I guess it’s time to replace your Android phones now. If you’re using an Android phone that is less than three years old, it could be broadcasting the names of every Wi-Fi network you have connected to. A new investigation was conducted by Electronic Frontier Foundation traced the behavior to a feature called Preferred Network Offload (PNO) introduced with the Honeycomb OS.
What the PNO does it that it periodically blasts out a list of named networks the phone has previously connected to. It happens even if the phone in sleep mode. If the name of the previously used Wi-Fi include specific places, like “TheNerdMag HQ network” or “Josh’s Apartment”, these name or list could potentially give away a person’s movements and activity. Which could be really helpful to track down someone, even with their GPS off.
But if you just got all worried about it, there a cure. Just to
- “Advanced Wi-Fi” settings
- Disable the “Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep” option
This would stop the PNO from checking for networks in sleep mode. This also has another advantage. You’ll probably see a slight uptick in data and power usage.
EEF has asked Google to address the data leak at an OS level, but the response is as follows:
“Since changes to this behavior would potentially affect user connectivity to hidden access points, we are still investigating what changes are appropriate for a future release”
iOS users should not be alarmed that much. Devices running iOS 6, 7 or 8 are not affected by the bug. Although, EFF reported some date leakage in iOS 5 devices. Laptops that are running on OS X or Windows 7 are also potentially affected. Though they do not consist of the certain Sleep Mode protocol. The date leak was projected to be much more limited.
Now that we all are aware of the situation, change what seems necessary, either it’s your phone or your Wi-Fi settings.