What is a MAC address and how do you find it on the iPhone 7

MAC in this contect has nothing to do with Macs, but stands for Media Access Control. It's a unique number given to every single network connection in devices (so there are milllions of them) - a Mac, for example will have one for the Ethernet port and one for the Wifi card. They take the form of six groups of two letters or numbers. On an iPhone it's listed as the 'Wireless address'. This page illustrates how to find it:

Office of Information Technology | The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The MAC address on an iPhone can be found in Settings->General-About->Wifi Address.

Beyond that, I've never heard of such an implementation, and in fact given what the MAC address actually does, it would seem unreasonable to think it can be randomized. A MAC address by definition needs to be unique for each network interface.

On a computer for instance, if you have more than 1 network connection, i.e wifi and ethernet, each connection has its own MAC address. Each device has its own address and its unique to itself, and even unique to the manufacturer. No two devices can ever have the same MAC address. Randomizing could cause this to happen so would be impossible to do even for Apple.

An iPhone broadcasts the MAC address to the router its connected to, and as far as I can find it always broadcasts the same thing.

This however, has nothing to do with websites you visit. There is no mechanism to view a MAC address of a connected device on a website. Because the MAC address is not broadcast over the internet at all, and even your devices local IP is kept private. The only thing a website would get and therefore a marketing database would see is the public IP address of the network you are connected to.

You would do if your wireless router is using Access Control, though from the wording that's probably not the issue here: however some IT departments may require the MAC address so that only authorised devices can connect to their network.

Thanks for the clarification and additional information.

I was thinking of what I learned here when I gave my response:

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/8233/20140612/apple-implements-random-mac-addr ess-on-ios-8-goodbye-marketers.htm

Paraphrasing the article, I interpret it to mean Apple has basically hidden MAC addresses originating in iOS devices effective with iOS 8 because it may divulge too much information.

Yes, even in that context, I can see it certainly makes sense for an IT department to request it - although they should realize what Apple has done.

The article is a little misleading. When you connect to a network iOS uses the real MAC address. However, when routers are scanning, before you choose to connect to a specific router, the fake address is sent.

You should never have to find a MAC address for an iPhone.

Tell us more about this form, if you wish a clearer explanation.

Thanks for all the followup information.