Re: Sys Info network attributes

+1 on Thomas's request for specific, realistic use cases for revealing  
MAC addresses through the web browser.  I'd also be interested in any  
argument that revealing MAC addresses is "not really a threat" -- I  
think that such a capability would have very significant and  
problematic implications for privacy.

John

On May 20, 2010, at 5:28 PM, Thomas Roessler wrote:

> On 20 May 2010, at 14:23, Brian LeRoux wrote:
>
>> Some notes from the phonegap team for consideration:
>>
>> - MAC addresses can be used to uniquely identify a network device
>> which we can/have/do use for some apps. I can give some specific use
>> cases here if neccessary. We feel this is useful in the spec and not
>> really a threat.
>
> I'd be interested in seeing the specific use cases. In particular:  
> *What* is it that you really want to uniquely identify?  The network  
> interface? The user?  The device?
>
>> - Also: MAC addresses can be spoofed!
>
> Yes, but that's not very likely to occur.
>
>> - IP Addresses only give a rough estimate of where a person is...and
>> if we don't include it can be easily retrieved with
>> http://whatismyipaddress.com anyhow. We should include in the spec.
>
> These may well be different addresses: The device might be behind a  
> NAT, a proxy of sorts, or may use an anonymization service.
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 21 May 2010 03:25:03 UTC