Easiest way to change your MAC address (unrooted)

What is the easiest way to temporarily change your MAC address (for privacy reasons) on an unrooted iOS or Android device?

As you all know, the hardwired MAC address of your WiFi NIC is (essentially) unique, and therefore, can be used to "tag" all your communications when you are away from home.

That means that anyone at a Starbucks, McDonalds, public library, etc., or even someone driving next to you on the freeway, can uniquely identify that device as being a device they've seen before (or not) if they simply bother to record the MAC address.

Therefore, it would be nice to change the MAC address daily, as I already automatically do on my laptops.

But I don't know *how* to change the MAC address on my smaller unrooted mobile devices, such as my iPads and my Android phones.

Googling, I easily find MAC address spoofing freeware which requires a rooted device, such as: Wireless Mac Address Changerm Osama Abukmail

formatting link

It's harder to find iOS MAC address changer software, but it must exist.

What is the easiest way to temporarily change your MAC address on an unrooted iOS or Android device?

Reply to
Paul B. Andersen
Loading thread data ...

Don?t change it daily, set it to 00:50:43:00:45:3e. Safety in numbers, and all that.

formatting link

Reply to
Richard Kettlewell

The MAC address is not available to machines beyond your router. The only people who can "tag" you based on the MAC address are those controlling any networks you connect to.

If you don't want to be tagged, don't connect to unknown networks.

This is entirely 100% incorrect.

Reply to
Lewis

"In iOS 8, Wi-Fi scanning behavior has changed to use random, locally administrated MAC addresses," reads the slide, which can be downloaded from Apple's servers as part of the presentation. "The MAC

(universal) address."

here's the slide:

Reply to
nospam

If you turn off the WiFi on your smartphone no-one will be able to detect the MAC number or anything else. Only enable it when you want to use it. There's at least one Android app that can turn your WiFi on and off according to your location - "Wi-Fi Matic" by GZ Systems Ltd.

I know that doesn't change your MAC. But if you don't trust a router with your MAC, don't connect to it.

Reply to
Whiskers

You're on to something there, with the "safety in numbers", If we all use the same MAC address, we can better hide. Yes, I know we can't be on the same network, but, there's not much chance of that since there aren't that many of us.

I like DE:AD:BE:EF:CA:FE myself. It's the "foo" of MAC addresses.

Reply to
Paul B. Andersen

It's not only the router you connect to, it's every single person in the public library also.

It's probably easier to change the MAC address than to kick everyone else out of the public library whenever you use their wifi. :)

I found this article which says "Android Terminal Emulator" freeware will do the trick on half my systems:

formatting link

They suggest Terminal Emulator for Android by Jack Palevich

formatting link

  1. Find your MAC address in the settings about menu
  2. Start the "Terminal Emulator for Android"
  3. Get out your reading glasses because the text output is tiny!
  4. Find the name of your WiFi card
  5. Change the MAC address

Example on my system:

  1. My WiFi MAC was 5c:0a:5b:a1:ff:00
  2. I started the terminal emulator (& put on my reading glasses)
  3. I typed "ip link show" (or "ip link show | grep -i 5c:")
  4. That MAC address showed up as "wlan0"
  5. I typed "ip link set wlan0 address de:ad:be:ef:cafe" and "ip link set broadcast de:ad:be:ef:ca:fe"

The only catch was that I got an error "Operating not permitted", so, it didn't work (yet).

Reply to
Paul B. Andersen

If so, what's the "bar"? or the "Kung" :-) ? Cheers, -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

Well, buck up, and keep us posted :-) . Cheers, -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

Personally, I think the web page was a scam. You'll notice the guy who wrote it was: a) Indian b) Marketing major c) Copied the information from a 2008 Android discussion d) Selling advertisements

Given that, I am almost positive the web page (there is a duplicate on another site by the same Indian author) is simply a dumb site merely to generate user views, so as to sell advertising space.

I don't think, after researching this, that you *can* change the MAC address without first rooting the phone.

Then, any of a number of methods work (e.g., ifconfig or set ip).

HERE IS INDIAN MARKETING SCAM PAGE 1:

formatting link
HERE IS INDIAN MARKETING SCAM PAGE 2:
formatting link

Reply to
Paul B. Andersen

Here is the 2008 discussion the Indian marketing scammer probably stole the information from in 2015 to generate page hits:

formatting link

Notice the Indian marketing scammer didn't even correct the erroneous command to set the "broadcast" address to ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff (which isn't even needed because that's the default).

Anyway, I have concluded two things: a) The Indian marketing scam web page is a lie, b) You can't change the MAC address without booting to a rooted OS

If I'm wrong, I will be perfectly happy for someone to prove me wrong, as I'd *love* to be able to change my MAC address without having to root the thing.

Reply to
Paul B. Andersen

BTW, what does "buck up" mean?

Anyway, here's another idiotic reference to the exact same text, in this case, from 2014 (which again, probably just copied the erroneous 2008 information):

formatting link

At least since that was on a forum, people refuted it in the subsequent posts.

It's only on the Indian Marketing Scammer's blog that you can't refute what the guy says. It has a comment section, but, I'll bet the guy deletes all the comments because there are none, and, you'd have expected at least one person to refute the information.

Reply to
Paul B. Andersen

It's a NE Americanese phrase of encouragement, replacing "chin up", "cheer up", "be of good cheer", "don't be disheartened", &c. HTH. Cheers, -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

Which sounds reasonable doesn't it? If a malicious app on your phone randomly changed the MAC address (which it could do if there was no requirement to be root), couldn't it play havoc with your communications, giving you a denial of service problem?

Unfortunately, this kind of scam is run by people in the U.S. and elsewhere in addition to people in India. I don't think it's India specific.

To make the scam work, people use Google's adsense system. If you complain to Google and provide the evidence that the website is just a plagiarization of other sites, Google may cut them off from the adsense program, but they might very well come back under a different name.

One of the funny things about this kind of scam is that the people who do it typically aren't stupid and could probably make more money with an honest job. Maybe it's the thrill of scamming people that attracts them. Maybe dishonest work attracts them more than honest work, even if it pays less.

Alan

Reply to
Alan Meyer

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.