What price for free wi-fi?

16 points by aDevilInMe 11 years ago | 11 comments

mathattack 11 years ago |

If we accept that nothing is free, then we have to ask what the best way to pay for the so-called free product. In my mind it's either some sort of usage data, or it's via taxes.

jbuzbee 11 years ago | |

I would guess in almost every case, the purpose of free wifi is not to do any sort of tracking, it's just to get you in the door. I know that I've picked hotels and other establishments based on the availability of free wifi.

mathattack 11 years ago | | |

Yes, though this is now becoming an expectation. I haven't done much business travel in the past few years, but now that it's ramping up again I notice how important the free wifi is.

collyw 11 years ago | |

A lot of "free" on the internet is ad sponsored. That doesn't really fit your two categories.

mathattack 11 years ago | | |

True. I was thinking more in the context of wifi. You're right though.

roberjo 11 years ago |

Is there any technical reason our Mobiles have to broadcast the MAC address?

Could we simply disable MAC address broadcasting?

rmlewisuk 11 years ago | |

iOS8 randomises the MAC address to avoid tracking like this: http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/19/why-ios-8s-mac-address-ran...

tombot 11 years ago | | |

Yep, so glad that this feature exists. Hope everyone else follows suit.

Have nothing against collecting data of people which choose to join the network, accept T&Cs etc but bulk connection of people passing by is not cool.

hgsigala 11 years ago | | |

Isn't Apple leading the beacon tech though?

gojomo 11 years ago | |

iOS 8 randomizes MAC addresses while scanning. (I believe it returns to the device default MAC address when choosing to connect, though.)

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/09/mac-address-random...