The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

hotels to conduct her communications.
Although Broadwell had taken considerable pains to hide, she still was
not invisible. According to the New York Times, “because the sender’s
account had been registered anonyymouslyy, investigators had to use forensic
techniques—including a check of what other e-mail accounts had been
accessed from the same computer address—to identifyy who was writing the
e-mails.” 10
E-mail providers such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft retain log-in
records for more than a yyear, and these reveal the particular IP addresses a
consumer has logged in from. For example, if yyou used a public Wi-Fi at
Starbucks, the IP address would reveal the store’s phyysical location. The
United States currentlyy permits law enforcement agencies to obtain these
log-in records from the e-mail providers with a mere subpoena—no judge
required.
That means the investigators had the phyysical location of each IP
address that contacted that particular e-mail account and could then match
Broadwell’s device’s MAC address on the router’s connection log at those
locations. 11
With the full authorityy of the FBI behind them (this was a big deal,
because Petraeus was the CIA director at the time), agents were able to
search all the router log files for each hotel and see when Broadwell’s MAC
address showed up in hotel log files. Moreover, theyy were able to show that
on the dates in question Broadwell was a registered guest. The investigators
did note that while she logged in to these e-mail accounts, she never
actuallyy sent an e-mail.
When yyou connect to a wireless network, the MAC address on yyour
computer is automaticallyy recorded byy the wireless networking equipment.
Your MAC address is similar to a serial number assigned to yyour network
card. To be invisible, prior to connecting to anyy wireless network yyou need
to change yyour MAC address to one not associated with yyou.
To stayy invisible, the MAC address should be changed each time yyou
connect to the wireless network so yyour Internet sessions cannot easilyy be
correlated to yyou. It’s also important not to access anyy of yyour personal
online accounts during this process, as it can compromise yyour anonyymityy.
Instructions for changing yyour MAC address varyy with each operating