Microsoft Can Track Users via a Windows Device ID

Post by efilife » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 10:29 AM UTC

egamirorrim wrote: post #10

Truly terrifying. But also shocking that a 'hacker' is using windows

Post by cryo32 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 10:36 AM UTC

givinguflac wrote: post #17

tremon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both systemd and dbus have a similar device id for Linux, which e.g. Chrome reads at startup: https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/systemd/machine-id.5.en.h... https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/dbus-bin/dbus-uuidgen.1.e...

Is this specific to Debian?

Post by nehal3m » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 10:52 AM UTC

efilife wrote: post #22

egamirorrim wrote: post #10

Truly terrifying. But also shocking that a 'hacker' is using windows

Some hackers want to spend their time doing cool stuff rather than constantly fixing their system

Post by ale42 » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 10:58 AM UTC

echelon_musk wrote: post #5

Terr_ wrote: post #2

TLDR: Microsoft can (at least) correlate your Windows installation to all website domains you visit while using Windows. It's unclear what the mechanism is, but I'd wager their "telemetry" is constantly revealing your installation ID, your current IP, and domains that were recently resolved.

Worse than just domains as TFA shows full URLs are recorded. Reminds me of Google Safebrowsing.

Post by crtasm » Tue, Jul 07, 2026, 10:58 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #21

Vague article. No evidence that Microsoft can see what web pages you are visiting in Chrome or Firefox (for example).