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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.

Sathyajith Bhat
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Khattak
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    No. 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 F Dec 01 '14 at 16:49
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    What 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. – Ramhound Dec 01 '14 at 16:51
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    MAC 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. – joeqwerty Dec 01 '14 at 17:00
  • @Ramhound Indeed they won't help with location as they don't go out v far. However, MAC addresses are supposed to be unique and if they're not unique, one might rightly think them reasonably unique, look at this answer http://superuser.com/questions/268006/are-mac-addresses-unique-when-coming-out-of-the-factory "There are 2^48 or 281 474 976 710 656 different potential combinations. They are reasonably unique." Sure it can be masked, but if you know a MAC, then a manufacturer could potentially know what laptop it was. And if they haven't masked it then it's not masked. – barlop Dec 01 '14 at 17:02
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    @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? – barlop Dec 01 '14 at 17:06
  • IDK but if it did, that's as far as it would go. It wouldn't go beyond the first router his traffic passes through. – joeqwerty Dec 01 '14 at 17:07
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    @joeqwerty yeah I know, we're on the same page. – barlop Dec 01 '14 at 17:08
  • @barlop - I never said they were not unique. What I said is they alone cannot be used to identify your device. I also said its trivial to mask the address and have it report as an entirely different address. I am well aware of how many potential combinations there are. You also included those that are not even valid MAC addresses in that number you quoted me. – Ramhound Dec 01 '14 at 17:10
  • @Ramhound Yes but I am questioning this part you wrote "What I said is they alone cannot be used to identify your device." <-- If you agree that MAC addresses are uniquw, globally unique even, or reasonably globally unique.. Then given a MAC it is possible to identify the network adaptor with that MAC, (the first 3 bytes identify the organisation that produced it, the latter 3 bytes identify or should and could potentially reasonably uniquely identify the component) and so it's possible to identify a laptop given that MAC. (of course, the ISP will won't get that MAC, so he seems 2b screwed) – barlop Dec 02 '14 at 09:29
  • I thought it was clear. When I said it cannot be used to identify you I mean on the internet. It can be used within an intranet. **But that isn't what the question is asking.** The author lost a device, I presume he is trying to locate it, and my statement clearly indicates even if he knew the MAC address he wouldn't be able to use that **alone** to locate the device. I need to learn just to ignore your comments towards me, this is a habit of yours, you see to argue over the smallest and tiniest details over my comments. – Ramhound Dec 02 '14 at 11:54

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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.

LawrenceC
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