IP address
The numeric address identifying your connection on the internet, visible to every site you contact.
Glossary
MAC address
Also called: Hardware address, physical address
A hardware identifier for a network interface, used only on the local network segment and never visible to the websites you visit.
Why it matters
It is routinely confused with an IP address, which leads people to buy a VPN expecting it to hide something that was never exposed. Websites cannot see your MAC address with or without a VPN, because every router replaces it before forwarding the packet onward.
What most explanations leave out
What can see it is your router, everything else on the same Wi-Fi, and captive portals that use it to remember an authorised session. The countermeasure is MAC randomisation, which every current phone platform applies per network by default — not a VPN, which operates a layer above and cannot affect it.
Related terms
Terms are defined here because they appear in our scoring rubric or in provider reviews, not to fill a glossary.