What does ISP see when my computer connects?

[Catacombs]

And what the ISP sees after I start a Qube?

How can I see what my MAC is on a receiving website. Documentation suggests that it would see a spoofed MAC. But that spoofed MAC needs to be unpredictable and look normal.

When I had at home internet, the ISP allowed me onto their connection according to the MAC address of their router. Which MAC is being broadcast across internet?

Am I worrying about the wrong detail?

[Steve Coleman]

On 4/5/20, Catacombs <ggg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And what the ISP sees after I start a Qube?
>
> How can I see what my MAC is on a receiving website. Documentation suggests
> that it would see a spoofed MAC. But that spoofed MAC needs to be
> unpredictable and look normal.

Nobody but your local router will ever see your MAC address. If your
machine is behind a firewall then they will only see the IP address of
your cable modem or firewall, depending on how you connect to the
Internet. Very likely you have no control over the IP address that
your Internet provider assigned to your own equipment.

People who spoof/randomize their MAC address are generally concerned
with use-cases where the need to connect to a public WiFi where the
MAC address is announced on that untrusted WiFi router such as at an
internet cafe or coffee shop. In that case randomization of the MAC
can help to somewhat hide your identity, or at least make it less
predictable as to which MAC address connection is actually yours. Any
logging of session would only have captured some random MAC address
which is not in any way tied to your physical WiFi card NIC.

If you care about your assigned IP address being visible to the
websites that you visit then you should look into setting up a VPN, in
which case your address on the internet will always appear as a random
address at your VPN provider, or one of the hosts that they rent for
network services. In other words, it will never be your own IP
address, or internet providers, but rather one that is shared with
many thousands of other people on a rotational basis.

[rickey]

MAC- address is layer- 2 address and it is "staying" into your local network. If you are in a place where the administrator having ip- addresses assigned by dhcp (or manually) always on the same pc, based on the mac, you most probably would like to spoof it so to be different than the expected one. if they use sso though, will be a problem, because when you change your mac- you still will be using your assigned credentials to access the network, and Internet so the admin will know that your computer has different mac. some, even block the macs- which are not "known". as  Steve Coleman has mentioned spoofing it in publicly accessible networks will randomize your laptop. if a further check occur, keep in mind that nowadays there are cameras everywhere, and they might show you are using your laptop at certain time, so if the mac cannot be found, I guess there will be more questions then.