[SOLVED] Get list of MAC Addresses nearby (without pairing with those devices)

Get list of MAC Addresses nearby (without pairing with those devices)

I was wondering if it is possible to uniquely identify Bluetooth devices around you with iOS..

My first idea was to get the MAC address (or any other kind of unique GUID) but I was reading on the internet that such info is not shared until you pair the devices, which is something we didn't want to do in our scenario.

Also, it shouldn't be something too iOS specific, cause the idea is to discover also Android devices and implement something similar even on Android (with a separated app)

To recap these are the requirements:

solution not too iOS specific
no pairing involved
get a unique identifier from a simple Bluetooth scan

Do you have any idea/code example to share? Thanks in advance

Solution

By design, no. Bluetooth devices randomly modify their addresses specifically to avoid this kind of tracking. For several helpful links to how this important privacy feature is implemented, see How do BLE IoT devices usually generate their private MAC addresses?