Question for you tech savvy people

But your assuming they WANT to track YOU. Given the number of people using public networks, the likelyhood of being tracked is nothing at all. Unless you do something to cause LE to be concerned enough to use resourses to find you, it just is not going to happen at random. Local LE just does not have the budget or resources to just throw a net out there to see what they catch. As to honeypot networks, if your not paying enough attention to know what network your attaching to, you just are being careless. Those are almost always setup with a specifc goal in mind, not just random searching. If LE really wants YOU, they will find you given enough time.

While there are many things possible, there is also the extremly unlikly. If the OP wants to post a link to a public website and uses a public network, she is safe. Unless its a site about WMDs. :-) Or terrorism thats on a national watch list. And if you use different public networks at random, tracking becomes almost impossible except for the use of a LOT of federal resources.

Well, I'll admit it's not likely for mongers like us, but I assure you that LE is willing and able to search logs on MANY different public wifi networks, and that, over time, they're able to match those MAC addresses to a person that they want to track. There is also always the possibility of a "honeypot" network. LE sets up a network near Starbucks and gives free wifi to everyone willing to connect, which also allows them to see every bit of network traffic.

It's not easy to stay truly anonymous if you're connecting to someone else's network. Originally Posted by Crock

But your assuming they WANT to track YOU. Given the number of people using public networks, the likelyhood of being tracked is nothing at all. Originally Posted by OldButStillGoing

This is true. But it is so very different from being unable to track you.