WHAT IS MY COMPUTERS MAC ADDRESS SOFTWARE
WHAT IS MY COMPUTERS MAC ADDRESS PASSWORD

If your computer is from an assembly line (like say Dell) sometimes it can be used to identify a possible model for your computer, and any other information that could be inferred from that (like was that model primarily marketed to corporate customers or grandmas? Was it an expensive model or a cheap one?).Very rarely some other piece of information the vendor used to generate it when the card was made which usually isn't very useful.

Sometimes the exact model of network card used since most vendors use a predictable process to generate part of the address.

Often the approximate generation of the device based on which prefix is used.

To prevent collisions each vendor has a set of prefixes they're allowed to use, and it's up to them how they use them and how they uniquely generate the rest of the MAC For legitimate devices it is directly tied to the hardware and often burned into 'rom' on the network card itself (but sometimes it's not actually read only). The MAC address is intended to assist your network in getting you the packets intended for you rather than your co-worker sitting next to you. And secondly the ways in which it can be used as a unique identifier for you. Firstly to understand what metadata can be derived from it. To really understand what risks leaking your MAC address poses requires two parts. The short version is the other accepted answers here are more or less correct, essentially you shouldn't assume your mac address is private, and posting it doesn't pose any direct risk to you as a person unless you're trying to remain anonymous. See an example of this in the comments to this question. MAC addresses are designed to be unique therefore, if you see a debug report coming from user shelvacu with the MAC 00:1C:B3:09:85:15, and then stumble upon another report from user John Doe with the same MAC, you may conclude quite safely that shelvacu and John Doe use the same computer and likely are the same person. The only serious issue I can think of is identification.

WHAT IS MY COMPUTERS MAC ADDRESS SOFTWARE

There are no security concerns whatsoever, unless you used some kind of very, very badly designed software that only relies on your MAC to give a computer access to your data and an attacker were on the same network as the listener. All the traffic I'll generate will appear to come from your computer. If I come into knowledge of your MAC address, I could connect to the Wi-Fi network disguising as your network card, therefore gaining access to the Internet. The hotel has a Wi-Fi hotspot, to which both you and I have access additionally, you bought an Internet pass, which enables you to connect to the Internet through the hotspot. The only situation I can think of is something on the lines of It's extremely unlikely that this could cause any annoyance to you, let alone pose a security risk. a Wi-Fi router) that's pretty much all of it. If knew your MAC, I could disguise my network card as yours when dealing with a gateway (e.g. In short, there are some theoretical hazards, but in practice, anyone in a situation to exploit them has other ways to get your MAC address. In theory, someone could use this information to make a targeted attack against a security hole in your card's network driver, but I've never heard of it happening in practice. The first digits of the MAC address identify the manufacturer of your device. This isn't as useful as it sounds, though: in order to actually use the password, they need to be within radio range of your AP, and in that case, they can simply sniff the MAC address off the air.

WHAT IS MY COMPUTERS MAC ADDRESS PASSWORD

Someone could use the address you posted to associate the device they've been tracking with an actual person, but if someone's going to the effort to track the movements of a wireless device, they probably already know who owns it.Ĭertain wireless routers set their default password based on the MAC address. Unless you take steps to change it regularly, your MAC address uniquely identifies your device. The address is (and needs to be) visible to everyone on the network segment, but because of how network routing works, is not normally visible to anyone else. A MAC address is a number used to uniquely identify your device on the local network segment.

What is my computers mac address