Can you disable the SSID broadcast without turning off WIFI?

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Level 1

8 points

Can you disable the SSID broadcast without turning off WIFI?

Is there a way to disable the SSID broadcast without disabling WIFI altogether? Prior to the 4.3 IOS upgrade I could keep my WIFI enabled and when at home, the phone would automatically switch to my hi speed WIFI. The new upgrade now turns your phone into a WIFI/MYFI hotspot and broadcasts your phones SSID to the world.

Message was edited by: KevInFWB

IPhone 4, iOS 4

Posted on Mar 15, 2011 7:58 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 15, 2011 8:23 AM in response to KevInFWB

KevInFWB wrote:
The new upgrade now turns your phone into a WIFI/MYFI hotspot and broadcasts your phones SSID to the world.

Message was edited by: KevInFWB

Only if you have enabled and setup personal hotspot settings in your network settings, AND have the hotspot conneciton active AND are sharing the hotspot connection via wifi.

If you do not have Personal Hotspot features enabled or active, your iPhone is not broadcasting any network connection ID information, with or without wifi enabled.

P.S. according to the iOS release notes, even if you leave Hotspot active, it will stop broadcasting the SSID after a timeour with no connections, since the HotSpot feature turns off after a short timeout with no activity.

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Answer 2

KevInFWB Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 15, 2011 11:56 AM in response to Michael Black

Michael,
Thanks for the reply and great info. I use my Iphone for tethering and previously utilized only the usb plug-in feature or Bluetooth for connectivity. I did some experimenting here and seem to have found a solution I can live with. Without turning this into a long story, I changed my phone name (it used to be my First and Last name) so it wasn't broadcast everywhere, and turned on the WIFI setting. I continued to connect via the USB connection and the SSID name did time out after a certain period of time.
Hopefully the Apple folks can fine tune the OS to enable the user the option of not broadcasting the SSID at all, if desired.

Message was edited by: KevInFWB

Message was edited by: KevInFWB

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