Mobile devices, in particular, smartphones are ubiquitous. Many of these devices are able to communicate using the Wi-Fi network. In order to support fast service discovery, Wi-Fi devices broadcast probe request frames to actively look for Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) nearby. These probe requests provide information that allows one to extract useful observation about user behavior. In this paper, we present our results obtained from a long-term passive scanning of Wi-Fi probe request packets collected in a popular outdoor food court in Singapore. The collection was done over a 32-month duration. We present measurements on the breakdown in device vendors, probe intervals, Service Set Identifier (SSID) leakage and a simple counting application.
['XiangFa Guo', 'Hande Hong', 'Mun Choon Chan', 'Li-Shiuan Peh']
Poster abstract: Long-term observation with passive Wi-Fi scanning