As part of iOS 14's forthcoming release, Apple have introduced the ability to have what they call a "Private Wi-FI address" on your iPhone, iPad and iWatch devices.

The Wi-FI address - more commonly known as the MAC address - is a twelve-digit code of numbers and letters, unique to your device's network hardware. It can also be called the Physical address, and it's used by networks to keep track of all the individual devices connected.

Most of the time, this is totally unchanging, but Apple have introduced this feature as an additional option to keep your device safe if you connect to a lot of different Wi-Fi networks regularly, coffee shops, pubs shops etc. There's very little that can actually be exploited by having your MAC address alone, but by having it change, a Wi-Fi operator might be able to roughly track your different connection instances on their Wi-Fi network. You can read a little more about security on the Glide network here.

As Glide is a residential service, our network is expecting your devices to keep the same MAC address, as such we use it to make sure that you're always being given the right speeds and you don't have to log into your account all the time to renew the connection.

Disabling Private Wi-Fi Addresses

Handily, Apple have taken networks like Glide's into account, and provide instructions on how to disable the feature for certain network. This means you can keep it enabled for other networks, but disabled when connected to Glide:

 Source: Apple Support