Opting wifi addresses out of public databases

anonymous634:

I also learned I should opt out my wifi network names from Google, Apple and Microsoft by appending _nomap and _optout to them at the end.

According to my research, _optoutwas a Windows 10 specific thing and has been deprecated anyways. You only need to worry about _nomap. I mean, there might be others I’m not aware of, but of the two you listed that’s the only one.

One thing worth considering is that doing stuff like adding _nomap makes you stand out to a dedicated attacker. Like in theory, say you have a bored teenager or hacker in your building, if they see that SSID they’ll know what it means and know that you value your privacy and/or are a bit tech savvy and that might make you stand out. In my personal opinion, the odds of this are seriously low. Even if someone else saw it, they probably have better things to do than hack me out of sheer boredom or curiosity, and the bigger/much more likely threat is the privacy invasion from Google and/or Apple. So for me, I’m willing to stand out because the odds that anyone cares are near zero while the odds that someone is gonna come over with an iPhone or Googled Android and use our guest WiFi is basically 100%.

Personally speaking, in my threat model:

1. I trust my existing security features just fine (aka “if some bored teen hacker starts trying to crack my WiFi, I’m using good passwords and modern protocols and I encrypt most of my stuff at the device level anyways so I’m not super worried about it”).
2. I think it’s way more likely that the cops are gonna stick a van down the street (which I don’t think is likely, tbh) rather than I’m gonna happen to move in next door to Elliot Alderson, who additionally would have to decide that I’m interesting enough to do more than just go “oh wow, a _nomap SSID. That guy must work in tech or something” and then move on with his day.

That said, if you don’t trust your neighbors or have some valid, realistic reason to think you might stand out in a bad way, that’s worth thinking about.