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= Change Proposal Name = Changes/IPv6-Privacy-Extensions-in-Workstation

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Enable IPv6 temporary addresses from [RFC 4941](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4941) in Fedora Workstations (including other desktop spins such as KDE Plasma, of course, notably only excluding servers as to not cause unneeded frustation and potential ).

Owner

  • Name: LucasMZ
  • Email: fedoraaccounts@lucasmz.dev


Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora Linux 44
  • Last updated: 2025-11-07
  • [<link to devel-announce post will be added by Wrangler> Announced]
  • [<will be assigned by the Wrangler> Discussion thread]
  • FESCo issue: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
  • Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
  • Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

IPv6 temporary addresses are enabled on all big operating systems, such as Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Ubuntu, this feature helps stop persistent tracking of the IP address of users, by randomizing the address used for outgoing connections every 24 hours, Fedora users at the moment do not get this basic protection when browsing, and while their prefix stays the same, their individual device can be tracked over long periods with precision.

Benefit to Fedora

Scope

  • Proposal owners:
  • Other developers:
  • Policies and guidelines: N/A
  • Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)
  • Alignment with the Fedora Strategy:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Users that may be using for example, dynamic DNS to host a service in Workstation, that uses regular outgoing connections to tell what IP to use, may have issues as the temporary address may be used instead.


How To Test

Enable IPv6 privacy extensions' temporary addresses by creating a file in /etc/sysctl.d/10-ipv6-privacy.conf:

`conf

  1. IPv6 Privacy Extensions (RFC 4941)
  2. ---
  3. IPv6 typically uses a device's MAC address when choosing an IPv6 address
  4. to use in autoconfiguration. Privacy extensions allow using a randomly
  5. generated IPv6 address, which increases privacy.
  7. Acceptable values:
  8. 0 - don’t use privacy extensions.
  9. 1 - generate privacy addresses
  10. 2 - prefer privacy addresses and use them over the normal addresses.

net.ipv6.conf.all.use_tempaddr = 2 net.ipv6.conf.default.use_tempaddr = 2 `

and restart

This file is from Ubuntu


User Experience

This should not be a noticeable change for most users, as in, it shouldn't be noticed much, even with its benefits.

Dependencies

N/A, I believe there are a few places were one can enable IPv6 temporary addresses.

Contingency Plan

  • Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
  • Blocks release? Yes


Documentation

N/A

Release Notes

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