When ones goes into a public space, like a train or plane, how does one prevent

Question

When ones goes into a public space, like a train or plane, how does one prevent their previously joined SSIDs from being broadcast? I noticed that my phone and tablet tend to try to join these networks and it can efficiently build a list of places I've been to in the past without too much effort. The accuracy might be off, but you'd know that I've traveled to Starbucks at least once.

If there isn't a solution outside of just disabling WiFi on my mobile devices, is this just a specification of WLAN devices? Also, if solutions exist, I'm curious specific about Android, Linux and Windows devices.

Explanation / Answer

Well, if you're worried about open wifi hotspots, the obvious answer is to simply delete them as you leave, so your device doesn't have them in the list anymore.

Alternately, particularly if you want to save WPA or WPA2 passwords, then on Linux and (rooted) Android, you can also remove them from wpa_supplicant.conf; you could have a variety of copies of that file with different names, and copy the one you need over the main file.

Android location: /data/misc/wifi/wpa_supplicant.conf

I'm not as sure about Windows; if you unselect "Connect automatically when this network is in range" and also unselect "Connect even if the network is not broadcasting its name (SSID)", what does a packet sniffer show you're broadcasting? I would expect it to no longer broadcast that SSID, but you'd have to check.

You should always check, if you're truly concerned :).

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