired, but what search terms did you use to put that together?
Arcadyan LG TV.
First result on Bing.
That’s not a guarantee or anything. But you already surmised it could be an LG TV. Apparently other people have made that association too.
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Also, what I have done before is go into the suspect device, and go to its network settings where you can usually see the IP and/or MAC to verify, without having to unplug anything.
I have a list of all the MAC / Name pairs exported from my router to a text file which works as a backup if my huge list got wiped off my router somehow. Took a while to piece together all the obscure stuff the first go around.
That is what i started working on today. The Espressif devices are going to be the difficult ones to pin down, i have seen that show up on several devices. Some i have figured out some i haven't.
