MAC address randomization fails

I just got the new Fairphone 6 with preinstalled e/OS. As the FP 6 also ships with a generic Android 15, it should, as a device, support MAC address randomization. In e/OS, however, wireless MAC addresses are not randomized by default: I confirmed that two unrelated access points show the phone’s “Device Wi-Fi MAC Address” in their connection logs. (Note that even under persistent randomization, the two APs should see different client MACs, and neither should see the device MAC.)

Researching this issue suggests that there should be a “Privacy” tab in the detailed view of a WiFi connection that offers related options (i.e., toggling randomization on a per-network level). But this tab is missing in e/OS.

I already enabled developer options and the “Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization” feature (which does exist), followed by a reboot, but to no effect. The e/OS version is v3.0.4-a15-…-official-FP6.

As e/OS is privacy-focused, and this is a basic anti-tracking feature (offered by baseline Android since version 10), I suspect that this is a bug and that e/OS simply fails to recognize the capability of FP 6 to randomize the WiFi MAC.

Does anyone know of a fix or has additional insight? Specifically, can someone confirm or deny whether some variant of MAC randomization works properly on the Fairphone 6, on e/OS 3.0.4, and on both together?

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if it’s missing with the FP6 atm (much older devices and FP4/FP5 do support it in /e/OS) then it should be filed as bug in the backlog.

The FP6 device tree (here?) isn’t yet public to check ourselves.
The config_wifi_connected_mac_randomization_supported is set in two overlay config.xml files and as you said, the wifi driver/hardware underneath has to play ball, but it’s mandatory for A10+ release devices anyway.

did the bug filing. I normally don’t for devices I do not own to reproduce it myself, but this should be an easy one

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Thanks a lot for filing! I was considering this but didn’t know which subrepo to use and also wanted to make sure that it’s supposed to work; which I’m glad it is. Unfortunately on the technical end I have no more expertise to offer.

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