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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>told me that about 80% leave Wi-Fi always on

which means 20% don't, which is suspiciously high considering how much of a hassle it is to turn wifi on/off. then again, they could have unlimited data on their phones.

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> how much of a hassle it is to turn wifi on/off

It's not a hassle at all. Pull down the notification shade, touch the wifi icon.

And then forget to ever turn it back on. And that only works on some phones anyway. On mine I have to go into settings.

Windows Phone has a "turn back on in X hours" option. Best microsoft idea ever...

Is this an iPhone thing? Android phones have had access to all the important settings from the pull down menu for years, and most recently you've been able to add many of the less common settings like casting and NFC.

I have a two year old android that doesn't have that either. I think it's just a Samsung feature. Or at least it varies by manufacturer.

All of my Sony phones (Xperia Z and Z5) have had it as well as all of the Nexus phones I've tested on. I think maybe Samsung was the first to include it, but its standard now as far as I can tell on Android.

It was a Samsung feature for a long time but Google adopted it in Android 6.

I'm involved in the tracking industry. Where it used to be 70% of people trackable with WiFi we are now seeing >90%. This is in large cities in wealthy European countries.

Most powerusers run tasker or similar apps to automate these sort of stuff on android, so no hassle at all.

Maybe they just randomise broadcast packets MAC addr?

MAC address randomization must be implemented properly to be effective. This is not always the case (http://papers.mathyvanhoef.com/asiaccs2016.pdf)

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