I known Apple stopped MAC address API since iOS 7. But I just found the app Fing can get MAC address. How could it happen?
If I use samillar way to get MAC address, is it allowed by iTunes review?
BTW: the How to get iOS device MAC address programmatically doesn't really help. I need MAC address, not [UIDevice identifierForVendor].
A MAC address is a string that is unique for every computer device. iOS 11 does absolutely not allow apps to read these MAC addresses. We were told by Apple engineers that this is a privacy feature of iOS 11 because some companies misused the unique MAC address to track users.
Apps get MAC addresses from your operating system by asking for it. You really should be careful about what apps you run. In practice no one around you will be careful so your MAC address's presence will make it all the way back to the goon squads at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.
If someone is using the same ISP as you, they actually can trace you. MAC addresses are broadcast through the network (aka the network that all computers connected to the ISP are on), therefore someone could, theoretically, trace your computer. That is, if someone is inclined to do so.
Fing can only get the device's MAC address if the device is connected to a WiFi network. I suspect it implements an ARP scan on the local network and matches the known local IP address to determine the local MAC address.
There are some questions that address capturing ARP data here and here
What Fing does is it pings each IP on the network and builds the ARP Cache and then it reads the Mac Address from the Arp Cache table.
Here is my own answer after half year.
It is possible to check ARP table on iOS device to get iOS device MAC address, technically. See this: How do I query the ARP table on iPhone?
However, the App Store will reject your App by this. But, people said fetch the host, router and other device's MAC address will be fine. I haven't proved it yet.
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