None of the articles I’ve read about this explains how the GDID gets mapped onto the user’s activity.
“Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page”
So does it mean that Windows monitors your activity outwith just Microsoft services and sends all data to their servers? Is it maybe MS Edge history sync?
I wonder if windows 10 has the same feature?
I would be amazed if it didn’t.
I switched to Linux Mint a long ass time ago. Micropenis can go fuck themselves.
Don’t be euphemistic. Shame them by their actual name. It’s Microsoft. Microsoft makes software that is dangerous to its end users. SAY IT.
I’d also endorse calling them Microslop, half because their software seems to be rapidly ensloppifying and half because it pisses off their CEO
The mysticism of many cultures throughout history has assigned a power to knowing, saying and writing a demon’s true name. The earliest example of this I can think of is from the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, the obscure god Medjed, “The Smiter” whose physical appearance can’t be known so when he’s depicted in heiroglyphs, he’s drawn as a bedsheet ghost with eyes and feet..
Call evil by its true name.
I know that concept, but I believe it is more about unambiguity and transparency: I know who and what you are. There is no disguise or deflection to hide behind.
In that vein, I also believe that there is power in intentionally corrupted mockeries of those names, so long as those twists preserve clear lineage to their originals and are somewhat apt to the creature being described. They not only identify their subject, but also taunt it, essentially boasting the power that the subject has no recourse to your mockery.
“Micropenis” is a generic schoolyard insult that could just as well mean a certain president or a buddy you’re looking to tease.
“Microsoft” is the true name.
“Microslop” is clearly related to that name, so you know who I’m talking about, while also calling out the sloppy character of their work and taunting its executives who object to describing the digital offal they peddle as the slop it is.Voldesoft, get 'em Harry!
Microsoft fucked their customers for the #69514026th time, will it be enough to make people switch to Linux, or do they just like being fucked? Who knows.
I legitimately tried to switch to Linux a few days ago. Got virtual ox running, got one of the recommended noob distros (cinnamon?) and then got an error message that I cannot make sense of during install. Even googling it didn’t help
I’m not a computer guy, and I’m legitimately concerned that if I ask for help on the Linux forums I’ll be the punching bag of the week.
Cinnamon is a desktop not a distro. Fedora as much as I hate Red Hat is a pretty solid distro.
Bazzite is the most stable and noob friendly distro I’ve tried. I’ve installed both Bazzite and Windows in the past year and the Bazzite install process was far easier.
Throwaway culture exists with software but without the waste that comes with physical things. If one distro doesn’t work, try a different one. It’s only bits. The only thing wasted is your time.
Also, even though people claim to be happy to answer your questions, I think there’s a strong likelihood that if you said what issue you had, nobody would be able to solve the problem due to how complex any modern operating system is, and due to not having direct access to the machine to troubleshoot. Seriously, they’re so big and complicated that they’re approximately black boxes. The easiest way for you to resolve the problem is to try something different until it works.
Just ask here! Lemmy is full of us Linux nerds!
Do you have any external storage? You do not want an NTFS formatted drive for food backup if you’re going to switch; just recently, the NTFS support has finally improved, bit I still wouldn’t trust it. Exfat, or any other fat filesystem, should work fine.
But, my advice? Just backup everything important, and then just follow a tutorial for installing Linux (probably Mint Cinnamon, unless you game a lot - in which case you might give Bazzite a try).
Make sure you have a USB windows installer ready before; if you have to, you can just go back to windows that way.
Get a small SSD that you can install Linux on and go from there. Starting with a virtual machine is definitely the hard way.
PM me and I’ll help, no punching.
As much as I hate to endorse an AI (and I’m going to get hella down voted for it)…it’s one of the few actual good uses for it…
You can ask plain questions, copy\paste error codes, and it will actually walk you through fixing problems like a non-judgy person would. ;-)
Perplexity is my go-to when I’m troubleshooting something I can’t figure out.
“How do I open and edit a word document in Linux?” Is a perfectly acceptable question to ask, things like that.used it when I was building this server to work through some concepts I wasn’t familiar with.
I had been using duck.ai for a while and found it to be a frustrating experience. Switched to free Claude and ended up with way better answers and a better experience overall. Still made a couple mistakes, but not nearly as many as duck. My only complaint is the limitation on the length of the sessions for the free version.
How is perplexity in that dept?
So far I’ve found it to be Pretty good… I do pay the $20/month “pro” membership but I’m pretty sure most months I cost them money. ;-)
What drew me to perplexity is that it will give you footnotes on basically every statement so you can go read the reference material it pulled from. Not foolproof, but lets you see if it’s quoting an idiot or not… ;-)
What I most use it for is debugging. You can just copy/paste trace files or logs into it and it will read the log like a book and tell you exactly what’s happening.
That shit’s $20 per month? What the hell, that would be my third most expensive monthly payment behind rent and internet.
You’ve got two things going on:
- If you are trying to switch, a virtual machine is a bad way to start and it’s the hard way. What you really want is to use Rufus or something (easy Google) to make you a bootable USB and you just boot in and play around. It MAY require you to change boot order in BIOS if you plug it in and reboot and nothing happens, but that’s an easy fix
- You want to ask for help. You only get “beat up” if it looks like you did nothing first and you are asking people to do it for you. Pretty much every place you go if you can say, “I want to do X, it doesn’t work so I tried Y and Z.” Nobody will say shit to you. Also, on Lemmy if you say you’re new, people like me and the other guy who replied will probably offer to just DM us directly (which for me you can).
Might try the boot USB route. I wanted to do a virtual box so I could easily test to see if my current games/programs work
Going to second dream_weasel’s suggestion. Don’t try to game in a VM. That is going the ultra-hard route while you are still unfamiliar with the OS.
My suggestion is to take a side/old computer you don’t use every day, format it, and install Linux on it. Completely blow away Windows on that machine. Then use it regularly until you get comfortable with it. You still have your main computer to lean on.
Once you are comfortable enough with it, flip the script. Put Linux on the main machine and Windows on the side/old machine. You will find yourself turning on the side/old machine less and less.
So I don’t really have an unused side/old computer that is operational. I’m an engineer, but not the computer kind.
Dual booting is an option, but without two separate drives (or sometimes even with windows on a separate disk), windows update will just nuke your EFI partition and do its own thing.
It’s possible, but I probably wouldn’t recommend to a beginner, as bootloader issues are usually not fun to fix (had to do it a lot when I was dual-booting back in the day)
Goodwill is your friend
You can also just search game name + distro name. Highly recommend looking at the newest results possible because A LOT of games now work on Linux thanks to steam and proton
I think that will require you to do some passthrough for drives and hardware which may not be trivial. If you’re close to something working, stick to it. Otherwise I think that VM road is mostly pain. Caveat: I have not tried to do VM stuff in probably 10 years so it could be easier now.
What was the specific issue?
Error code Somethingxsomethingsomethingsomething hexadecimal-like
Edit: Hx4d3cim4l
I’m switching. I’ve been intimidated by the command lines but jfc these people are cartoonishly evil.
Mint was my first Linux distro away from Windows. Command line stuff is essentially optional if you’re just using the computer for web browsing, gaming through Steam, basic desktop usage, etc. No regrets, fuck Microsoft.
I’ve enjoyed mint the last month or so. My previous dabbles with Linux were much more command line necessary than it is now. And on the rare occasion I need to, there’s usually good info out there to read.
I think I’ll follow suit, thank you
I’ll say that I only touch command line when I want to on nobara (I hear bazzite is the same). In general the days of command line being necessary are over
It’s clearly been way too long since I’ve looked into this
The world has changed a lot. Linux Usability has come a long way. It’s not perfect, but it sure isn’t as bad as it was for non-techies.
I switched recently because they fucked me in a way I couldn’t deal with. To be fair, I’ve been experimenting with Linux on and off for 10+ years. But this was my kick to fully transition. Microsoft no longer serves convenience.
I downloaded this program called “Driver Easy,” which scans my hardware, searches automatically for driver updates, downloads and installs them for me. If I could download a wizard that got rid of windows, installed a nice user-friendly version of linux, while keeping my old programs, files and junk… I’d do it in a heartbeat. All I want to do is play my video games from Steam, download shit to watch, browse the internet, write in Libreoffice… Can I do all those things with Linux? Can I download some install wizard to switch?
If that wizard existed, a shit ton of people would switch. It’s just the idea of deleting my current OS and putting in a new one makes me thing I’m gonna brick my machine.
Steam works on Linux BTW. Actually a lot of my games run better on Linux than windows
Don’t delete your OS then. Just buy a small SSD to put Linux on and go from there.
Those driver tools are often bundled with malware and do a poor job validating what they download is safe and correct. They are often associated with services that crawls the internet for downloads and tries to match the hardware id.
Generally, drivers are available from the motherboard or device manufacturer page. That said it’s rarely the solution and for your gpu (amd or Nvidia) they already have their own tool for keeping you up to date.
But with Linux most of that is taken care of for you by either the kernel itself or your distro’s maintainer.
Most games work fine on Linux and may only require small tweaks. You can check the games you’re interested in playing on protondb. http://www.protondb.com/
The notable exceptions are games with aggressive anticheat software. Such as but not limited to (EA games, PubG, Fortnite, GTA5)
If you’re looking for something “easy” look into Kubuntu LTS.
I can say that both versions of GTA5 on steam run without issues, though I’ve never played online, but the option is available.
Yeah it’s the online component effected by the anticheat.
It used to work last year but they block Linux now.
It’s always a good idea to back up your important files before a big change like switching operating systems, and your old software won’t work. But drivers haven’t been an issue for me in years. Mint is probably a super easy distribution for the switch. You can load it on a USB and give it a try before committing to the full install.
You just need to think outside of the box. Instead of thinking. Instead of: “Can I convert my windows programs to linux?” Think: “Is there a free linux alternarive?”. 99℅ of the time the awnser is yes and most of the time they are even better. I made the mistake of seeing linux as a windows replacement and forced my self to get the same shit running on my linux distro. Then I changed my way of thining and it completely made the transition so much easier. Yes it will take a little time to get the thinks the way you want. But with a little investment you will have a machine that YOU control. And not the other way around. I had to boot up my windows partition the otherday to copy some leftover documents. And it felt so fucking alien to me… And Ive been a windows user since 95. But It has been a long time since my computer actually felt like mine again.
One of the bots could write one maybe
Its doesn’t have a off switch but you can generate a new one.
Elaborate, Please…
I don’t remember the command but it was easy to find. There are a couple of ways to do it. I used a scheduled power shell script for the persons computer I did it for. They used it to avoid a annoying set of trackers that kept her from getting the lowest price on some equipment website. That was in 2020 or 2021.
Cant wait for someone to make or reveal they already have a GDID spoofer and can now make grandma look like the worlds number 1 hacker.
I do absolutely nothing illegal on my windows 11 machine. I save the fun torrenting for my Mac. And soon I’ll have a Linux device set up.
I can’t believe Microslop would do something like this to its loyal customers!
What idiot hacker uses Windows?
A script kiddie
A genz hacker. In a world where “hacking” is writing prompts and calling IT help desks.
Social engineering is hacking in fact, it’s literally the most prominent form of hacking in easily the most important form of hacking.
It’s also the most efficient and effective.
If you’re s*** talking social engineering, you’re a goddamn moron
and calling IT help desks.
It always amazes me how much people shit talk social engineering, when it’s been a power house for hackers since the beginning.
The human (or I guess AI now) element is always the weakest link
Okay look, I’m old, I’m inadequate, and I’m drunk. But I’m also a millennial, and I was a flight instructor at the age of 23. I pray to whatever god actually exists instead of Jesus for the unceremonious deletion of every soul that doesn’t give young folks a chance to learn, grow and actualize themselves. Because I am so inordinately sick of being written off due to the year in which my parents fucked that I’ve got room on the docket to be pissed off when you do it to cohorts other than mine.
It is our responsibility to teach the kids, to let them learn, to let them fuck up in order to learn some more, so that they can become the actual adults someday. And it hurts my mind, soul and dick that I’m apparently the only human on earth not excessively lead-addled to realize that. And bitch I’ve washed my hands in 100LL. It’s blue and feels cold at any temperature.
If there’s one thing I’m going to teach you commie retards before I’m banned outright from this platform, it’s that you treat your students with at least the benefit of the doubt if you can’t manage genuine respect. Believe it or not, they’re real people living real lives that are different than your own. Things that are obvious to you aren’t to them because their lives led them to be curious about a different set of things than you did. And if you find yourself in the role of “teacher”, almost always your path led you to expertise sooner than your students. Sooner. Not Younger. I can tell you that, having served as a flight instructor at 23 mostly teaching men in their 50’s.
You think you’re the senior in a field? You think it’s your job to reign superior over your juniors? Think again. Because it’s your job to sit in the right seat as a kid twice your age sits in the Captain’s seat and fails to use the rudder correctly, because falling off a bike is how you learn how to ride. You have to let them slam the plane into the runway, because how the hell else are they going to learn?
Anyone with more experience expressing contempt for those with less experience for having shown up later: FUCK YOUR FUNERAL. Die unmourned.
The amount of times boomers on worksites called me retarded for not knowing how to do something I’d never done before astounded me.
Meanwhile these fuckers would get real butthurt and start yelling and making a fuss when they’d struggle to find a file they just saved on their PC and you do anything besides silently assist them.
I vowed to be different, to teach my people what it means to be competent and respectful. I tell them I expect to see the same level of professionalism and respect I show them going to everyone around them. It’s working! They aren’t coming to work high or hungover, they aren’t being pieces of shit, and they’re communicating with each other instead of yelling insults at each other (well except for when its funny lol).
This has made me unpopular with the boomer leaders but fuck em: we get shit done, we get it done right, nobody gets hurt, and everybody feels respected and doesn’t dread coming to work.
Good on you being the change you want to see. This is the way
it’s not the experience or knowledge part that bothers me, as you said people focused on different things and everyone starts from 0. it’s the attitude of giving up when their ai slop doesn’t work or coming up with bandaid solutions to get the task done quickly rather than trying to actually learn or see the bigger picture. it’s an era of short attention span and fast dopamine due to tech, ofc everyone is affected but gen z and a more so because their parents put ipads in their faces since 0 years old.
To be fair, not really their fault. That reality was created for them.
I’m sorry, I don’t quite get how this is relevant to the topic at hand at all.
It’s a response to the tired refrain that the latest generation are stupid and lazy
tl;dr
Stop being a boomer and teach like a man.
Stop being a boomer
You should try that and not use such idiotic language, like calling people rtrds or to ‘teach like a man’, cuz that’s some of the most boomer bullshit I’ve heard in years.
Sounds like the tagline for a really crap movie. How far we’ve fallen from two people on one keyboard.
Don’t forget breaking out a second keyboard, but both people use one hand on each keyboard instead of one keyboard each!
It’s necessary since hacking is so time sensitive - if it can’t be done in a hurry there’s no point!
I know, right. . . Now that’s real hacking!
Wait, calling IT Help Desks isn’t social engineering now?
It always is. Even if you’re actually calling for help, you need to basically trick them into helping you these days.
Tbf, some of the best hackers were social engineering their way into the backend just by calling up certain support numbers on the 80s
I refuse to call social engineers hackers, conmen is more fitting.
You can refuse to call them hackers, everyone is entitled to be wrong about something.
Kevin Mitnick was a prolific hacker who used social engineering regularly to infiltrate, and hackers still do today. Humans are a massive weak point in any org, that’s why we have to take quarterly training not to be a moron and let someone into our network through doing something stupid.
Mitnick was also a hacker, but I never considered his social engineering feats as hacking themselves. They were definitely what let him accomplish his goals though and I consider those skills adjacent, just like lock picking. If you see someone picking a lock, I doubt your brain says “OMG a hacker!”.
Defcon would disagree. I’ve watched so many presenters talk about all forms of penetration testing, many of which used social engineering and lockpicking as a way to create exploitable vulnerabilities in networks. Whether or not you care to call them hackers… It doesn’t really matter, won’t stop them from hacking.
The weakest link in cybersecurity are usually the users after all.
Hacking is making something work in an unconventional or unexpected way. Social engineers hack people in that way.
Real hackers social-engineered their way into high security systems decades before the first blue haired femboy nerd proudly announced “Btw i am usin Arch!”
Gen Z knows how to use Windows?
There’s a very easy trick to defeat this: use Linux.
No you don’t understand… I’ve spent the last 30 years investing in increasingly awful software companies to create “industry standards” and leaving these companies behind would require me to change and learn!!!
Even worse!
Admitting that I was not always doing the most sensible thing, at all times! That I was actually doing really stupid things, for a long time!
I … I can’t make mistakes… no … reality is wrong!
Realizing you’re making mistakes and continuing anyway is the problem.
Yes, I’m trying to be hyperbolically facetious, to illustrate that.
So many issues with the world boils down to that last part, people refusing to change and learn. I never understood it, I’ve always loved change and learning. I’ve seen so many people go from having that same openness to only caring about keeping everything the same and never learning, it’s really disturbing. Some are like that from a very early age, others fall into it at any other part of their lives and it’s never a good thing IMO.
For me, I’ve got a million interests. I could change and learn this one thing, but that would take time away from learning about other, more personally interesting things.
I talked with the women i’m working with where we print our price lists about changing from adobe to something else and she told me it would be a bad idea since it would make both of our work much more buggy and time consuming with more chances of the end result being worse. So i’ll keep using indesing and the adobe suite for now but i did switch from sketchup to blender for 3D modeling and it’s a bit challenging and more messy then i’m used to but i get better rendering results from what i tried so far.
As long as you can export to the same format, it shouldn’t matter from the print shop’s perspective, no? They just see the same file they would’ve always seen.
At some point you just have to leave the software behind. That time is now!
If your system uses systemd, it has an etc/machine-id, which is used for a lot of different things. And changing it will break a lot of stuff, probably until you reboot. I guess you could write something to randomly shuffle it every time you reboot? But it is the go-to way for lots of programs (including browsers) to identify themselves. Which means (unless you have done the work to scramble your machine ID) you can be tracked on Linux as well.
The difference is that Linux isn’t sending telemetry to some central entity associating that ID to an IP.
Microsoft’s records showed that at that exact same minute, a Windows device carrying GDID g:6755467234350028 had visited the ngrok signup page. Three hours later, the same GDID visited the retailer’s own website, through the same Tzulo proxy address used to set up the ngrok account.
This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry?
Fucking gross. And if you know of anything on Linux exposing/transmitting the machine-id, please do let everyone know because nothing should. Anything that does should be considered malware.
Another user said they think machine-id is readable by the browser. This is absolutely true, machine-id is working as described when it is read by any web browser.
So Linux isn’t sending your unique id to a central entity that can associate it with your ip, it’s sending your unique id to any entity you browse to that can then associate it with your ip.
If you’re really worried about that, just change it every time you boot or something. There’s a kernel parameter to change it.
There is not a parameter to automatically change it every time the system boots, that solution doesn’t work for machines that don’t reboot often and it breaks stuff in systemd as volunteered by many people talking about it online and as verified by me two weeks ago when I tried that.
I never said there was. There is however a kernel parameter to change the machine id, which I did say.
It’s intended to be read by applications on the system. That’s like its whole purpose. If you know of any browsers sending it or otherwise making it available without hashing it with an application key first, that would be a problem.
Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine.
A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked.
Yes as I said it’s working as intended. The point of machine id is to id a machine.
Your claim was that Linux was “sending your unique id to any entity you browse” which is misleading at best.
machine-idshould never be transmitted and if it is, that software should be considered spyware.A better solution would be to not rely on the various programs to hash the unique id and instead have the host read it, hash it and provide the hash to the program that asked.
That doesn’t solve anything, really. There’s plenty of ways to fingerprint a machine that doesn’t involve the
machine-id.
This article is super vague about this as well. How does Microsoft not only have the GDID->IP link, but they have Web history as well? Are they just exposing all this through advertising telemetry?
My interpretation was that they had an IP that they suspected was the perp’s home network, and subpoena’d some major platforms to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt. Given the perp’s sloppiness in using the same machine for both personal and illicit computing activities, they could even have some network traffic in the capture to indicate which platforms they should subpoena
Or if we want to be more conspiracy-minded, maybe they installed a trojan on his computer and this is the parallel evidence trail that law enforcement created so they don’t have to admit to hacking the hackers
Or he used Edge, so Microsoft just has all his browsing data.
i think i remember hearing the dbus machine-id being read by google chrome on linux. it could be used for privacy violation with proprietary software, though i personally consider linux machines with chrome or equivalent software installed compromised.
It’s not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too. Source: https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-windows-driver-to-now-collect-user-telemetry-data-like-website-categories-by-default/
It’s not just Windows tracking your web browsing history. GPU drivers do it too.
…on Windows. if you explicitly install their malware and agree to data sharing.
I should have clarified, but yes it’s the windows GPU drivers. Though even on Linux, it’s hard to know what the proprietary GPU drivers do, but from what I read they don’t collect telemetry by default. Luckily Nvidia is developing official open source drivers now so we won’t have to worry about these things.
Also note that for the Windows Nvidia drivers, it’s fairly annoying to disable all telemetry. It’s not just an option in the installer. You have to use unofficial third party tools.
That’s wild. Shit like this makes me distrust proprietary drivers
I distrust proprietary anything at this point
also there’s the TPM chip.
Upvoting both comments for awareness, since Linux is the first of a multi-step process, not a privacy panacea.
But we must be clear that in both theory and practice there’s little comparison between systemd and modern Windows machine-user association.
Someone using Windows regularly has a gaping wound, is actively bleeding out. Switching to Linux is just a tourniquet, but every other treatment is at best no-effect until that tourniquet is applied.
E: transpose
systemd/Windows for clarityAlso as a life long programmer, I have this feeling it is possible to just go in and make some changes so I can have the system just make shit up about the TPM while indeed also doing the equivalent of having system-d decide to respond with random bullshit.
Don’t even need to be a programmer, just find a community of them that you trust that distribute their own “fixes”.
Definitely not doing that with anything else because its both hidden in compilation and buried like herpes across multiple components. Probably/hopefully not directly related but I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service.
And you’d be technically correct, the best kind of correct.
To the inquisitor:
any distro that’s fully OSS can be fully compiled from scratch with any modifications you choose).
Though yes, if you’re still using Windows, the learning curve may look like a wall.
I really want to know what they changed to break the clipboard service
Guessing the X11 [X]Wayland migration KDE Plasma bug report? Should be fixed in 6.5.2.
Adjacent comment. I’ve found working in a true posix environment is drastically better than the oddities I dealt with Win32. One annoyance is Microsoft has never been able to implement
fork().Though i never messed with x11 as I was never motivated to see what it was like under the figurative hood.
It really is a hell of a lot more sane, instantly missed once you don’t have it. And yeah Fork’s a blessing when used with care lol
Sorry, switched contexts there. Microsoft broke their clipboard service recently which makes me think they added “telemetry” collecting logic somewhere in there.
Oh right, I misread. And yeah not sure (my win32 repro targets have all been locked for a while) but with all the facepalm regressions I’ve read about lately it really could be anything.
Please elaborate on what u are referring to with regard to systemd machine user association?
I’m specifically highlighting that there is none though I acknowledge machine ID makes it easier.
ETA: edited original comment to be more clear
Yeah, motherboard-level tracking is scary because even the OS won’t be able to detect it. The truly paranoid people (and security researchers) go as far as desoldering chips to ensure nothing phones home.
Where in the source does Firefox expose machine-id to websites?
With a quick grep I’m only seeing it around audio?
If that hacker only knew about tracking by Windows…
I wouldn’t call overhauling your entire operating system, including finding alternatives to software you use daily, making sure your hardware is compatible and relearning your entire work method as an “easy trick”.
In any other context I’d agree with you, but hacking is the one context where you really do want to do things the hard way. Use ephemeral VMs with passwords only saved in your head, have a dedicated machine for your illegal activities to help isolate your real identity from your hacking.
Honestly even if you’re just doing HackTheBox and similar best practice is to spin up a Kali VM and only use that VM for the activity since you’re literally connecting to a network with a bunch of hackers, even though what you’re doing is entirely above the board
I think you might actually be surprised…
So they’re saying that all these “secret” societies online, like the Peter Thiel psychopathy, are relatively easily identified and rounded up and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and they’re just choosing not to do it? I’m shocked.
I mean Epstein was actively talking about his crimes over plaintext Gmail
Why would they catch pedophiles? Their founder is one
I was gonna comment something about Linux distro also having a machine ID, but then I remembered that it’s not in a big database, and it’s so well enforced I routinely have multiple machines with the same ID pop up :D
Linux users will probably tell you their id if you ask them nicely and seem interested in their distro of choice.
I’ve been using Linux for more than 10 years and I had no idea this was a thing lol.
But yeah after reading up on it I don’t see the issue with giving someone this id (though I also don’t see any reason why someone would need it). It’s just a file on disk that can be changed at will with a kernel parameter.
The level of naivete to think it’s a good idea using a microsoft account on a microsoft product for your illegal activity is astounding. Especially when you consider the amount of technical knowledge required to do such a thing.
I legitimately cannot make that connection, Microsoft has never been shy about tracking you or their tight relationship with 3 letter agencies. It doesn’t take a genius to know they are going to snitch, I figured that was a foregone conclusion.
Kids need to learn about OPSEC.
Agreed, using the same device for illegal and personal activity is dumb.
Then why haven’t we heard about all the criminals (pedophiles, terrorists,…) being caught by Microsoft surveillance? Because they don’t care about the crimes you do. Their tracking is for money making only.
If I were a criminal I would not bank on it - they might use it for blackmail, too - but for the most part they are not in danger.
Because you aren’t looking they take down people and groups all the time, it’s not their job to prosecute
The current federal government is pedophiles, they aren’t going to arrest themselves.
Yeah. What a moron.
My laptop came with Win11, I’ve removed that drive a few months ago and replaced it with Mint.
Does this mean MS has my motherboard, WiFi, other hardware identifiers that would still tie that laptop to their database?
Yup!
Motherboard, CPU, GPU models and serial numbers. Ram size and speed. Those were used during Windows activation as old as windows 95. But likely yes, a full list of every component connected.
Your Android phone collects every WiFi network it has ever seen and sends it to Google, so we should assume Microsoft does the same (Android can locate you without GPS by using your neighbors’ WiFi signals as position identifiers, and can triangulate you to a few feet using the relative networks’ signal strengths)
Wait, what is the solution then? Genz are not going to settle on 10 yo laptop. They are going to buy new expensive AI-ready windows machine, replacing with Linux will do nothing privacywise? The only viable alt is to buy some obscure Linux laptop or old device? How old should it be anyway?
Oh, so to clear up confusion - switching to Linux destroys the local storage of the GDID, and Linux has generally much better privacy (to the degree the OS is involved - browser privacy is a related subject). However, it doesn’t undo the past - if you previously signed in with your MS account on that system, Microsoft will have that record in perpetuity.
Best solution would be to wipe any system you acquire without ever signing in to Microsoft. While switching to Linux will not change any of the components serial numbers that Microsoft has, you will at least not be actively associating most of your web activity with your M$ account.
Tangent - if you’re gonna do shady stuff, use VMs or TailsOS.
GrapheneOS babyyyyy
Cannot wait for the Motorola/GrapheneOS collab phones.
And if you dont have Pixel, try /e/os, SailfishOS, Mobian, PostmarketOS or anything other than vendor Android.
Um… You’re aware that your pixel was known to google before you graphened it?
Never knew a google account, so it was known to Google but not to me. … but while on the topic, know of a better option?
so it was known to Google but not to me
Right, but you can assume google knows the imei and other hardware details, so they can probably link you to your identity on other platforms.
There is also the baseband issue. It is currently assumed that manufacturers could have access to snoop your LTE/5g and WiFi traffic, because the software running most phone baseband units is closed and not audited.
So you are probably private, but if you really want a phone with no Big Brother, you should get one from Pine64 or Jolla.
I’d love to. I bought an early pinephone and after about a day of trying to make it do basic functions I gave up. I’d LOVE to have a real Linux option but in my experiences so far we’re not there yet. I don’t see a better option than Graphene at the moment- it’s that solid.
Yes, I agree. We might not have rock-solid solutions, but less google is better.
I keep a oneplus 6t just to test Linux phone options.
Jolla Phone is just starting to ship
Promising…
Android phone collects every WiFi network it has ever seen and sends it to Google
Possibly, but how often do you use WiFi on a phone?
Possibly, but how often do you use WiFi on a phone?
Basically whenever I’m at home or a relative’s house?
But why? Mobile networks are very fast nowadays. And how many homes still have routers?
fast ≠ widespread or consistent. mobile date tends to have excruciatingly low upload speeds (at least in my region)
Ah, then it makes sense.
…are you joking?
I would have used WiFi on my phone perhaps two or three times in the last year. My home does have a router, because we’re dinos, but most new houses don’t since everyone has a smartphone anyway.
Please note: I didn’t say you had to connect to these networks. This happens as a background process unless you do a ritual to shut off location services and actively work to keep it off. Most people do not know/care to do this. And even if it’s off in settings, some apps have the permission to temporarily override this (and will ask you once to grant it such permission and then have that permission for the lifetime of the app). And regardless of which app overrides said setting, Google gets a copy of whatever the background scan finds (for all Android phones that have the Play store installed, which is most of them).
Am I the only person who switches off the WiFi after use? I thought that was common advice to save battery.
I use WiFi at home and friends. I use cellular for work and travel (usually between home and friends). I’m glad you have a simple enough arrangement that it’s worthwhile to manage it by hand.
Further, in recent versions of Android, factory settings are set to automatically turn WiFi back on if turned off - plus there’s several methods to indirectly turn WiFi back on (https://thedroidguy.com/stop-android-turning-wifi-on-automatically-1261625). This is that dark patterns thing. Getting people to do what you want by being frictionless with your preferred options and ‘polite’ but obstinate about options you wish to steer people away from.
I use WiFi at home and friends.
This is the part I don’t understand. Mobile data would work in your houses too, right?
Further, in recent versions of Android, factory settings are set to automatically turn WiFi back on if turned off
I haven’t seen this happen, but I use MIUI (Xiaomi’s Android ROM) which tends to be aggressive in limiting battery use. It will actually cut hotspot if unused for a few minutes.
This is the part I don’t understand. Mobile data would work in your houses too, right?
Actually, first - ironically mobile coverage is terrible right at my new home since I moved. Great about 200 yards from home and most everywhere I go, but there’s a weird blind spot at my address specifically.
Second, Most mobile data plans are 30-80 Mbps†, most home WiFi plans are 300 Mbps-1Gbps†. WiFi isn’t just faster, it’s a lot faster. † your milage may vary, these are based on my experience
Finally, again this is another case of maybe I’m weird, but my friends and I are into retro gaming, and self-hosting and both of those have LAN-specific options that only work within the WiFi and home network.
If it was registered, probably. They use a mixture of that to allow re-enabling the same license on the same hardware.
OEM systems come with the license key stored in the firmware (ACPI tables specifically), you can read them from *nix easily enough.
sudo strings /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/MSDMIf you boot the system and login an account then yeah they’ll be able to link that, but the install itself can “self activate”.
By design.
