MAC addresses preserved thrue VPN?

p1144902

Hi Everyone! 

MAC address can be used to track the sender as MAC address is a physical address which cannot be changed.

Facebook, Twitter, eBay, forum administrators, etc. are in position to trace and discover a MAC address and to locate your PC.

How Private Internet Access hide MAC addresses?

Thanks in advance for your replies!

OmniNegro

MAC addresses can and regularly are removed from packets. Search for MAC spoofing to see how often it happens and for what reasons people resort to this.

I can change the MAC address of every device I own at a whim. I have no idea why you think they cannot be changed.

johnfromnowhere

Yup, Omni is 100% right.  You can change your MAC id on your devices as often as you wish.

Rather than typing in a random hex string for your MAC id you can also choose which manufacturer you want your device to spoof.  This site offers one such database:

http://curreedy.com/stu/nic/

I don't know how accurate the database is, but I do like his saying at the top.

p1144902

I understand both of you, and you are right but do you think PIA can hide MAC addresses.

I spoke with people familiar in this topic and I was told that the administrators of forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc recognize every PC or they’re in position to do this based on MAC address and there’re other ways to find who the user is, i.e. the person participated in the same forum before, despite the fact IP and destination has been changed.

For example I disabled Ipv6, downloaded CCleaner Professional, clean all History from my browsers, cache, cookies, flash cookies, erased Java and persistently use Private Internet Access plus Comodo Internet Security, but when I publish a picture saved in my computer the forum administrator immediately recognizes my computer.

I would like to underline that I have no any doubts about Private Internet Access abilities to protect my identity, but want to know HOW the admin can recognize my computer.

johnfromnowhere

This sounds more like cookies to me than anything else, but you might want to check out this site:

https://panopticlick.eff.org/

Are you sure your cookies were deleted when you visited the site for the second time?  If you purge the cookies in your brower and then go to this site does it still recognize you?

You might want to consider standalone FireFox with a security pack from school of privacy:

http://www.school-of-privacy.com/wahprojects

catcher749

This is not a cookie issue, I too have had this problem after deleting all cookies. They are probably using invisible trackers, give Ghostery a shot.

p1144902

John-From-Nowhere,

Thank you very much for your explanation and much appreciated for both websites. >-

In regard to our conversation, as I said, always use paid version of CCleaner Professional and check my PC browsers one more time, just in case.

I am aware that Windows 7 is not properly secured and leaking.  When start working I take care about Cache, Cookies and exactly clean Adobe Flash Player from

[url=http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.htm]Klick Here[/url]l

 and Java from control panel (Programs)

Maybe admin uses some kind of cookies which CCleaner Professional cannot recognize?

Just share my opinion in this case. 

georgemacin

Try using WMIC commands

>wmic nic get macaddress,description

More....WMIC Commands

George