Protecting user privacy in WiFi sharing networks

Abstract

WiFi sharing communities are an interesting option for mobile Internet access. Today, however, users need to give up privacy in exchange for connectivity: they are required to expose their identity in order to be granted access. This information can be used to track users and to generate usage and movement profiles. We identify the challenges of providing a maximum level of privacy and anonymity in a WiFi community. From a discussion of privacy properties of existing architectures, we arrive at a privacy-aware WiFi sharing design for fully anonymous usage-without sacrificing any participant's security or legal safety. This system, like some previous designs, relays a mobile user's data via this user's home network; we discuss how and under which circumstances this contributes to privacy and anonymity. In order to enable users to remain fully anonymous in such a system, a means to locate the home network of a user without leaking permanent identifiers is needed. We introduce and evaluate volatile host names, a novel method to generate anonymized, non-persistent host names in standard DNS.