Is there any problem if i gave someone my wifi mac address

Probably not. The MAC address is a unique 12 character string assigned by the manufacturer. Unless your device has been granted access to some secure network based solely on its MAC address... giving it out should not be a problem.

It is not common for network security to rely on MAC addresses.

Phenom95 wrote:

Is there any problem if i gave someone my wifi mac address???

Why do you want to do that in the first place?

The MAC (Media Access Control) address is unique for every ethernet or WiFi interface and is assigned when the chip is created.

When you send network packets over ethernet or WiFi, your MAC address is included in that message. It will be stripped off of the message at your router, and the body of the message will get a new router MAC address for the next hop. So you are letting other devices in your local network see your MAC address, and when you use your WiFi in a public WiFi hotspot, the MAC address is visible to the hotspot router, and any device also using the hotspot that may be sniffing WiFi traffic at the hotspot.

As mentioned by piperspace, some network facilities (think schools, or other places where they only want members of the select group to have access) need to register their MAC address so that the routing equipment will know your device is part of the allowed group of users (this is an alternative to using passwords that may be given out to visiting friends, that the facility does not want). NOTE: There are some Device/OS/Software combinations that allow changing the MAC address that can fool such MAC address checks by pretending to be a registered device.

And in a few situations, there is sofware that uses the MAC address as a Software registration key, so that you give the MAC address to the software company and they generate a license key that will only work on the device with that MAC address. Of course if you have your motherboard replaced, or you need to exchange your iOS device for a replacement as part of a warranty repair, or you just decide to upgrade your equipment for newer better device, your MAC address will change and the licensed software locked to your MAC address will not run, requiring you to contact the company and get a new license key, if the company is still in business.

As said the MAC address is unique to the device, so in theory it might be used to identify you. But for the most part it does not mean a whole heck of a lot, as you have been broadcasting it everytime you access the network, especially when out in public.

So while I would wonder why someone wants your MAC address, if it is for a good reason, then it is most likely not all that big a deal. If it is for a software licence, the software may not be a good deal in the long run, but that is a purchase/tradeoff decision.

BobHarris wrote:

NOTE: There are some Device/OS/Software combinations that allow changing the MAC address that can fool such MAC address checks by pretending to be a registered device.

FWIW, spoofing MAC addresses is trivial, and everything necessary to change your MAC address is part of OS X itself.

There is at least network protocol that actually depends on setting the MAC address to specific values, too — this capability is something that many network controllers expressly permit, going back to the earliest days of Ethernet.

Put another way, MAC security really isn't all that secure.

MrHoffman wrote:

There is at least network protocol that actually depends on setting the MAC address to specific values, too

Besides DECnet, what other protocols (It is a serious question, as my low level network knownledge is mostly odd bits and pices of knowledge gleamed from running into it like a brick wall, or what I read on the internet). And if it is only DECnet, I'm not sure the Phemom95 with his iPhone 5c cares 😁).