How To Hide Your MAC Address From WiFi Positioning Databases

WiFi positioning databases store the BSSID, GPS coordinates and RSSI value. The information is collected by wardriving efforts and/or crowd sourced using mobile phones such as the iPhone and Android phones. Several well known companies such as Google and Apple maintain WiFi positioning databases.

We maintain a tool called OUI lookup Tool that provides a way to look up OUIs, MAC address prefixes, and full MAC addresses. If a full MAC address is searched an option to geolocate the BSSID is provided. Results can also be emailed from the site.

My Wireless Router’s MAC Address Is Now DE:AD:BE:EF:13:37

I have received feedback from many users of OUI Lookup Tool asking how to prevent their WiFi router’s info from getting added to these databases. While you can turn off SSID broadcasting this will not hide your WiFi router’s MAC address from the techniques used by these organizations.

The only practical option is to change your WiFi router’s wireless MAC address to a MAC address that already exists in the WiFi positioning databases. Doing this will cause your WiFi router to get fingerprinted in the wrong location.

One MAC address that can be used is DE:AD:BE:EF:13:37. This MAC address geolocates to Latitude: 44.4899982 Longitude: 11.3569865 Piazza di Porta Maggiore, 2-4 40125 Bologna, Italy.

Related posts:

1. Locate Rogue Access Points Using Data From WiFi Positioning Databases
2. WiFi Positioning Databases
3. 192.168.1.1 – Linksys Router Default IP Address
4. 192.168.0.1 – D-Link Router LAN Interface Default IP Address
5. OUI Lookup Tool – MAC Address Lookup Tool

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Filed under: How To Guides, WLAN Security