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Forum Discussion
Prevent IPv6 Tracking (RFC 4941/ 8981)
Do any of the NetGear WiFi Routers implement RFC 4941 or RFC 8981 to prevent IPv6 tracking of internal devices? Or are there any Netgear WiFi Routers that allow you to disable IPv6 altogether? ...
My Windows PC, for example, shows a bunch of "Temporary" IPv6 addresses
Those are likely link-local addresses (private addresses, so not internet routable).
The gist of the RFC is that a persistant and globally unique ipv6 address creates inherent privacy issues, because the ipv6 address is sent unencrypted in every packet sent to or from the device. That reveals a lot of information about the user of that device.
Honestly this issue is also there in ipv4, just not as fine-grained. Although the client IP is masked by NAT, the WAN address of the router can be used similarly to reveal information about the people using that router. And most ISPs don't change ipv4 address assignments very often.
Anyway, the RFC outlines several ways the interface ID portion of the ipv6 address can be randomized to make such tracking more difficult. The manual you referenced says that by default the router generates the IID from the mac address (page 46) - so it does not use the privacy extensions in the RFC.
A custom ipv6 IID for the router LAN interface could be set, but it's not the default option. Shouldn't the client devices enforce RFC privacy extensions with stateless auto configuration?