This disclosure allows greater privacy for mobile device users while maintaining functionality through a process of signature-hopping. Mobile devices have persistent identifiers or signatures which are used in providing device functionality (routing calls to the correct number, returning web queries to the originating device, and connection continuity in local area networks such as WiFi®. These persistent identifiers or signatures can also be collected by unintended recipients or used by intended recipients to correlate, track, or otherwise discover information about the user of the device in extremely intrusive ways. Regularly changing these signatures can mitigate privacy problems for mobile device users, and the disclosure here shows how functionality may be maintained through these changes.