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I do not understand though. Whitelisting MAC addresses is something you can do, but 99.99% of the wifi spots out there don't have it enabled. Why should my phone leak my MAC address needlessly instead of just generating a new one every 5 minutes or so?

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If you connect to any hotspot with a captive portal, you would need to deal with the portal again every 5 minutes.

The MAC could remain unchanged for established connections while changing for new connection offers.

What does that accomplish?

It accomplishes what changing it in the first place is intended to accomplish - anonymity. Changing for established connections offers no benefits.

Hopefully just the process of watching all connections break and seeing the internet go away as the client reassociates with the AP each time they foolishly tumble their MAC on an _active_ connection will be enough to keep this scenario from ever playing out.

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