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Privacy / MAC Address

SilentLeviathan

I am better than you.
Oct 30, 2002
909
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Papi Chulo said:
Is it posssible for your ethernet adaptor's MAC address to be used for tracking by websites, etc when going through a router & modem?

Is there any benefits to spoofing a MAC address?
I suppose it possible, but not really useful.

None that I can think of.

Considering how you can get a new MAC address simply by buying a new $10 network card it's kind of pointless for a site to track them. The only advantage I can see is a company tracking the MAC addresses of its own machines and what site they went to. However, it's a lot more effective just to track it by user accounts as that'll narrow down who was using the machine not just the machine itself.

Besides, a site can track you by you ISP assigned ID code which will track usage by a particular account as opposed to a MAC address which will just track by machine.
 

Anynym

Just a bit to the right
Dec 28, 2005
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MAC addresses are used within the scope of the "layer 2" (ethernet) network. On the other side of a Router (which does "layer 3" forwarding), the packet will use the different layer 2 (MAC or other equivalent) address for that medium, and so on between each layer 3 hop.

If some remote site is seeing your MAC address, it would have to acquire it through some odd means (e.g. in a packet's contents, being reported by spyware). I suppose they could correlate it with other information, but it doesn't contain a lot of useful information. Translating it to the manufacturer is easy enough through online databases, but identifying that manufacturer's assignment process during manufacturing isn't always so easy. So all they could use it for might be some sort of machine ID. There are certainly more popular ways of doing that, and your browser probably reports more information about your machine every time it connects (e.g. browser type and version, operating system). Unless you want to spoof a new MAC address on a frequent basis (meaning that you suspect some spyware might be reporting it!), you won't accomplish much.

Then, any spyware which was strange enough to report a MAC address would be expected to watch (and report) any changes to that MAC address, correlated with some sort of cookie.

Short answer: it's unlikely that anyone beyond your ISP can see your MAC address, and spoofing it is not likely to bring any benefit.
 

skihrdr

New member
Mar 25, 2004
55
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I agree with Anynym, it's pointless to try and track someone via MAC. Even a network admin would never really need to use that on his/her internal network (unless some odd behaviour was occurring that would more likely indicate hardware failure, etc)

The only real area I see MAC address identification to be of any use is your own home network if you use a wireless router. Most routers allow logging and show MACs that associate with it. Reviewing these logs can indicate whether someone is trying to jump onto your WLAN or has gotten on.

Back in the early days of Netstumbler and war-driving, many participants purposely changed their MACs (by editting the registry) to a phrase that would indicate a fellow member had been using someone's home equipment. I forget what the phrase was, but think it was something like DE:AD:BE:EF:00
 
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