this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Fun fact: Microsoft will try to guess your passwords to open and scan your encrypted archives when uploaded to OneDrive.
Microsoft also hands your BitLocker recovery keys to the government on request.
Microsoft also uses your local machine’s GDID to deanonymize and track you across the internet for the government.
These are paid surveillance services Microsoft provides to the government, paid for by your tax dollars. No wonder they desperately want to force you to use OneDrive.
Hey now! I can honestly say Microsoft has never done that with any of my computers!
(Why yes, they do all run Linux. How did you know?)
If any of your Linux machines use SystemD, ~~then Microsoft has done that~~ then there’s something to be aware of with those machines. SystemD has a global system ID that can be used like the Windows GDID apparently.
Edit: not MS
Source?
See discussion below. I’m making it up obviously
Tell me more. I may have to move to a distro without systemdeez.
machine-id
Okay but correlate that with the same methods and usage and by the same threat actor (MS) in this case.
Or any of the combination, as a treat
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's extremely implausible.
Absolutely zero reason a init system needs admin date of birth. Yes separate issue entirely, but it’s showing a trend and the direction things are headed.
https://blog.bofh.it/debian/id_473
To be fair, yeah that shit is egregious.
But that's not at all what I asked you or what you claimed. Those are technically two different things. And not technically like yes or no. Those are entirely different security fronts.
You've got to back that claim up or take it back, and I have a feeling you'll be taking it back.
It's okay to be cautious, and it's especially okay to warn others of trajectories that could lean into privacy or security issues, but it's not okay to make shit up.
Lastly it's no longer an init system. It's a system that happens to handle init.
That’s fair. I didn’t mean MS was the threat actor, just the seed from which this grew. I definitely take that back after reading up more on where machine-id grew out of.
However, I don’t concede that machine-id is theoretical for user fingerprinting. Any software installed can read it, especially a browser. That’s the vector for tracking across the web. Do I have instances of this occurring, no. Seems plausible and the more we can sandbox things, especially “web browsers” (untrusted app runners more like it) the better.
Probably correct. I'm not going to pretend to have the know how, but I would assume that if this was exploited widely, we'd have heard about it.
Would it be a great target? Maybe. Attack it. Show us all the love of contributing in hardening it.
I’m not technically inclined enough to harden against that, nor do ai really have the inclination. But here is a thread on that topic where I even heard about it.
!privacy@lemmy.ml
https://lemmy.ml/post/49710604
I did just read I think 90% of that, and it just seems like that person is sour about systemd in general.
I agree it's not unix/Linux philosophy but it's the best we have.
Does it do too much? Maybe. I haven't seen that exploited on a large scale in the real world, but it's definitely a golden key.
There are options. But it's just one of those things. You're pissing in the wind unless you're willing to write it yourself. You can use non systemd distros or even use bsd.
All that said, you're absolutely right to be concerned, but speaking on it like it's an active vulnerability is dangerous.
It's also evident that it's reliant on the software you run, it's not systemd that's giving you away, it's your application that you chose to install that's abusing or neglegent of systemd's access.
I didn’t saw it was dangerous only that it was similar to MS GDID, and it is.
To support and to need are two different verbs. Linux also needs your phone number in the user metadata by the same standard.