It's been a few weeks since Android Q beta is available. As new features brought by the new version of the OS, Google has announced a feature a priori innocuous, but that will help improve the security of users. This is the randomization of MAC addresses, an option that already exists, but has been improved to prevent tracking the location of smartphones.
Android Q will automatically change your MAC address according to WiFi networks
A MAC address is an identifier associated with each device and which makes it possible to uniquely identify it on the networks, unlike the IP address. Whenever your smartphone searches for WiFi networks around you, access points are able to read its MAC address, even when it does not connect to the network. Technically, your travels can be tracked by simply tracing the location of access points that your smartphone has tried to connect.
For this reason, Google has deployed in the latest versions of Android a feature to make random MAC addresses. So your smartphone uses different addresses when scanning WiFi networks. But still had to activate it in the options developers. Also, as the Android Police site explains, once connected, the MAC address displayed on the network was the original one of the smartphone.
In Android Q, the functionality has been improved to randomize MAC addresses once the smartphone is connected. Android Police has been interested in how it works in practice and provides useful details. The false MAC address is generated only once per network. In other words, when you connect twice on a WiFi network at different times, the same address is used. It remains however associated only with this network. Such an option already prevents you from following you when you switch from one network to another, especially since it is enabled by default.
At the same time, it allows Internet box administrators and routers to retain the ability to filter MAC addresses on their network. Otherwise, it would for example be easy for a banned user to log in simply by changing his address.
