Is Your MAC Address Really Safe From Google?

M

MHunter

New member
Oct 20, 2011
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I keep hearing on different forums that there is no way that Google can read your MAC address when you connect to their services. This answer never made me feel warm and fuzzy.

According to the article below the drone in the article uses your MAC number to tie together all the info it has stolen from your mobile phone.

Do the reporters have this right or is this more reporting like we are seeing on flight 370.

This Drone Can Steal What's On Your Phone

This drone can steal what's on your phone - Mar. 20, 2014

That includes the sites you visit, credit card information entered or saved on different sites, location data, usernames and passwords. Each phone has a unique identification number, or MAC address, which the drone uses to tie the traffic to the device.
 


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That article references basically a man in the middle attack. It has nothing to do with if google can see your mac address.

For Google to view your mac address using the linked article's security concern, Google would have to fly drones over your house and pretend to be a wifi network you've connected to before, and if they wanted that data referenced in the article. launch a man in the middle attack and sniff your traffic.

By Scanning the air for 802.11 traffic, you can see a device's mac address but that doesn't mean a website can. I'm not sure about phones but on a computer I don't think they can grab your mac unless you install a program on your computer. But since Google chrome IS a program, it may or may not send your mac address at any update's notice when using it. Chromium is open source, Chrome is not.
 
While websites can't see your mac address, they can see your browser fingerprint and I believe mac id influences the fingerprint. I could be wrong though.
 
What good is your MAC address to Google? Change it…

Also, if you're concerned about them knowing your location, then kill yourself. I turn location services off, but with friends regularly connecting to my router who do have it on, Google and Apple now knows the location of the router.

And when Google drove around for street view and there was that wifi controversy, did no one put 2 and 2 together and realise they were likely mapping all wifi and hotspot locations that were broadcasting against a map? They'd be insane not to.
 
back in my gaming days, manually spoofing my mac address was standard practice if i wanted to make sure a certain PC was viewed as unique. i always assumed any site i connected to could see my IP & MAC addy, especially neteller or other payment sites.
 
Just wanted to say thanks to everyone here for the info.


I have been toying with the ideal of running a few virtual machines on my desktop and presenting different personas to Google and have been wondering of I can really get away with it.


Thanks MM9 for the nice clear explanation.


justover77 where did you find that video of me? Even after going through the process more than once I still tend to be to trusting (mighty slow learner).


Drave are you referring to location or killing? :ak:
 
Your mac address is only visible to the next device in route you send data to.
While your IP is visible to the end device you connect to (lets say a website), that website does NOT see your mac, unless your mac is captured and forwarded client side.

Think of it like this.

Internet is comprised of a bunch of routers and computers who talk to each other.
Between "google.com" and your computer there are a bunch of these.

In order to connect from your computer to "google.com" server your computer needs to know exactly which router to send data request to.

If it does not know which router is next in line, it would have to send request to ALL of the routers it knows about, and those then to the router they know. And so on... Overhead would be enormous.

Instead your computer sends request ONLY to the next router in line.
It works like this:
Your router sees the MAC of your pc. Then your ISP router closest to you sees the router of your modem, then that modem's mac is visible by the next router. And so forth.

Website you connect to only sees the last router in line. (so it'd see it's datacenter's router).
So chill....

Mac isn't an ip. Mac does not need to be unique. Website do not see your mac unless they capture it from your computer directly.
 
If you install software or an app, it can grab the mac address off the network card in the device.

Doesn't really matter though.....
 
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