Abstract: A method and system for the anonymization and segmentation of the media access control (MAC) addresses reported by visitors' 802.11 enabled devices at a venue operator premises. This system assures a venue operator and its visitors that no individually identifying information about a visitor is re-transmitted or stored that can be traced back to their MAC address, while still allowing the venue operator to obtain venue visitor counts visit frequencies well as traffic patterns during visits (i.e. dwell times at, and movements between, locations within a venue) and counts of common visitors between venues. It also ensures that the data generated is segmented so that the data obtained by two different venue operators is not correlatable between visitors common to the two sets of data.

Abstract: Disclosed is an invention for the identification of the true identity of a WLAN device that has been “cloaked” (its source address has the U/L bit set as L), by evaluating its history (recent or distant) of Probe requests for WLAN infrastructure and treating that history as part of its “fingerprint”. Disclosed also is an invention that prompts more management frames from a WLAN device that is sending broadcast Probe requests without specifying a particular network, by presenting the appearance of the presence of popular networks.

Abstract: A method and system for proximity detection, recognition and classification of a wireless local area network (WLAN) enabled device without a WLAN infrastructure. The proximity recognition system monitors WLAN communications at one or more known locations. The proximity of a WLAN device (transmitter) is sensed by examining signal strength received therefrom as the device engages in a sequence of protocol data unit exchanges seeking WLAN association.