I think someone has spoofed my MAC address!?

Hello,

So I have also read that you can "spoof" someones mac address, now if this is true, I have my routers wifi led light going crazy as if there were something being downloaded or someone using my wifi but I am not connected, I have mac address whitelist for my iphones mac address only.!! My neighbor also has an iphon, can he duplicate my mac adress on his iphone to gain access to the routers whitelist and steel my wifi ??? Please help

Here is the information you need to know about a MAC address. Most important to understand is that "MAC" is not short for McIntosh. It's an internet thing, not an Apple thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_address

The MAC address of your phone is burned into hardware. No one can spoof it and your IP address.

The only purpose of a MAC address is to identify your phone to a WiFi router. So the only benefit of spoofing a MAC address is to connect to a router that is restricted to specific devices. So how would anyone know if your MAC address were spoofed? Unless they were using the same router?

What exactly is it that is happening that someone has told you that your MAC address was spoofed? Do they own the router?

The flaw in that argument is that your MAC address is not part of a message, and your IP address will change many times during the day as you move from WiFi network to WiFi network or from cell tower to cell tower.

All devices accessing a site using the same WiFi router you will have the same IP address (the IP address of the router itself). The IP address you see on your phone is a "private" IP address known only to your device and the router. However, your MAC address is not included in a post to a web site.

Yes, and it won't be the addresses of the devices. It will be the addresses of the router. An HTTP header will contain the IP address and the host name of the actual device (iPhone) so the site can return data to the correct device. An HTTP header CAN be spoofed and frequently is by hackers and criminals.

There is a sure way to secure your session with the site so that it cannot be spoofed; always use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) when accessing the site. You do this by explicitly putting HTTPS: before the URL rather than defaulting to HTTP:

For example, to access Apple's site you would enter https://www.apple.com or https://apple.com. Some sites do not support SSL; you should probably avoid those sites.

It is true that no two iPhones can have the same MAC address because an iPhone's MAC address cannot be hacked or spoofed ON AN IPHONE. Your MAC address can be spoofed on some other device such as a computer or Android phone. The bigger question, though is how does said person claim to know your MAC address? It is not sent as part of any protocol that a web site could receive. So the whole story sounds suspicious. Has said person told you your MAC address? Have you verified it? What about your IP address? Same questions.

Either said person is lying, or there is a highly sophisticated attack against you in progress. In either case you should probably contact the police.

If the person has not provided your IP address and MAC address to verify this is most likely a hoax. Whether it is a prank hoax or a criminal hoax is up for you to decide. As I have said several times, there is no way that a website could know your MAC address at all whether original or spoofed, as the MAC address is not sent as part of an HTTP exchange. Similarly, your MAC address is not part of an email or iMessage header, or any other communication that your phone might send. So the fact that someone says they have your MAC address makes everything else they say suspect.

Yes, someone in your house would have the same IP address if they were using WiFi.