The Un-Official Proxomitron Forum

Graycode;

All you say is absolutely true.... or at least I agree with you 100%, so we're either both right or both wrong.

The sad fact is though, many (if not most) non-professional computer users have NetBios turned on, if for no other reason than Windows won't recognize any other devices within one's home network if it's not active. And if I'm not mistaken, most ISP's, or at least a fair number of them, don't bother filtering out any such "extraneous" information - it's not worth their time or bother to keep their customers from divulging private data.

And you'd think that campus (college, university, you name it) IT people would indeed try to protect their own, but not so. Nearly all of the MafIAA filings I've read (thanks to Ray Beckerman, linked above) include the MAC of the accused person(s). That's how they go for the John Doe, because as far as the cloud is concerned, the campus is just one IP address. (Albeit, a massively used one.) Without a MAC, any requests to an IT department would just get a blank stare - they dole out dynamic and static IP's by the hundreds, per hour. No way they're gonna be physically able to cooperate without that all-important MAC. Which of course just bolsters your point - it shouldn't be visible to the rest of the cloud, but it is.

RJB's site is not meant to be technically inclined, but slash dot is, of course. They've discussed this facet time and again, and so far as I can tell, no one has come up with a good reason why the above is true. I'll not get into any debate about that one, it's enough for me to know that I'm probably so far under their radar that I can safely find and d/l Duke Ellington's "Caravan" without too much fear.



Oddysey

Hi "Guyz",
Here is another mac addy changing proggie that works alittle better for me. I tossed it in C:\ drive and wrote a batch file, put a short cut in my start menu so when I start'er up, it resets the mac address and it doesn't take as long as madmacs does at connecting to the net.

Also the batch file also cleans out the DNS cache. Now here's the thing, . .instead of waiting to "reboot" to change the mac addy, you can just click the auto batch file and it will reset without rebooting. Or instead of putting the short cut in the start menu, you could add it to Proxo in the "PROGRAM or URL to run when proxo starts up". That way you can click the little arrow at the top of the proxo main dialog box and the program will reset the mac addy.

Of course you have to wait to "reconnect" to the net with the new mac addy, but it only takes a couple of seconds for me. And on this ISP I get a new IP on the network.
Now I've only tried this on XP. You might have to change the code for vista, . .not sure.
Anyway, just thought I'd stop in and let you know what I'd been up to.
Here's the batch file code:


Oh, .. one other thing, I renamed my nic "Wireless", that was what the macshift program was looking for, so I just renamed the nic to fit. Just make sure that the name in the code matches the name of your nic. I've also uploaded a "help" file I found on the net about commands and switches, so you can configure it for your machine.

Have a great and wonderful day, . .night, . .*Smiles*
"JAK"

PS: One other thing, this program does Not change your host name. Still working on that part. *Smiles*

(Mar. 16, 2009 04:58 AM)Oddysey Wrote: [ -> ]Graycode;

All you say is absolutely true.... or at least I agree with you 100%, so we're either both right or both wrong.

The sad fact is though, many (if not most) non-professional computer users have NetBios turned on, if for no other reason than Windows won't recognize any other devices within one's home network if it's not active. And if I'm not mistaken, most ISP's, or at least a fair number of them, don't bother filtering out any such "extraneous" information - it's not worth their time or bother to keep their customers from divulging private data.

And you'd think that campus (college, university, you name it) IT people would indeed try to protect their own, but not so. Nearly all of the MafIAA filings I've read (thanks to Ray Beckerman, linked above) include the MAC of the accused person(s). That's how they go for the John Doe, because as far as the cloud is concerned, the campus is just one IP address. (Albeit, a massively used one.) Without a MAC, any requests to an IT department would just get a blank stare - they dole out dynamic and static IP's by the hundreds, per hour. No way they're gonna be physically able to cooperate without that all-important MAC. Which of course just bolsters your point - it shouldn't be visible to the rest of the cloud, but it is.

RJB's site is not meant to be technically inclined, but slash dot is, of course. They've discussed this facet time and again, and so far as I can tell, no one has come up with a good reason why the above is true. I'll not get into any debate about that one, it's enough for me to know that I'm probably so far under their radar that I can safely find and d/l Duke Ellington's "Caravan" without too much fear.



Oddysey

I would agree with Graycode. Any (not all) non proffessional people ,like all my friends are behind routers, and NetBios is not turned on by default. If I'm not mistaken, other than for dial-up or VPN's, XP or later have NetBios turned off by default. I doubt that many MACs are really visible after the ISP. You are still going to be identifiable through an ISP (if someone has enough money to do so) no matter what your MAC is; you will still be identifiable by which port you come in under through their switches etc. They still require your credentials to track bandwidth use etc. My real world example of this would be my son's first room mate in University (40,000 students, fibre optic network) who did the MAC spoofing thing etc. because he was on a rez network, and d/l movies etc. 24/7. He was cut off several times for excessive bandwidth use. How did they track him? I'm not any type of expert, but this is how I see it.