This has been an option in Android network settings forever: randomize your MAC. I think it's enabled by default now? It's a basic privacy feature; you can be fingerprinted by your device's MAC.

▲ jck a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yep. Android does this by default, but each ssid gets a randomized MAC which persists. It is still straightforward to trigger a MAC change manually tho. It is useful for privacy but imo useless for the public wifi limits use case since they almost always require an OTP via SMS to log in.

	▲	rahimnathwani a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		`For devices running Android 11 or higher, users can enable non-persistent MAC randomization globally for all Wi-Fi networks (that have MAC randomization enabled) through the developer options screen. The option to enable non-persistent MAC randomization for all profiles is found at Settings > Developer Options > Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization.`
	▲	matsemann a day ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Could you describe how? Quick searching doesn't show it to be "straightforward" as far as I can find.
	▲	tengwar2 19 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		OTP via SMS: depends on the country. These days it's not very common in the UK. They often ask for an email address, but my experience is that most of the time they don't check it for validity.
	▲	hhh a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		you have both options in ios/macos, fixed random mac per ssid, and rotating

▲ NoahZuniga a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, this setting randomizes your MAC address between networks, but you keep the same MAC for a specific network. So if you want the network to think you're a new user, you'll need to change this specific network MAC address, and this isn't a setting enabled by default (and oftentimes is not even a setting)

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khimaros a day ago | parent [-]

GrapheneOS has per-connection (as an alternative to per-network) randomization which is enabled by default

	▲	rahimnathwani a day ago \| parent [-]
		Android 11 or later allows the choice in Developer Options.

▲ netsharc a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's also in the Apple devices, you just have to "forget network" and reconnect for the device to tell the network of its new fake MAC address.

▲ alt227 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How does that work with MAC address conflicts and clashes? I naively thought every MAC address had to be unique.

	▲	BobbyTables2 20 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They must be unique in a LAN segment. And only the lower 3 bytes in a MAC are “unique” as the upper 3 are the vendor ID and relatively fixed. In practice people put fewer than 256 devices on networks (class C), so they have less than 1/65536 possibility of complete failure. And far less because they have a mix of OUIs. But yeah, if you put a few hundred or thousand security cameras or other device from a single vendor, all on the same network, conflicts are certainly possible. MAC conflicts are also a bit nasty to troubleshoot, and less obvious than IP conflicts.
	▲	diggan 21 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There are like 50 trillion possible addresses, unlikely to clash in one network :)