If you're letting the device access the Internet, you will also be able to see all of the packets it sends through your adapter.

But if the device does connect to your WiFi adapter, if it's assigning IP addresses, you will be able to see both the MAC address and the IP address you assigned, and with the MAC address you can infer roughly what kind of device it is based off the manufacturer's portion of the MAC address. If the device doesn't connect to that adapter, then you can't gather any information about the device.

The easiest way to get information on a device on a different network is to simply join that network.Įdit: As you say in another comment, you have a WiFi adapter that someone can connect to. There are probably ways to gather more info, but it's probably more trouble than it's worth. According to one commenter it may also be possible to sniff the device's traffic given close enough proximity. Specifically for mobile phones, you can probably get information via Bluetooth if it's enabled on the device, but you have to be in close proximity. Without getting too technical, unless the device has its own static IP address that you know, which is unlikely for a mobile device, if you query the network from the outside you'll get the public IP of the router, not the devices. Without access to the network that the device is on it's pretty difficult to get any information on anything other than that of the router. With that said, in your comment you asked if you could get any other information on the device(s). In other words, once you leave the network, unless the device(s) in question is/are directly connected to a router you will get the MAC address of the switch rather than the individual devices when querying that network.ĭepending on the security of your network, you may not even be able to get the MAC addresses of devices on the same switch since they may be on different VLANs. MAC addresses are hardware addresses and are usually hidden behind a router unless you are on the same network or have direct access to the device. If it's not in the same network, you most likely won't be able to.

How to get the mac address linux