IP addresses are assigned to computers when they connect to the internet and cha

Question

IP addresses are assigned to computers when they connect to the internet and change depending on your location. However, I read that your computer also has an address that doesn't change. So, when you connect to the internet, your IP address is assigned by the network and your address of your computer is shown to the network as well? Is that how the government finds out or the network you are using can determine what sites you searched or what you downloaded?

What I was thinking was if your computer did not have an address, how could they locate your computer once you left the network and moved somewhere else? I'm sure that they are able to now and was interested in understanding how the government or someone can find a user's location when they connect to the internet.

Explanation / Answer

The other address you are talking about is a MAC address, but that is only used at the local link level, not to communicate across the open internet. Only your IP address is used when talking across the internet, however there are other ways to track you.

For one, the manual way is to contact whoever has the IP address and ask who was attached at the time. Your ISP may be to see the MAC address of your computer (if you were directly attaching to the cable modem) in their logs for the time and any hotspots you connect at can tell the mac address of the systems connected to them. This doesn't provide reliable tracking though as MAC addresses are trivially spoofed.

Another, easier way to be tracked is through cookies and other information unique to your computer that is shared by the browser. There is a lot of information that most browsers expose that tell unique things about your computer such as what set of plugins and versions are available, what browser and OS you are using, possibly some other accounts that you have, etc. When gathered together, this information actually is pretty good at identifying you and is actually part of how advertisers track you across multiple websites and locations.

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