How Your WiFi is Betraying You

Assange once said, “A mobile phone is a tracking device that also makes calls”. He’s not wrong. There are countless ways that phones track our movements, and one of them is via WiFi probe requests.

In this video we explain how your phone automatically connects to your WiFi whenever you return home or to your favorite coffee shop, and why it leaves your device vulnerable to all kinds of attacks and surveillance -- it can allow people to maliciously intercept your internet traffic, track you, or find out personal information about you.

Main takeaways:
Turn your WiFi OFF when you're not using it
Don't automatically connect to WiFi networks
Forget networks after joining them
Keep your OS and device updated

00:00 Intro
01:00 How WiFi connections work
04:29 Hidden networks
05:49 Why broadcasting SSIDs is a privacy nightmare: Tracking
07:45 Why broadcasting SSIDs is a privacy nightmare: Exposes Private Info
09:06 MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE VIDEO: malicious connections
11:03 How to protect yourself
13:11 Summary

Research paper from Johanna Ansohn McDougall:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.03745.pdf

Video from Modern Rogue:
https://youtu.be/NkNgW3TwMy8

Brought to you by NBTV members: Lee Rennie, Will Sandoval, and Naomi Brockwell

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