Quote:
Originally Posted by planes Nowadays it really doesn't matter because the MAC address can be spoofed with software. |
Actually, it's not that easy.
Many ISP's bind their service to your NIC's MAC address, so spoofing this causes your internet to stop working. You can still get your ISP to update to the new MAC address but the extra work is not something you'd want to do on a daily basis.
The definitive answer:
NO a web site cannot determine your MAC address over the internet. The MAC address is only visible to the first hop in the routing chain to the destination server. (there may be typically 5-12 hops in this route.)
BUT:
A website which communicates with dedicated client software installed on your computer CAN find out ANY information programmatically accessible to an application, from the Processor serial Nr , to the NIC's MAC address.
If you use any ebay software (Turbo Lister, Blackthorne) these programs are executables installed on your computer. From the vantage point where they are run (your own processor) the can see and pull all hardware information, and communicate it to ebay at the next connection.
If you used Turbo lister with account1, TL could have sent your MAC address to eBay. (it may or may not, I don't know, but if I were a programmer for eBay I would be crazy not to take this opportunity to gather info). FACT: this info is certainly visible to TL
Now account1 gets suspended, and you reformat your HD, reinstall the OS, start clean with a virgin drive.
You open Account2
You re-install Turbo lister from scratch. Brand new TL installation, no leftover clues from any previous account.
You fire up TL and TL starts an HTTP connection each time you run it, and connects to eBay. This it does on startup, even if you never upload any listings to eBay.
TL can gather your MAC address and send it to eBay in a blink. Now eBay can see that the MAC adress from account1 is the same as the MAC address from account2. And MAC addresses are 48 bit numbers which are unique in the universe.
Thinking that "they wouldn't do that because it is an invasion of privacy" is abit naive.
I would not want to bet my business and years of hard work on such a wishful assumption.
Microsoft already gathers this kind of data on every OS boot, and if it finds a different NIC with a different MAC address, will unashamedly tell you that your hardware has changed sufficiently to require re-activation.
And Microsoft has a very legally correct privacy policy.
Note that eBay's privacy policy lays out that they do not SHARE any info gathered about you, but does not specifically state what info they gather, or if they place any limits to what they gather.
AND , in the interest of fraud prevention, they may share any information with 3rd parties. as required to investigate. So if they suspect something fishy, all bets are off with respect to the privacy statements. Their suspicion would not be enough to get a court order, but they are enough to cause them to trash the privacy policy for any account.
This is similar to Pre-Crime (from the movie Minority Report)