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The obvious way to track users across heterogeneous WLANs is to use the MAC
address as unique identifier. Trackers can use this information to correlate
any other behavioral information to a MAC address to easily create profiles.
Fortunately, although MAC addresses are permanent by design, there exist a
number of mechanisms that allow users to change the identifier. Gruteser et al
[32] introduce the idea of short-lived disposable MAC
addresses as a technique for the reduction of the effectiveness of location
tracking. However, randomizing MAC addresses often leads to problems. For
example, several ISPs use MAC addresses to map IP addresses. Also, some
software licenses are bound to a specific MAC address. Furthermore, even in the
presence of such techniques, user profiling can still effectively track users
in dense urban environments. In our system, we use MAC addresses as
temporary identifiers for correlating information that will be used to create
user profiles as described below.