Unity: We have to charge for every install because we only see totals. Also Unity: We can tell which install is which, so you won't be overcharged.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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The MAC address is the address of the network card, which can be either built into the motherboard, or on a replaceable card... so if that was the only thing they tracked, you could replace everything except that... unless you have a network card with an editable MAC (they don't need to be unique worldwide, only on the network they directly connect to).
Microsoft seems to use a slightly different system, where they'd generate a sort of hash for all the components, then allow a limited number of changes per year, so you can change the while computer a limited number of times a year.... but they call home all the time.
My phone at least has a setting where I can choose what it does regarding a MAC address.
It can either use a randomised MAC address or it can use the MAC address of the router itself (can't really see why you'd ever want to do that). So while I am sure traditionally the MAC address comes from the network card it's clearly not the only way to derive one.
Also I'm almost positive that I went to change my graphics card and that changed my MAC address. It was years ago so I can't remember the details but I remember it causing some problems with some work software until I realised that's what had happend and just remapped the licence.
The MAC address is the Ethernet address of a network card endpoint, whether fixed or not. Multiple network cards, multiple MAC addresses. A single network card can also respond to more than one MAC address, or use randomized ones like in the case of your phone. They still tend to come with a factory fixed one, that is just used as a default when nothing else is changing it.
That's... are you sure is what it says? There are MDM managed networks where a router can push an MDM profile to a device, and set its MAC that way, maybe it's something like that?
A graphics card "shouldn't" have a MAC address... unless it has an output which can push Ethernet traffic (FireWire, HDMI HEC, etc.). A bit weird to have a licence locked to the GPU's whatever-port MAC, but possible.