BT Hub and device MAC address confusion

[TheaR]

No idea if this is the right 'board' to ask this (none others seemed quite right) but hopefully someone can help with this bizarre discovery?

Was making my occasional visit online to the BT Hub Manager to check what devices were showing and noticed that whilst the MAC address for one of two iphones listed is the correct one for my current-in-use phone (which displays that number in Settings on the phone) it is a different MAC address (not the one on my physical phone) which responds to my turning wi-fi on and off on my physical phone in my attempt to verify which was correct on the Hub Manager - i.e. the device appears and disappears from the list of Connected Devices when setting the Filter to  either [Show Connected] or [Show disconnected].

Does anyone have an idea of what is going on as it's confusing the heck out of me.  I did have a previous iphone, but am no longer able to check those details, but even so I still can't see why this would be happening.

Thanks very much if someone can shed light.

T

[yorkspark]

It's the private wifi address feature of the iphone, it will eventually fill up the smarthub and can prevent connection, turn it off for your home network

[WSH]

A lot of phone manufacturers now use a MAC randomisation system for privacy/anti-tracking.  It can usually be turned off on the phone, allowing the default MAC to show.  Also, be aware that each connection interface generally has its own MAC.  Ethernet and WiFi are different, as are LAN and WAN etc.

Tracking MAC addresses to see what is connected & MAC filtering was not a lot of use back in the day and it certainly isn’t worth the effort today, despite the hype.