What does a MAC address do?
My school needed it i order to give me access to the public wifi. What does a MAC address do? And can they see what I'm doing, even when I'm not connected to their Internet? For example, can they see what I do on my phone at home because they have my MAC address?
Comments
A MAC address is the address of the network adapter in your device. Every network interface card (NIC) has a MAC address, which is used to identify it on a network. Its like the address on your house.
The MAC address is only used in Local Area Networks (for any other network people out there, I'm keeping it simple) to direct traffic to your device. It may also be used to allow access to restricted networks, like at at your school. They cannot use your MAC address to spy on you at home, as you are on another network. They could use your MAC address to look at your traffic while you are connected to the school's network, but unless you are doing something you shouldn't be they won't.
Hope this helps.
BigE is correct. Your MAC address only applies to the local network that you are on. Once the packet leaves the router, it will have the MAC address of the routers external interface.
They only need your MAC to allow you access to the WiFi. They can't do anything else with it, including viewing your traffic outside of their network.
100% wrong "bigE"
the MAC address of the source machine is in EVERY packet sent on the internet or local network
Its hardwired into the network adaptor and is added to EVERY packet you send
(a "packet" comprises lots of info besides the actual message you are sending)
EVERY active bit of hardware on the internet has its own unique MAC number
what does it do?
in itself nothing EXCEPT that it can be used to identify or confirm YOUR specific machine sent the message
(MAC numbers are allocated to hardware manufacturers
They can trace a given MAC address to wherever they sent/sold that bit of hardware)
The mac address is NOT sent when you cross any network (your router, the school s router). So the correlation between your mac (your device) and the internet is only done by IP once you get off your network. So in other words, knowing the mac doesn t give any info, except what type of device because the mac s types/ranges are registered.
Think of the MAC address as a unique identifier of a piece of equipment, much like a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN). It is used for identification purposes.
A MAC address is a unique identifier for a device. Of course if you aren't connected then there is nothing allowing them to see anything.
Some networks can block access to a device based on the MAC address. This is probably why they requested it in order to grant access
1) it is the hardware address of your WiFi card (adapter) and is used so that the admins of this network can limit access to devices with known MAC addresses
2) because of the MAC - no.
MAC address = Media Access Control address
Every device with either an Ethernet or Wi-Fi adapter has a MAC address tied to that specific adapter. If your device has both types, then it has two MAC addresses. And there are no duplicates in the world. Part of the address tells us the manufacturer of the device -- the rest is that adapter's unique ID.
Look up the Wiki page for more info on the matter.
The mac address is the electronic name of your machine and is fixed
It can be recorded every time you access a network and tied to your activity
They know everything