Re: Tutorial: Query the Apple database with Python for your access point BSSID

On Tue, 30 Dec 2025 22:24:03 +0100, "R.Wieser" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Arlen,
>
>> And, you understand that if they move, they take their router with them.
>>
>> Are you disputing any of that?
>
>Wishfull thinking much ?   If he doesn't I will.
>
>> I know the owner of every home on Josey Circle in Shreveport, LA, right?
>
>Which is pretty useless.
>
>> And, in another post, I showed the BSSID nearest to each of those 
>> buildings, right? (I'm not going to put it together here for reasons that 
>> I'm not trying to dox people.)
>
>:-)  You're just telling us exactly what you've done, so we can repeat it 
>ourselves.  In my country thats called "aiding and abedding" - which can 
>easily land you into jail.
>
>> a. Are you disputing I have the named owner of every home in the USA?
>
>You already asked that.
>
>> b. Or are you disputing I have the BSSID of every home in the USA?
>
>If he doesn't I will.   Also, *the* BSSID ?  Just a single one ?  What are 
>you ? Poor ?
>
>> Note that by tracking the BSSID and knowing the owner of every home in the 
>> USA (since that's a public record), I could tie it to you "if" you're the 
>> owner.
>
> Thats a rather big "if", don't you think ?   It certainly trashes your 
>initial claim that you could track *everyone* (all over the world).
>
>> But in the USA, overwhelmingly, people own the home they live in.
>
>Tell that to all the poor city-dwellers who predominanty rent they places.
>
>Who are, by the way, in close proximity and often stacked several layers 
>ontop of each other.  Which ofcourse makes a mockery of any claim that a 
>certain location will al;ways point to a single home.
>
>> So it's tied to the owner.
>
>:-)  You're "cooking the books" there.
>
>> Who, in this case, would be you.
>>
>> Would it not?
>
>Chances are - for multiple reasons as indicated in the above - he's not.
>
>You're playing the "no true Scotsman" falacy there* : when you do not like a 
>certain result you just discard it - leaving you with a meaningless, small 
>subset, but all confirming what you wish to claim.  Duh. Also, blergh.
>
>* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
>
>Bottom line : you *might* be able to track someone when you are given a 
>persons name. - if the stars align just right.

Some random thoughts...

A BSSID is typically based on the interface's MAC address. Each MAC
address is assumed, by many people, to be globally unique, but they
don't have to be.* It helps greatly if a MAC address is unique within
its local network segment, but a duplicate MAC appearing somewhere else
shouldn't cause any problems. By extension, a duplicate BSSID appearing
somewhere else shouldn't cause any problems that I can think of.

So my question is, would it help Arlen's quest for privacy if he were to
choose a MAC, and thus a BSSID, that already exists somewhere else and
is already present in the database? When someone does a query on that
BSSID, would they get the first result, or all results? I wonder if
Arlen has checked for duplicate BSSID entries in his favorite database.

*Many years ago, where I worked we trialed a piece of software that
intentionally used the same IP address and MAC address on every server
in the pool. That violates everything we're taught about network
addressing, but it didn't cause any problems. It simply moved certain
tasks farther up the network stack. We ended up buying and deploying
that software into our production network.