Is there is any way to find MAC address of stolen laptop? I previously use my Facebook and email account on the machine. Can I extract my MAC address from email of Facebook account. Give me technical idea.
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2No. You can't get your MAC address using social media or email. If that were true, then we would all be in a world full of more trouble. Your best bet is to report it to the police and they can try to find it based on a description.– Eric FDec 1, 2014 at 16:49
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3What do you hope to accomplish by knowing the MAC address of your laptop? A MAC address is trivial to mask. It alone cannot be used to identify you let alone locate the device.– RamhoundDec 1, 2014 at 16:51
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1MAC addresses are globally unique, but only locally significant. The MAC address of your laptop isn't seen or known outside of the local network it is attached to.– joeqwertyDec 1, 2014 at 17:00
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1@joeqwerty I agree.. but i'm curious.. suppose he plugs in the laptop ethernet cable into a bridging modem, no NAT. The modem doesn't have an IP.. I wonder if it doesn't have a MAC either.. in which case maybe the MAC of the laptop reaches the ISP's router? With no NAT, and a PPP connection the IP of the laptop would be the same as the IP of the default gateway.. the same public IP. I'm not sure re MAC in that situation, any idea?– barlopDec 1, 2014 at 17:06
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1@joeqwerty yeah I know, we're on the same page.– barlopDec 1, 2014 at 17:08
1 Answer
The MAC address does not leave the local network of the laptop. If the laptop starts communicating, and is behind a router (as it must be to get Internet access) the moment the traffic passes the router, the MAC is lost (routers forward packets, so the outgoing traffic of yours from the router actually has the router's WAN MAC).
Websites generally use cookies to tell users apart, and don't need the MAC address. It would be very unusual (and probably not possible unless using a Java, ActiveX, or other custom plugin) for a website to try to record your hardware MAC addresses, and even more unusual for it to allow you to see the MAC addresses it's collecting without a court order.