If you expect privacy or anonymity, Meshtastic is a danger to that, and you should not use it.
This is your regular reminder that Meshtastic is designed badly and is effectively a straight up non-anonymized wireless tracking beacon which can be intercepted and tracked by anyone with a smidgen of technical knowhow.
Resetting your devices identity or reloading the Meshtastic firmware does not help, because Meshtastic encodes the hardware MAC address of your device's radio unencrypted into every packet sent, including on-by-default telemetry packets which are sent regularly without any user interaction.
Many of these packets are intercepted and recorded by a myriad of MQTT observers around the world that other Meshtasic users have set up to log mesh traffic to the internet.
Holy shit I love my internet service provider said no one ever!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
A female figure in a 1960s dress and gloves, flying through the air astride a Western Electric Bell telephone handset. Her head has been replaced with the head of Karl Marx. A shower of US hundred dollar bills flows out of the receiver's earpiece and mic. In the background is a telephone pole with many wires attached to it, slicing chords through the blue sky.
Nachdem das Chatnetzwerk Meshtastic als Bastelprojekt startete, gibt es immer mehr Fertiggeräte. Der SenseCAP P1 funkt als solarbetriebener Meshtastic-Router.
Viel hat sich bei Meshtastic getan, seitdem wir 2022 zuletzt über das Projekt berichtet haben. Das kann der Katastrophen-Messenger heute und so steigen Sie ein.
heise+ | Auch für den Katastrophenfall: Meshfähiges Chatnetzwerk im Eigenbau
Mit dem Off-Grid-Messenger Meshtastic kommunizieren Sie auch dann, wenn Internet- und Stromversorgung ausgefallen sind. Das kann der Katastrophen-Messenger.
So I’ve been experimenting with LoRa and meshtastic. https://meshtastic.org and I have some ideas on how to use it as a neighbourhood sensor and chat network. Inline with my thoughts on decentralising (power) grids. But also for generic neighbourhood chats that by definition stay local. Lots of opportunities to explore. Next: a cheap, solar powered Meshtastic node that you can just throw in trees etc. LoRAnarchy ;)
So instead of positioning LoRa the „traditional“ way — a solution for off-grid, remote areas — I want to explore its potential as a kind of „whisper network“ for neighbourhoods, local communities. In densely populated areas. With the very low bandwidth as a feature, not a bug.