MAC - Adress

[sternbildchen]

Protect Personal and Individual Privacy. Some companies track users via their MAC Addresses... In addition, there are more and more Wi-Fi Wireless connections available these days, and Wireless network security and privacy is all about MAC Addresses...

Can anyone tell me something more why you could want to change your MAC Adress? F.e. why does changing the Mac Adress increases sercurity?
- Can they just indetifie my computer with the MAC Adress?
- If I connect to a WLan will I change my Mac Adress before and back afterwards so they cant indentfy me ?


Are this the two only ways to change the MAC Adress?

Under Windows, the MAC address is stored in a registry key. To change a MAC address, find that key with `regedit` and change it. Of course, Microsoft keeps moving the location of the key around!

Windows XP adds an option to change the MAC address on some network cards under the Advanced tab in the network adapter's Properties menu.

If I connect to the internet without a proxy they can see my mac adress?
If I connect trough a proxy they see the mac of the proxy, right?
Is changing the MAC adress only important for wardrivers?
Do you know any links that are usefull to read about this topic ?

[DNR]

Buddy,
Consider this, your computer setup, the OS, your registration on the OS, version and patch of OS, browser, browser version, network card, and your MAC is like a fingerprint. If the cops can catch you near the wifi AP, they will not only try to match the MAC address, but this 'fingerprint' you left.

This threat of being fingerprinted is even more with server-side codes that look for your recent browsing history, your cookies, even data you might have from 'save my password' or html forms you filled out.

The fact that MACs can be spoofed should could trouble for any court trying to convict solely on a wardriver's laptop. It would have to consider the 'fingerprint' of the laptop and the circumstances of the person using the laptop. (being caught sitting in car near it or living next door to the stolen/abused wifi AP).

We discussed SMAC on a thread here on suck-o search for SMAC..

DNR

[sternbildchen]

Thx for the post DNR.

I guess that:

If I connect to the internet without a proxy they can see my mac adress?
If I connect trough a proxy they see the mac of the proxy, right?

Is true.

So changing the mac adress is only important for wardriving, right ?

[bad_brain]

about MAC & proxy:
it depends on the proxy. many people don't really know what the use of proxyservers was (you'll see why I say "was"). proxyservers were used in the beginning of the internet where connections were very slow and so downloading a file took very long. the network architecture of the net wasn't as advanced as now and so it could happen that downloading a file located on the other side of the globe was horrible slow. because of the faster connection of the proxyservers files were downloaded from the original place to the proxyserver's cache and the user got the files from the proxyserver then. this was much faster because the nearest proxy was picked of course.
so the real intention behind proxyservers wasn't about anonymity, it was to speed-up downloads.
(and now to the "was"-part):
nowadays there is no real use for the real intention behind proxyservers anymore because people have fast connections and the internet structure is covering the whole globe. and because of this proxies are now used for anonymity issues.

as you can see "proxy" don't mean "anonymity" at the same time.
if your MAC adress is transmitted by the proxyserver or not can be tested:
http://www.all-nettools.com/toolbox
scroll down to the proxy tester, if your real IP don't show up the MAC adress isn't transmitted too and is only stored on the proxyserver itself.
but even then it is no warranty that you're real anonymous because the connection is still stored in the proxyserver's logs.
for best anonymity use JAP:
http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/ ...they run no logs...

[sternbildchen]

Thx for the Link b_b.

I think Tor Servers don't keep logs too. Does anyone know exactly?