With the launch of iOS 14, Apple is bringing many privacy improvements. One of those improvements is the ability to mask your MAC address for individual wireless networks. Now you can choose to hide your MAC address for particular networks on your iPhone. In this article, we are going to explain what MAC address is, and how you can enable private MAC addresses for wireless networks on your iPhone in iOS 14.
Before we get to our tutorial, we first need to talk about MAC addresses. Not everyone knows what it is, so I have included a primer on the same. But if you don’t want to read it, you can click on the anchor links below to quickly move to the section you want:
What Is a MAC address?
We all use the internet all day every day, however very few of us consider how all this works. Have you ever asked yourself, how a website sends information to your computer when you click on a link? Well, the first part has to do with your IP address. Your computer sends out an IP address that makes it possible for the websites to send information to your computer. Think of the IP address as your home’s address.
Why You Should Mask Your MAC Address?
Since your MAC address is device-specific, you might want to mask it for privacy reasons. While you can leave it unmasked on your home network, it is a good habit to mask your MAC address when you are using a public network if you don’t want to divulge your private information.
With all that said, let’s get to our tutorial:
The steps are really easy. Just follow the tutorial, and you will be done in seconds:
- Launch Settings and tap on WiFi.
Mask Your iPhone’s MAC Address for Improving Privacy
This is a handy privacy feature by Apple for iPhones. While we have been able to change MAC address on Macs for a while now, it’s the first time that this feature has made to iPhones.
