The MAC address is designated by the manufacturer of a NIC (Network Interface Card). You cannot really change it because it is hard-coded. And, that’s the reason MAC Address is used for system identification by ISPs. However, you can change or spoof your MAC address.
In this article, we will take a look at the benefits of changing your MAC Address and know how to change your MAC address in Windows.
Benefits Of Changing Your MAC (Spoofing)
- Reset Internet Data Quota
- Identity Protection
- Bypass MAC Filtering
- Prevent ISPs from tracking your MAC Address
Steps To Change Your MAC Address In Windows
- Head to the control panel by typing in – Control Panel – in the search bar.
- After launching the control panel, click on “Change adapter settings.”
- Now, you will observe several network connections listed. The network connection labeled as Ethernet should be the wired network and the marked WiFi network is your wireless network connection. Select the one you are connected to and right-click on it to head to its properties.
- Click on Configure to continue.
- Head to the Advanced tab. Now, you will encounter several options, just scroll down to find “Network Address.” Click on it then set value (6 pairs of numbers and characters without dashes).
- Click on OK to confirm the change.
In order to verify whether the MAC address modification was successful or not, you can head into the command prompt window and type in – ipconfig /all to check the physical address (it should now display the modified MAC address).
You can alternatively utilize quite a few MAC spoofing software tools for the job. However, we will recommend following the method above to change the MAC address.
Steps To Change Your MAC Address In Mac
- Open the terminal app.
- You need to generate a random Mac address which is something like this “00:d2:d3:d4:d5:d6“. If you do not have an idea about it – you can always use a Mac address generator online. Do note that we have chosen a random Mac address – you don’t want to utilize the same.
- When you have a random Mac address with you, type in the following command in the terminal with your desired Mac address:
sudo ifconfig en1 ether 00:d2:d3:d4:d5:d6
The above statement will change the Mac address. In case you run into any error, you can replace the “en1” with “en0” to make it work. - To make sure that the Mac address has been spoofed, you can type in the following in the terminal:
ifconfig en1 | grep etherAnd, you will see the Mac address displayed like:ether 00:d2:d3:d4:d5:d6 - If you observe it not working – you can try another command in the terminal:
sudo ifconfig en0 Wi-Fi aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff.And, then verify whether the Mac Address was changed successfully or not.
Wrapping Up
Did you change the MAC address manually as stated here or do you prefer a software tool rather changing the MAC address manually? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.