“A new feature in Apple’s upcoming iPhone operating system iOS 8 makes it harder for companies to learn about your location and habits when connecting to public WiFi,” Lisa Eadicicco reports for Business Insider. “The feature, which was first spotted by Swiss programmer Frederic Jacobs and has since been written about on Quartz, prevents marketers, retailers, and other companies from seeing your phone’s identity.”

“Apple’s new feature prompts your iPhone to generate a random MAC address when it scans for public WiFi networks,” Eadicicco reports. “This means that although these agencies will be able to detect your device, they won’t know whether or not the same device is returning to that particular location.”

Eadicicco reports, “By generating random MAC addresses, Apple is thwarting marketers’ attempts to track how long you’ve been in a store, where in the store you’ve been shopping, and other types of location data that can be traced back to your iPhone.”

Read more in the full article here [1] .

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Arline M." for the heads up.]