You’ve probably seen those Wi-Fi hotspots already that offer free trial connections for 20, 30, or 60 minutes before. The way they track your device is usually by its MAC address, so if you can change its MAC address you can keep getting free trial connections.

I’m at a McDonald’s in Hong Kong right now and the only Wi-Fi connection that works for me only offers 20 minutes free trial. Back when I was using Windows I would use a software like MAC Address Changer to change my wireless card’s MAC address. One thing I didn’t like about it though is Windows requires a reboot for the MAC address change to take effect.

Now that I’m using Ubuntu 12.04, I no longer need additional software nor had to reboot my machine. This feature is built in and very easy to use:

1. Click the wireless icon on the top of the screen and select Edit Connections.

2. Click the Wireless tab.

3. Select the SSID of the wireless connection that you want to spoof the MAC address for and click theEdit button.

4. In the settings below, enter a value for Cloned MAC address and hit Save. I normally just copy the Device MAC address and change the last character (values 0-9 or A-F).

5.If you’re already connected, disconnect and reconnect to re-link the new MAC address and it should now work. If you want to check whether the new setting took effect you can type in ip link ls in a terminal window.