This is new to me but came back on an escalated case from the higher up level.
Scenario …
Found this by a Google search …
Some windows 11 “factory resets” do not erase wifi and other setting info.
In addition, if the user is using a “Microsoft account” (email address) to log into the device, the saved wifi FOLLOWS the login, so new device magically remembers all your saved wifi info!
The first thing I did was Google …
Our neighbor wanted to “borrow” our internet last weekend as his was down. We denied his request and explained we ran a business on ours. We didn’t want to take a chance that he might have some connection to something out there that would cause an issue.
This type of stuff backs up our denial reasoning.
We would be interested if you find out what type of connection Amazon is using when making this type of claim.
My guess would be they are tracking the MAC address of the wireless device that is providing the access (access point, router, etc.) These normally can’t be changed unless you intentionally spoof them.
-Ana
They use the MAC.
The question is … if you don’t log in and just have your laptop around a wi-fi that you previous logged into … how is that being recorded?
It isn’t.
Now it could also be in the vicinity of Amazon Devices. Echo’s MAY record local or close by mac addresses. I haven’t looked into their software.
It has been a subject of speculation over the years as to how Amazon gains access to MAC addresses on a PC. I certainly would expect it to be easily available on smartphones and tablets.
Some programmers will tell you it cannot be accessed, though I believe anything can be accessed with great enough permissions and a strong will.
As for “systematic wireless connection” I have never heard of it and at this hour the only result I see on a Google search is this thread.
Nothing on Bing or Duck Duck go which is relevant.
Could Amazon be inventing a term and doing something totally invalid in order to conclude there is a problem? Would not be the first time.
There is a lot of weird carp going on because the Internet will never be secure. My Xfinity router is doing a whole lot of data blocking which is not under my or any user’s control.
One of their router security upgrades made our smartphones unable to connect. No action on correcting it, but users who wanted a work around found that adding a wifi repeater to their network allowed the phones to connect.
There is also a lot of blocking going on through Cloudfare, which may or may not be fully documented.
No. But now I have one additional thing to worry about.
The only way to get the visitor’s MAC address is to run code on his laptop, from the browser. There is no way to do it since it would be a breach of privacy or security.
There are several workarounds like running Active-X controls for Internet Explorer only or running XPCOM for Mozilla Firefox only. But these approaches require extension installation or a prompt from the user, so they wouldn’t work for collecting all the visitors’ MAC addresses in background.
Fun MAC Fact! The original IEEE 802 MAC address is derived from the original Xerox Ethernet addressing scheme. This 48-bit address space potentially contains 2^248 or 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses.
Yes for the method, ??? for whether there is no way to do it. And whether it is truly necessary or available because it is harvested by data mining firms which are getting it from apps which do not disclose they are harvesting your data,
P.S. The Xerox, Intel, Digital Equipment committee never considered privacy or security in their efforts. Several of the members were my colleagues. Ditto the IEEE 802 committee.
They knew what they were doing was not secure.
When the IEEE DES committee considered encryption, they were limited in how secure the encryption could be. The standard was devised so the CIA, KGB or the Mafia could break it, but no anyone else. The spies underestimated how cheap computing power would become.
And encryption alone does not provide security.
Third-party apps (for example maybe QZ tray, or predecessor Print Connect) obviously collect and use MACs, do we know if they at any point share it? Show of hands, how many have Amazon Prime, Amazon Music, Amazon Seller app, Amazon app, Kindle app, Alexa app, etc. installed on your phone, PC, and/or tablet? Do they inject the MAC, encrypted or otherwise into a cookie that the website accesses?
Indeed, for decades it was assumed that any data on a device that had a communication port such as modem, ethernet, serial, etc. was or would be compromised. Hence, couriers and SCIFs and why the DOD and intelligence have entire warehouses of hard copy only documents. Most people aren’t even allowed to bring a pencil and paper into a SCIF despite having high level security clearance.
Good old fashioned cold war spies, didn’t. Those dinosaurs got run out by signals after the cold war because they fought anything other than face to face debriefs.
One of our “neighbors” down the walkway from our warehouse location was suspended from etsy last week.
Two other businesses were suspended this weekend. Those two sellers never received reason for their suspension etsy just shut them down.
Waiting for our “turn”.
One of the two suspended businesses was able to contact etsy by phone and they were told they were shut down due to a related, suspended account. Their business next door neighbor??? Is this now going to become something else to worry about?
Amazon is not alone.
Ridiculous and disheartening.
Yes they did. The US spy agencies were on the backs of the DES committee members to reduce the effectiveness of the encryption so that the real spies could still decrypt. I was close to some of the committee members and contributed to the process through them.
If they thought the computing power would become commonplace, they would not have pressured to lower the bar.
DARPA knew that ARPAnet did not have any security. Lousy technologists saw it as a way to build a network without any royalites, and used it.
I ran marketing for one of the first exploiters of public networks based on ARPAnet. It was our network AOL used. When a customer needed a secure net, we built them a private net with “locked room” security at all access points, internal and external.
Could it be a shared access point?
Or could ex-bf have mounted stealth software on client’s device?
Not likely.
This whole thing is beyond odd, but hopefully will come back as resolved very soon.