Microsoft Can Track Users via a Windows Device ID (pcmag.com)
290 points by ifh-hn 9 hours ago
lorislab 5 hours ago
The interesting part is not really the existence of a machine identifier. Almost every modern OS has some equivalent. The bigger question is the boundary: which components can access it, and when does a local identifier become a remote tracking identifier? A machine-id sitting on disk is very different from an OS vendor correlating it with network activity.
J-Kuhn 2 hours ago
Systemd (part of many major linux distributions) has for example machine-id[1], readable by anyone on the machine under /etc/machine-id.
[1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/mach...
felooboolooomba a few seconds ago
Yep, and firefox ships it to it's servers.
drnick1 20 minutes ago
Unlike the Microsoft equivalent (?), nothing prevents you from scrambling it or outright chmodding to 700 to protect it from prying eyes. I go further and bubblewrap software that I don't fully trust like Steam on my gaming machine. I simply don't expose /etc at all in most cases. The Linux security model is actually quite weak against potentially invasive software running in a main user account. For example /home is completely exposed.
dlenski 2 hours ago
Yeah, this is what's glaringly missing from the article.
Exactly how does Microsoft's device identifier get associated with the ngrok session (normally initiated via its closed-source CLI)?
I can't tell from the article whether Microsoft is doing something underhanded to inject its device identifiers into network traffic, or whether the ngrok client software (again, closed-source!) grabbed the device identifier… and might well do the same on any other OS, using /etc/machine-id on Linux for example.
Since ngrok uses a "freemium" model, it wouldn't surprise me at all if its clients send machine IDs to try to catch users trying to get around its free limits.
srichard16 15 minutes ago
I work at ngrok, and this is not how our freemium plan works. Free plans limit based on usage alone, not on machine IDs.
nickphx 44 minutes ago
from the microsoft store. the ngrok app was downloaded via microsoft store...
dlenski 30 minutes ago
Bender an hour ago
Adding another example of this is the NetworkID in about:networking#networkid in Firefox. There was a point in time that cause some controversy. Every AI has the wrong information about it's origin and use.
llm_nerd 3 hours ago
This is the part that isn't clear and is by far the most interesting. At what stage and what point did the GDID get correlated with a tool/web request. As is it almost sounds like Microsoft "telemetry" gathers everything and they did a bulk search for certain activity, pulling the GDID and correlating it with a user.
mysteria 3 hours ago
From reading the official criminal complaint [1] it looks like Microsoft literally logs all web requests along with the GDID and sends it over as "telemetry". It basically associates the URL, the client's IP, and the GDID together.
Or I suppose it's possible that it only sends the domain and not the full URL, but that's enough for the police to go to the hoster and demand logs containing the full URL for said IP.
1. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/media/1450651/dl?inline
nailer 2 hours ago
nailer 2 hours ago
Good question. My understand is that it was licensing:
Hackers cloaked IP address -> VPN license -> Windows GDID -> Hacker's name.
llm_nerd 2 hours ago
cheschire 7 hours ago
Well they can’t use that to track users of Linux.
I was a big fan of Microsoft ten to fifteen years ago. I’ve since transitioned my whole family off Microsoft products now over to Linux, Apple, and proton. Edit: and Brave.
I really thought their corporate culture would’ve changed after the late 90’s but I guess this is a good lesson for founders. The culture you build into your company will likely outlast your tenure.
tremon 7 hours ago
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...
everdrive 4 hours ago
That's good to know, thank you. I'm been considering moving away from systemd, and certainly don't use Chrome.
The number of things you need to try to keep track of merely _improve_ your privacy is maddening. The whole world seems to be against you.
drdexebtjl 4 hours ago
mochapwns an hour ago
LtWorf 4 hours ago
heikkilevanto 7 hours ago
I don't like the idea of a persistent id for my machine. Would there be any harm in rewriting the machine-id at every boot? Or just deleting it as part of the shutdown sequence?
xeyownt 6 hours ago
gcr 6 hours ago
layla5alive 6 hours ago
alimbada 6 hours ago
I went to check if Flatpak would protect against this but it seems although it's a wanted feature it's not so straightforward to implement: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/4311
LtWorf 4 hours ago
CoastalCoder 7 hours ago
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that.
I have the urge to grab a pitchfork, but I know better than to make assumptions about why that functionality was added. Time to do some homework I guess.
ux266478 6 hours ago
Wow, three pieces of software I don't use for other reasons, just gained a new reason to evangelize against them!
heresie-dabord 5 hours ago
The utility of and presence of unique identifiers in software should be no surprise.
But if you are using TelemetryOS (i.e. you cannot fully switch off the chatter) and your daily Web browser doesn't offer privacy extensions, you are the product.
MisterTea 4 hours ago
Sounds like chrome is the problem.
jcarrano 3 hours ago
In dbus, it seems the feature is intended for two processes to know they can access the same shmem and other system resources. I'm struggling to understand in which circumstances would that be useful.
salawat 3 hours ago
teaearlgraycold 4 hours ago
Trying to imagine a world where I use Chrome unironically.
ezoe 6 hours ago
But does browser send these id?
xeyownt 6 hours ago
anthk 6 hours ago
As an Hyperbola user both systemd and dbus are a no-no there.
givinguflac 7 hours ago
Is this specific to Debian?
tremon 7 hours ago
nickjj 6 hours ago
cryo32 7 hours ago
noisy_boy 6 hours ago
> this is a good lesson for founders. The culture you build into your company will likely outlast your tenure.
Good founders already know this. Bad ones don't care.
reactordev 7 hours ago
Aww you missed the Ballmer Years. Chalked full of "me too!"'s and broken promises. But he was right about one thing. Developers, developers, developers...
gigel82 2 hours ago
Tangentially related to Device ID: Apple is significantly worse when it comes to machine identifiers; even with Autopilot enabled you can still install Linux on a Microsoft Surface device (or even Windows if you don't use a Microsoft Account). With MDM locks, Apple devices are literally bricks (especially since all ram and storage is soldered down and locked/paired to the secure enclave chip).
merb 7 hours ago
Well Enterprises can also enroll Linux machines in intune
mc32 4 hours ago
I remember a long time ago intel tried introducing unique IDs for their processors. People got up in arms made a big stink and intel put its tail between its legs. Many years later, the industry through a thousand little cuts has that and more with merely a whimper because it’s not a single big boogey entity but it’s diluted across hundreds of thousands of developers who deployed a myriad ways to fingerprint their users…
Someone 6 hours ago
I guess we’ll see a Windows tool that sets your identifier to this suspect’s “g:6755467234350028” very soon (weird ID, by the way. 16-digits makes sense, but I would have expected it to be hexadecimal)
Also, can anybody tell how “Microsoft had records showing that on May 12, 2025, at 19:21 UTC, the GDID associated with Stokes’ computer “accessed, among other ngrok pages, 'https://dashboard[.]ngrok.com/signup,'” works?
If it’s the browser sending that info to Microsoft, wouldn’t somebody have noticed that their PC contacts Microsoft for every web page they open? Or do they batch that data and send it at some later time?
Also, would that mean this ‘only’ affects those using Microsoft’s browser (or does Chrome do the same, sending data to Google?)
Alternatively, is this happening lower in the stack? I can think of a place where a system component has access to the domain name, but not of one where it has the full URL.
Kipters 5 hours ago
> (weird ID, by the way. 16-digits makes sense, but I would have expected it to be hexadecimal)
it's the decimal representation of a 64 bit integer
boopig 2 hours ago
It was Microsoft Defender SmartScreen in Edge I believe. The visited domain is submitted to Microsoft to check it against known malware and phishing sites. And, as we're learning here, it is associated with the GDID (and Microsoft Account) which can be accessed via law enforcement requests.
embedding-shape 5 hours ago
> Also, can anybody tell how “Microsoft had records showing that on May 12, 2025, at 19:21 UTC, the GDID associated with Stokes’ computer “accessed, among other ngrok pages, 'https://dashboard[.]ngrok.com/signup,'” works?
That URL shows 16 blocked requests, it tries to load (at the very least) datadog and googletagmanager, I'm guessing the police simply reached out to all the analytics companies Ngrok ends up indirectly/directly sending data to, which ends up saving everything they get their hands on.
What surprises me the most is that the guy was using a Windows installation to do all of this. But then again, you only hear about the dumbest criminals who get caught, so I guess it does make sense after all.
advisedwang 2 hours ago
> I'm guessing the police simply reached out to all the analytics companies Ngrok ends up indirectly/directly sending data to, which ends up saving everything they get their hands on.
But those companies would have no way of knowing the GDID. It's not sent in a header, I assume.
ndiddy 4 hours ago
A non-Edge browser would give the OS the domain name from the HTTPS connection and the page title because that's what it sets the window title to. I think that would be enough to identify the URL in a lot of cases (i.e. the sign-up URL sets the title to "ngrok Sign Up".
ralferoo 4 hours ago
Converting that ID to hex gives 18,000F,C8CB,93CC which rather looks like 32 bits of random data plus the prefix 0x18000f or possibly 40-48 bits of time in ms granularity from some epoch.
midtake 8 hours ago
To me this indicates that Microsoft has some sort of traffic analysis performed on endpoints, then linked to GDID. I'd guess this is part of Defender's real time protection or MAPS.
Fun fact, Microsoft Defender MAPS was previously named SpyNet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Active_Protection_Se...
The GDID identifier seems software in nature though. They could be more aggressive and tie it to the baseboard's serial number the way some games do. Then the hardware is tracked throughout its entire lifecycle, not just per instance of Windows install.
reactordev 6 hours ago
that's the idea behind SecureBoot and the TPM chip is to provide the GDID based on hardware fingerprint. Some games already do this as "anti-cheat" measurements (tracking you) and Microsoft has been doing it since Windows 7 days. It's just that the TPM now gives you that hardware authority.
gruez 4 hours ago
>that's the idea behind SecureBoot and the TPM chip is to provide the GDID based on hardware fingerprint
hard drive and motherboard serials have been around far longer than TPMs. Not to mention TPMs are far cheaper to replace than hard drives.
midtake 36 minutes ago
materialpoint 5 hours ago
This goes a long way to prove that Microsoft does NOT care about your privacy, even if the header of their cookie consent claims so. They absolutely do not care, and this should be said about every big-tech vendor, not matter how lame it seems to say so. It is long overdue that we all say what needs to be said: they do not care about your privacy, your independence, or your well being. They DO NOT CARE.
istoleabread 5 hours ago
Big news: Fork found in kitchen
failbuffer 2 hours ago
Yeah, but it's galling we accept these big obvious lies in our society. A legitimate government would impose appropriately stern consequences for misleading and false advertising.
materialpoint 4 hours ago
Since you did not understand the point at all: There are regulations in place to force sites to "ask" for permissions to use cookies and track you. The point is that the regulations completely fail to force the sites to not blatantly lie, and wrap the "consent" with "we care".
kevin_thibedeau 4 hours ago
contubernio 6 hours ago
Does this not violate European privacy laws?
tosti 6 hours ago
Probably yes it does. Not that it matters when you hack a website to have some expensive jewelry sent to your home address.
weberer 5 hours ago
So what if it does? They'll get hit with a fine that will be the equivalent of 6 hours of revenue as they continue to be bastards.
Kipters 5 hours ago
GDPR only covers PII, this is a randomly generated ID that changes on every install on the OS.
You can mix it with other info to track a user, but it's not enough to de-anonymize someone on its own.
tjoff 5 hours ago
If they associate it with a Microsoft account (or anything that is identifiable) then it becomes PII.
And of course they are.
totaa 5 hours ago
unfortunately under GDPR, anonymous IDs are personal data as they are used to single out a data subject.
account42 3 hours ago
nashashmi 3 hours ago
So this kid uses his home computer at his home, and they trace him down with the IP address, and the IP address also makes a request for Windows Updates. And that narrows down the Device ID. The device id is now traced to this kid.
This is the kind of stuff privacy advocates have been raising the alarms about. This is the kind of capability that de facto erased all privacy assertions. And further led companies like Google to take advantage of this and erase assumptions of privacy all together.
xnx 7 hours ago
Vague article. No evidence that Microsoft can see what web pages you are visiting in Chrome or Firefox (for example).
x______________ 6 hours ago
From the reply you're replying to:
> 27. Microsoft records also indicate: <...> a little more than three hours after the ngrok account was created, the user visited “[Company F].com” from the .168 proxy server.
crtasm 7 hours ago
Or even Edge with these options turned off:
>Send optional diagnostic data to improve Microsoft products [Includes how you use the browser, websites you visit, and enhanced error reporting. Determined by your Windows diagnostic data setting]
>Allow Microsoft to save your browsing activity including history, usage, favourites, web content, and other browsing data to personalise and improve Microsoft Edge and Microsoft services like ads, search, shopping, news, and Copilot [Includes your history, usage, favourites, web content and other browsing data]
bigbuppo an hour ago
And remember, most of this telemetry is just marketing/ad tech, so anyone that works in the martech/adtech space, you're also part of this.
materialpoint 35 minutes ago
The (not so) interesting part is how inefficient it is. Marketing by ads on the internet has less than 0.5% hit or click rate, and even then it is mostly accidental clicks due to the over-saturation of ads. It's not a real economy. It is just simply not actually worth it.
bigbuppo 4 minutes ago
And yet stupid amounts of money are spent collecting detailed dossiers on every person that touches the internet so that... I'm guessing someone's probably trying to sell mattresses or something... because that's always that weird last question in every marketing/advertising survey I've ever seen... do you plan on buying a mattress within the next six months?
Alien1Being 6 hours ago
The most surprising part of this is a "hacker" using Windows ...
pluc 7 hours ago
US Tech is fast becoming like Russia's and China's.
d5lt5 6 hours ago
Have you heard of a website called facebook?
pluc 6 hours ago
There was a time where the default assumption was functionality created tracking opportunities. Nowadays, it's more the opposite. Social media have always been on the forefront of monetizing data, but the same data in the hands of governments is used differently. My point is that the way you/we feel towards Facebook, the entire world is increasingly feeling about most, if not all, US tech.
I know people who won't use Israeli or Chinese-made tech for fears of sabotage. US tech is quickly making its brand in that market.
herbst 6 hours ago
NordStreamYacht 5 hours ago
inigyou 6 hours ago
It was originally called LifeLog and sponsored by the military as a data collection system to help them identify terrorists.
pessimizer 4 hours ago
Why when Americans do something do we feel like we have to mention the Russians and the Chinese?
Maybe I'm just bad at PR, though. If we call this "Chinese" behavior, maybe it will appeal a particular demographic who would normally support it in order to protect them from "Black Crime."
m132 7 hours ago
nubinetwork 4 hours ago
Android has one too. If you don't link your google account to an app, they can use your device id as your profile.
zelphirkalt 7 hours ago
My surprise level is at approximately... zero. Next we will see some news, that MS was compelled to share that info with some three letters. - Oh wait, that is exactly what has already happened, according to the article.
MS is just like that person, who drives a dagger into your back.
thewebguyd 2 hours ago
My thoughts exactly. Weren't they just caught recently handing over bitlocker keys (that get uploaded to MS by default when you sign in with a microsoft account) to the feds?[1]
Windows is malware.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/01/22/micro...
haussman 3 hours ago
Could this identification be through some alternate Windows service like Windows Update, Windows Time ntp server or Windows Defender?
egamirorrim 8 hours ago
Truly terrifying. But also shocking that a 'hacker' is using windows
efilife 7 hours ago
Some hackers want to spend their time doing cool stuff rather than constantly fixing their system
drw85 6 hours ago
I switched to linux a year ago and in that year had less problems than on Windows.
I had some minor problems after updates once or twice. On Windows i had to boot into restore mode multiple times due to Windows Update screwing something up.
The MS Store also constantly had trouble updating apps and games and i had to manage packages manually and uninstall and reinstall them so it would work again until the next update.
The times were Windows is easy to use and fire and forget are long gone. The decline in quality is noticeable.
nehal3m 7 hours ago
Yeah, that’s why they install Linux
gcr 6 hours ago
when it comes to video gaming I’ve found Bazzite to be generally far less fiddly than windows 11, surprisingly
dizhn 6 hours ago
This is basically FUD and has been for at least 20 years. Please refrain from it. I am not fixing nothing daily.
anthk 5 hours ago
Actual hackers don't need to run debloating tools each boot getting tired of all the adware and bundled crap eating GB's of storage.
Actual hackers would use Guix System and actually hack really cool stuff and, yes, Guix (the package manager) would be eating GB's because of reproducibility... but at least you could restore your system from Grub anytime.
ChrisArchitect 5 hours ago
[dupe] Full Writeup of the Windows GDID
protocolture 8 hours ago
Probably a capability demanded through a TCN or TAN as part of a mechanism like Australias Access and Assistance bill.
diogenescynic 4 hours ago
I assume this likely true for nearly all device manufactures. I assume all devices have some kind of unique ID that they use for tracking, whether they said so or not.
blaqq2 3 hours ago
I'm more surprised that this already isn't a known fact. I wonder exactly how far into each device activity is being tracked.
Terr_ 8 hours ago
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.
pogue 8 hours ago
The article links to this page, which was shared on HN yesterday. [1]
I feel like using wireshark to look at what's being sent back and forth from Windows telemetry, when using Edge, Chrome & etc should reveal what's being sent and recieved. Using MITM SSL spoofing should be able to intercept the packets.
Terr_ 8 hours ago
I would be shocked if Microsoft was not using their own layer of certificate-pinning to stop people from doing that, and/or using another layer of encryption separate from the networking layer.
pogue 8 hours ago
cromka 8 hours ago
boopig an hour ago
It's Microsoft Defender SmartScreen in Edge.
You can also use the Windows Diagnostic Viewer to check the telemetry data being shipped to Microsoft. I'd be willing to bet that you could use Edge (with defaults) and see the URLs being sent to Microsoft but nothing would come from Brave, Firefox, Chrome etc.
8cvor6j844qw_d6 7 hours ago
I was under the impression Windows is unreliable for these kind of activities as they are "leakish".
I imagine it's not too difficult to narrow down the potential suspects with how much data points you'd get from ISP, Windows telemetry, and whatever.
red_admiral 7 hours ago
"all" would be troubling indeed. I hope that someone can discover the mechanism, and whether it's depending on any settings like "Share browsing data with other Windows features" or any other settings.
echelon_musk 8 hours ago
Worse than just domains as TFA shows full URLs are recorded.
Reminds me of Google Safebrowsing.
ale42 7 hours ago
Possibly the same but done by Edge?