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My laptop was stolen about 2 months ago. I have the MAC address.

I have contacted the police, but they said they could not find the laptop if it is behind a ADSL modem or any NAT.

Is there any way I can find it?

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  • 1
    What model with what OS?
    – ott--
    Dec 2, 2012 at 18:47
  • 3
    MAC is used on the local network. So that is not going to help.
    – Hennes
    Dec 2, 2012 at 18:48
  • Unfortunately there is no way how you can find your notebook, unless you were using software such as Intel Anti-Theft or similar. With little luck you can try local pawnshops. Be sure you have changed all passwords you had stored in your software.
    – week
    Dec 2, 2012 at 18:50
  • Sony, Vaio VPCS116FG/B. Windows 7
    – morteza
    Dec 2, 2012 at 18:57

2 Answers 2

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Unfortunately, the police are right. Your MAC address is, in fact, a unique identifier of your laptop's networking hardware, but it is not transmitted any further than your modem or NAT router. Media Access Control (MAC) happens at the link layer (of the Internet Protocol Suite) and not at the Internet layer, thus this information will not be transmitted outside your local network.

This means you'll only be able to identify the laptop once you actually see it – and MAC addresses can be spoofed as well, so you couldn't even be sure about that.

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If the laptop is in physical proximity, you can listen to the wireless signals with aircrack and find the laptop

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