{"id":95,"date":"2012-10-20T17:51:16","date_gmt":"2012-10-20T15:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/?p=95"},"modified":"2012-10-20T17:53:04","modified_gmt":"2012-10-20T15:53:04","slug":"data-privacy-issue-your-android-phone-might-leak-your-imei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/2012\/10\/20\/data-privacy-issue-your-android-phone-might-leak-your-imei\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Privacy issue: Your Android phone might leak your IMEI&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just played around with a new home router and noticed that my HTC Desire S Android phone sends the following hostname when requesting an IP address with DHCP in a wireless network:<\/p>\n<pre>Android_3567080XXXXXXXX<\/pre>\n<p>Why is this is a problem? Because the trailing part of that hostname is your <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/IMEI\" target=\"_blank\">IMEI<\/a>, which is a unique number identifying your device. It&#8217;s normally only seen on radio-network level, so can normally be considered &#8220;private&#8221; (because your operator can&#8217;t disclose it to anyone).<\/p>\n<p>The IMEI also contains a component called &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Type_Allocation_Code\" target=\"_blank\">TAC<\/a>&#8221; (type allocation code) which identified the exact handset model you have.<\/p>\n<p>So if you regularly visit Internet cafes or the like, these guys know how often and when you are there.<\/p>\n<p>Please let me know whether you consider this a problem or not &#8212; I do think it is one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just played around with a new home router and noticed that my HTC Desire S Android phone sends the following hostname when requesting an IP address with DHCP in a wireless network: Android_3567080XXXXXXXX Why is this is a problem? Because the trailing part of that hostname is your IMEI, which is a unique number identifying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[51,50,52],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security-computers","tag-cell-phones","tag-mobile-phones","tag-privacy"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Data Privacy issue: Your Android phone might leak your IMEI... - Ralf&#039;s Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bergs.biz\/blog\/2012\/10\/20\/data-privacy-issue-your-android-phone-might-leak-your-imei\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Data Privacy issue: Your Android phone might leak your IMEI... - Ralf&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Just played around with a new home router and noticed that my HTC Desire S Android phone sends the following hostname when requesting an IP address with DHCP in a wireless network: Android_3567080XXXXXXXX Why is this is a problem? 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