Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is literally court documents showing this was used by surveilling in at least one case. How that is paranoia
Could you share more context and details?
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Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
11–20 of 66 posts
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#12Windows has a hardcoded list of Microsoft domain names that entirely bypass the hosts file. I see nothing about this, so I would assume there is no countermeasure here. Curiously, this approach appears to have been tested as working anyway.
Is there anyone maintaining a canonical list of such domains and hosts? This would be useful to add as firewall rules on a router upstream of any windows hosts, or to a pihole.
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#13 > Court reporting in 2026 established that Microsoft held a GDID-to-URL/time/IP association in one investigation.
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#14Wouldn't it make more sense to instead use the same GDID on thousands of hosts? Or a random GDID on each read? No GDID sounds like it sticks out a lot more.
Trying to make windows work differently than what Microsoft wants is a losing proposition.
It would make more sense just not use windows to begin with.
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#15"The mutation path", "the fully lab-validated line. Other accepted builds warn.", "Status can still inspect", "command, verdict, exit code", "device-identity rehydrate sources", "the network gate", "real-shaped PUID"?
WTF.
That was extremely difficult to read. I'm assuming it's LLMese (I've had less trouble with reading the writing of ESL'ers), but one of the strangest dialects of it I've ever seen. It has the flavour of article-spun SEO spam and those shady fake research papers with "tortured phrases". What causes this obfuscated writing style?
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#16Fun story, when my ex and I split a few years ago, I wiped all connections of my Microsoft account to the machine I built him.
Last week, when I logged into my Microsoft account, I had an extra machine with a funny name. Checking some logs, sure enough that was the hostname he gave that machine. Realized what had happened, refreshed the page, and it was gone.
The URL parameter for these devices in the Microsoft Account page is the GDID. So the Microsoft Account page showed me a GDID of a device I unlinked ~4 years ago. (And I'm slightly obsessive, I check on my Google/Microsoft account every other month.) Gooood job Microsoft.
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#17> Court reporting in 2026 established that Microsoft held a GDID-to-URL/time/IP association in one investigation. Afaik, this is illegal under GDPR, as an IP has been classified as a personal identifier.
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Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#18Sharing in the hope it helps even one person on the fence to convert.
C. 2012 I swore never to use Windows again, and I've managed it! It is possible - macOS is really good (you'll have to unlearn your muscle memory of the Ctrl key) and Linux gaming has come a long way.
If using Windows professionally, consider installing it in a VM on your mac or linux box, then asking your agent to set up scripts that remote to to it (eg. via ssh) and do the required tasks (builds, headless test-runs etc) - remotely.
Offtopic for the GDID thing; but couldn't be more on topic if you think the market shouldn't tolerate GDIDs and such things.
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#19"The mutation path", "the fully lab-validated line. Other accepted builds warn.", "Status can still inspect", "command, verdict, exit code", "device-identity rehydrate sources", "the network gate", "real-shaped PUID"? WTF. That was extremely difficult to read. I'm assuming it's LLMese (I've had less trouble with reading the writing of ESL'ers), but one of the strangest dialects of it I've ever seen. It has the flavou…
I like to call this style of writing "advanced technical claudish"
Re: Deletes all instances of Microsoft's GDID and prevents minting of new ones
#20"The mutation path", "the fully lab-validated line. Other accepted builds warn.", "Status can still inspect", "command, verdict, exit code", "device-identity rehydrate sources", "the network gate", "real-shaped PUID"? WTF. That was extremely difficult to read. I'm assuming it's LLMese (I've had less trouble with reading the writing of ESL'ers), but one of the strangest dialects of it I've ever seen. It has the flavou…
> What causes this obfuscated writing style?
Claude without an editor having worked too long on its own project.