this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2026
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Privacy
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When you walk and attempt to protect your privacy, are you wearing or carrying any WiFi and/or Bluetooth devices? Ring devices are Amazon Sidewalk devices. They’ll record nearby devices like your phone, whether you want it to or not.
You are not helping!
(But also not wrong)
So Ring can see all the WiFi networks my neighbors and I have?
all IoT devices can if they have any wifi functionality. they can even see the MAC addresses of the devices connecting to these wifi networks. if some of these devices are set to use their original MAC address instead of the randomized address on a network, IoT devices in signal range can see that too.
Any advice to prevent that? Is it easy to randomize a Mac address through shell command? No need for details, just wondering.
I swear to fuck, I can't address security issues faster than they can enshittify the whole world.
oh. well, there are the details anyway! :D
I often feel the same, too
recent android devices randomize it by default, per network, reusing them later when connected again to the same network.
on linux it's pretty easy to change the wifi MAC address, because it does not try to prevent you if you have admin rights.
most commonly
ip link set dev wlan1 address macaddresshere, details here: https://www.baeldung.com/linux/change-media-access-control-addressbut if your system uses NetworkManager or another comprehensive network management program, it might change your settings. so in that case you should set this through NetworkManager or what have you. It could sound bad but actually often it's better this way, because NM has clickable GUI integrations for the popular desktops, like KDE, Gnome, and it will also remember your wishes across reconnects and reboots. if you use the kde plasma desktop, it's straightforward: on the taskbar's right end open the network icon, expand your network adapter, click configure, and in the window that appears use the wired or wifi tab to change the mac address for that single interface. I think NM does not do mac randomization, but maybe I'm outdated on that, or perhaps there's already a setting that's off by default
edit: NM does support it, but you should check what is the current config for you: https://fedoramagazine.org/randomize-mac-address-nm/
Wow. Thanks for the details. I think I'll check with NM to see what is going on. I use Hyprland so I've never used a GUI for it, and didn't even know there was one. I'll see if they have one for Arch.
Yeah I remember hearing about Amazon sidewalk when it was announced but haven’t tracked it since. Definitely makes me more upset, but knowledge is power and I’ll have to consider how I handle my on-hand devices now, thanks!
Isn't sidewalk for lorawan type devices.