Today around 12:00pm EDT, a post was uploaded to r/whenthe by u/concussionmaker_91 about how despite their multiple privacy measures, Reddit was still able to ping their location and show them an ad about a business in close proximity to their house. Then, in less than 2 hours after the post when live, their year old account was permanently banned. 
Redditors in the comment section used a website called SnooSnoop to see if this account has done anything malicious in the past that may be grounds for a ban only to find nothing. 
I don’t think this is a mere coincidence and some comments I read on the post may be there to dismiss the situation.
I’m currently working on archiving the post and comments in case Reddit decides to try and erase this entire situation from the web, I’ll attach the files when I do.
Unless they’re spoofing their MAC address, hardware fingerprinting is much more reliable and predictable. It’s easy to watch a MAC bounce all over the country/world in a matter of minutes.
At this point in history, it’s too late to implement identity protections. Your profile is already built, stored, and backed up. They even know your deleted edgelord MySpace account and that you unfriended Tom (you monster). I guess if you were born in a ditch without a SSN, and never signed up for anything, not even a house/apartment, you could go under the radar.
MAC addresses don’t leave your home network, they are layer 2
I’m speaking from the point of view of the app you willingly installed that tracks your MAC address. Part of the reason iOS11 implemented built in spoofing, but I can tell you right now, I know Tim Apple ain’t on the users side anymore.
Never has been.
MAC address is in the data link layer of the networking stack, and would only be seen by other devices on the same network as you. This isn’t visible to websites you visit (unless you’re on the same subnet), and as TCP packets go through network hops, the MAC address is replaced with with the routers MAC address for each hop.
The reason for MAC address randomization (standard on iPhone and Android) is not for anonymity to the websites you visit, but is there to anonymize the wifi broadcasts in your general vicinity, like a 30 meter radius. The MAC address is randomized so that broadcasts to check wifi networks while you’re out and about can’t be used to track your physical location.
I’m speaking from the point of view of the app you gave permissions to collect your hardware data. Y’all are talking like I think a MAC is transmitted over tcp. I don’t need an intro to OSI. Those apps use the hardware data to know if you’re using Samsung, LG, Apple, etc and they store large databases of MAC addresses on individuals. They can even build a local hardware profile to see if you sold your device, to whom, and what device you replaced it with.
i was going to say something along these lines and also that the data they have on you has life long implications.
i used to work for a data broker and the tricks that their data scientists were able to cook up to track and predict people’s behavior was really unnerving to me.
the company’s clientele was mostly high end retail & real estate and geared towards predicting the likelihood of your next “lifetime milestone purchases” (that’s what they called it). i had access to the product; so i looked up its portfolio for me and it predicted that i was ever going to buy a house or car.
i chuckled at it back then because my salary as a software engineer at the time was a very comfortable 6 figures so it didn’t seem likely to me. 8 years later i’m scraping by working for a local non-profit, i’m still driving the same car and home ownership has never seemed further away.