Anonymity Properties of Stored or Transmitted Data Taken from Bluetooth Scans

—Modern consumer wireless devices are increasingly powerful, making them attractive to use as wireless sensor nodes. At the same time, many use protocol suites such as Bluetooth which require devices to reveal data that may make for unique device identifiers. This paper explores this quantitatively through scans covering several thousand devices in different urban locations. In measuring the anonymity afforded by the elements of a Bluetooth device profile, we find that (i) attributes such as the device class are poor for linking sightings of the same device; (ii) the device name can provide a surprising amount of anonymity but when it does not it can be a very effective key to link devices with individuals; and (iii) frequently users exhibit privacy-adverse behavior, such as placing telephone numbers in device names or using nicknames that are statistically rare.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: CSE
• Authors: David Evans, Robert H. Warren
• Keywords: Bluetooth Device Profile, Computer Science And Engineering, Consumer Wireless Devices, CSE 2009, Unique Device Identifiers