MAC stands for Media Access Control, and every network device has a MAC address, even Windows PCs. A MAC address uniquely identifies a network chipset to the world. Your computer or phone's wireless chipset has a MAC address that no other device in the world has. A MAC address is programmed into the chipset at the factory and it can never be reused or overwritten - it is tied to the hardware that it was programmed to for perpetuity.
A MAC address consists of six groups of hexadecimal characters. It appears as six groups of two characters, separated by colons or dashes. These characters can consist of the numbers from 0-9 and the letters from A-F, for a total of 16 possible characters (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, and F). The first six characters (or three groups) identify the organization that the MAC address is registered to. For example, a MAC address that begins with D4:9A:20 can be tied back to Apple, Inc., a MAC address that begins with 00:03:FF can be tied back to Microsoft Corporation, and a MAC address that begins with 00:13:CE can be tied back to Intel Corporation. This would be the company that manufactured the network chipset that is being identified by the MAC address. The 4th, 5th, and 6th group identify the specific chipset by that manufacturer.
MAC addresses can be used to tie network traffic to a certain client, but Kenyon does not track or log this data in a way that can be used to personally identify you. Kenyon only uses aggregate data which has been stripped of IP address and MAC address to better serve you and for diagnostic purposes. This data will never leave Kenyon LBIS, and it is discarded after a diagnostic investigation has closed. Having a MAC address does not allow a network administrator to see what you are doing. For example, we might be able to see that a client (not a person) visited an online banking website, but we cannot see any of the data, even in transit. We only use this information to fulfill our duties to members of the Kenyon Electronic Community as defined in the Kenyon's Computer Use Policies, including your right to expect reasonable security against intrusion and damage to our electronically stored information.