Duplicate (and more) of same device

[Retired_Member]

Circle Home Plus 2nd Gen

I have a few devices that keep adding entries to the device list. Particularlly my iPhone XR, it now has 5 entries. I keep assigning them to the same Profile... but I keep getting more. Why is that?

It looks like the Device ID keeps changed according the Circle App. A Roku Premier player duplicated and another iPhone, but the XR seems to be particularlly bad? Is there any way to stop this from happening?

[schumaku · Accepted solution]

The Device ID is based on the MAC address of the device. The MAC address can change when using elderly wireless extenders (they do MAC address translation), since iOS 14 Apple decided to force enable this nonsense for all known and new networks without informing the users, Android 10 does only use random MAC on new connected networks.

Disable this rubbish on your mobile devices for connecting to your home/business networks - there is nothing to hide there. 

@Christian_R I would like to see Netgear introducing isolating mobile devices using these addresses to showing a Web page that this network requires plain native hardware MAC, and not grant network access for security reasons. 8-)

FMI: https://support.meetcircle.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037239852-Android-10-and-iOS-14-devices-discover... (it's in fact since Android 8 but most vendors had not activated random MACs before) 

[Christian_R]

Hello bphein1980,

May you provide a screenshot of what you're experiencing for us to better assist. 

Thanks,

Christian 

[Retired_Member]

Sure! In this pic, this is the same iPhone XR. There are 2 other devices that are similar to this, but so far has only duplicated twice. In each one of these records, the Device ID listed is different. It looks like the Device ID is the "WiFi Address" in the iOS settings of the iPhone? 

[schumaku · Accepted solution]

The Device ID is based on the MAC address of the device. The MAC address can change when using elderly wireless extenders (they do MAC address translation), since iOS 14 Apple decided to force enable this nonsense for all known and new networks without informing the users, Android 10 does only use random MAC on new connected networks.

Disable this rubbish on your mobile devices for connecting to your home/business networks - there is nothing to hide there. 

@Christian_R I would like to see Netgear introducing isolating mobile devices using these addresses to showing a Web page that this network requires plain native hardware MAC, and not grant network access for security reasons. 8-)

FMI: https://support.meetcircle.com/hc/en-us/articles/360037239852-Android-10-and-iOS-14-devices-discover... (it's in fact since Android 8 but most vendors had not activated random MACs before) 

[Retired_Member]

Thank you for that info 🙂