New unknown device joined network

jonojus

I received an alert earlier that an iPhone jointed my network. I have two iPhones already showing on Fing (both mine, only two iPhones in the house) yet a new iPhone has been detected making a total of three iPhones showing on Fing. Could this be someone hacking my network or accessing it unauthorised?

Pixel

It’s unlikely to be someone hacking your network but not impossible. The easiest solution would be to block the iPhone but if  you are using private addressing on your iphones then it could be one of them appearing with a temporary mac address which would fool fing into thinking it’s a new iphone on your network.
It is safe to disable private mac addressing on your own, known, home network but definitely NOT on public networks.

Randomised MAC Address (AKA Private addressing)

Devices usually connect to the network using a static MAC address identifier assigned to them during manufacture, which enables the network to identify specific devices.

Some device operating systems offer enhanced privacy by randomising and changing this MAC address on a regular basis (known as Private address). This however means the network is unable to recognise the same device connecting and reconnecting, so MAC address based controls (such as Access Controls) will stop working for these devices.

It is possible to disable the randomised MAC address feature on most devices via their Wi-Fi settings. Information on how to do this and the impact can be found on the device manufacturer’s website.