[SOLVED] Find My Stolen Mini Mac By Mac Address

[farzin680]

My Mini Mac Stolen From My Office and I Think It's Stolen By My Colleague. All Of Them Are Software Engineer and I Think The Thief Will Install The Fresh Version of Mac OS X On The Stolen Mini Mac. So I Know I Can't Find It Any More By Find My Mac Ability Provided By Apple.
So I Went To Police Station and Gave Them Stolen Mini Mac's MAC ADDRESS For Wifi And Ethernet By Stolen Mini Mac's Box. The Police Told Me , They Can Send a Letter To All ISPs And Ask Them To Trace All Packets For The Sender MAC ADDRESS To Find My Mini Mac.

The First Question : Is It Possible ?!
The Second Question : If Thief Person , Use A Wifi Bundle To Access The Internet (Every External Wifi Bundle Has Unique MAC ADDRESS) , Can Police Still Find Him/Her ?!

Thank You All.

 

[bill001g]

You need to learn how mac and IP addresses really work.

The mac address is not transmitted over the internet only the local router would know it. It is highly unlikely any ISP has anything that tracks mac addresses that connect to routers. That assume that they control them in the first place. Most people run their own routers.

 

[velocityg4]

Use Find My Mac to hopefully lock it. Making it a paperweight. Note that it will only work if they try to use it before wiping it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204756

In the future use FileVault with a Firmware password. The firmware password locks it from booting from anything other than the boot drive without a password. Making it so it can't be erased and reused. Filevault encrypts your drive. So, all which can be used is the guest account. Which exists in a simplified OS X outside the boot partition. The purpose of which is so that the computer can broadcast its location.

Other than that. You won't find it. Even if you could somehow trace the MAC address. An ISP would never give you the users location.

 

[farzin680]

You need to learn how mac and IP addresses really work.

The mac address is not transmitted over the internet only the local router would know it. It is highly unlikely any ISP has anything that tracks mac addresses that connect to routers. That assume that they control them in the first place. Most people run their own routers.

Dear Friend,

I Know How Networks Work and What's Mac Address Role Exactly.
But The Police Told Me They Can Ask All ISPs To Trace All Packets And Open Them - Read Their Header To Find Which Packet Contains My Mini Mac's Mac Address. From That ISPs Contract To That User They Can Find The Location of Internet Owner.

This Is More Possible I Think , If He/She Use The Mobile Network Hotspot To Connect To The Internet. Then Mobile Number and Accurate Location Will More Accessible Than DSL Lines Internets.

 

[farzin680]

Use Find My Mac to hopefully lock it. Making it a paperweight. Note that it will only work if they try to use it before wiping it.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204756

In the future use FileVault with a Firmware password. The firmware password locks it from booting from anything other than the boot drive without a password. Making it so it can't be erased and reused. Filevault encrypts your drive. So, all which can be used is the guest account. Which exists in a simplified OS X outside the boot partition. The purpose of which is so that the computer can broadcast its location.

Other than that. You won't find it. Even if you could somehow trace the MAC address. An ISP would never give you the users location.

Dear Friend,

I Can't Do That And Any One Else Can't Do That In This Way.
If The Thief , Don't Startup My Mini Mac Normally , And Boot It By An Startup Removal Flash , He/She Can Install A Fresh Mac OS X On That Device And My "Find My Mac" Will Automatically Will Remove From That Mini Mac ...

 

[bill001g]

Dear Friend,

I Know How Networks Work and What's Mac Address Role Exactly.
But The Police Told Me They Can Ask All ISPs To Trace All Packets And Open Them - Read Their Header To Find Which Packet Contains My Mini Mac's Mac Address. From That ISPs Contract To That User They Can Find The Location of Internet Owner.

This Is More Possible I Think , If He/She Use The Mobile Network Hotspot To Connect To The Internet. Then Mobile Number and Accurate Location Will More Accessible Than DSL Lines Internets.

You have no clue how mac address work by this response even though you say you do. It pretty much proves you are too lazy to even look at a wiki or even read the response I left explaining why the ISP can't get them,

The police would have never told you ISP will do anything for you. The ISP will not even do anything for the police without a warrant.

 

[farzin680]

You have no clue how mac address work by this response even though you say you do. It pretty much proves you are too lazy to even look at a wiki or even read the response I left explaining why the ISP can't get them,

The police would have never told you ISP will do anything for you. The ISP will not even do anything for the police without a warrant.

Thank You For The Answer , But Keep In Mind That There Was No Offense In My Words To You Bro.
Thanks For Your Patient and Your Knowledge.

God Bless You.

 

[jsmithepa]

bill is right, police is talking out of their a**es.

In tech parlance, MAC is only locally significant, meaning is known only within the segment the NIC is in, so basically Your ISP is not going to see it.

With Find My Mac, as soon as he fires up the machine and connects to the Internet, you should get a location ping of where it is.

In a perfect world, Find My Mac ties your account to the machine serial# and well it doesn't matter if thief loads a new OS but NOOOoooo, Apple won't do that for you.

 

[farzin680]

bill is right, police is talking out of their a**es.

In tech parlance, MAC is only locally significant, meaning is known only within the segment the NIC is in, so basically Your ISP is not going to see it.

With Find My Mac, as soon as he fires up the machine and connects to the Internet, you should get a location ping of where it is.

In a perfect world, Find My Mac ties your account to the machine serial# and well it doesn't matter if thief loads a new OS but NOOOoooo, Apple won't do that for you.

I Don't Understand Finally !
Does Apple Pair Machine Serial Number To The Find My Mac Or Not ?! If Yes , So i'll Be Able To See My Mac's Location Every Time Till To The End Of The World !

My Mini Mac Stolen From My Office and I Think It's Stolen By My Colleague. All Of Them Are Software Engineer and I Think The Thief Will Install The Fresh Version of Mac OS X On The Stolen Mini Mac.

My Question Is , Will I See My Mac's Location Even The Thief Install Fresh Clean Mac OS X On My Stolen Mac ?
Is The Serial Number Of Machine Pair With The Find My Mac Function on Apple ? If yes , I Can Find It Even Fresh Clean Mac OS X Installation ; No ?!

Thank You All.

 

[velocityg4]

I Don't Understand Finally !
Does Apple Pair Machine Serial Number To The Find My Mac Or Not ?! If Yes , So i'll Be Able To See My Mac's Location Every Time Till To The End Of The World !

No, they don't. Once it is wiped it is over.

Which is why firmware passwords are important. As a firmware password blocks them from wiping it. While Filevault prevents them from booting it or accessing any data stored on it. While this is no use now. It is important to use both on future Macs.

 

[bill001g]

Lets make this simple.

You hook your mini to your router in your house. Only your router see the mac address. Everything past that uses the IP address that was assigned to your router. The ISP only see the IP address not any mac addresses.

So talking about a mac address is worthless. In addition the IP address may not even be unique. If it is used via a mobile broadband hotspot many people share ip addresses.

Tracking a IP address even if the software can get it requires a warrant for the ISP to release information on location. All kinds of bad people would make up lies about stolen equipment if the ISP would give out IP location just because you asked.

The only method that even comes close to working are the stolen device locators that give out GPS locations. Even then the police are very reluctant to raid someone house based on that. When you consider people fake 911 call to get swat to kick the doors of celebrates.

The only real option is to make the device unusable to a thief and hope they learn its not worth stealing.

 

[jsmithepa]

First problem: Trace the device's Geolocation. Second Problem: Have proof of ownership. Third problem: convince local authority will use their valuable time to chase down your electronic. Good luck.