Microsoft Can Track Users via a Windows Device ID

https://www.pcmag.com/news/a-hackers-arrest-reveals-microsoft-can-track-users-via-a-windows-device

by ifh-hn • 16 days ago

355 162 16 days ago

Terr_5• 16 days 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.

pogue3• 16 days 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.

[1] https://github.com/SmtimesIWndr/gdid-reversal

Terr_5• 16 days 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.

echelon_musk• 16 days ago

Worse than just domains as TFA shows full URLs are recorded.

Reminds me of Google Safebrowsing.

ale42• 16 days ago

Possibly the same but done by Edge?

red_admiral• 16 days 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.

8cvor6j844qw_d6• 16 days 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.

boopig2• 15 days 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.

protocolture• 16 days ago

Probably a capability demanded through a TCN or TAN as part of a mechanism like Australias Access and Assistance bill.

midtake2• 16 days 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.

reactordev2• 16 days 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• 15 days 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.

egamirorrim• 16 days ago

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

efilife• 16 days ago

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

nehal3m• 16 days ago

Yeah, that’s why they install Linux

gcr2• 16 days ago

when it comes to video gaming I’ve found Bazzite to be generally far less fiddly than windows 11, surprisingly

drw85• 16 days 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.

dizhn• 16 days ago

This is basically FUD and has been for at least 20 years. Please refrain from it. I am not fixing nothing daily.

anthk2• 16 days 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.

zelphirkalt• 16 days 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• 15 days 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...

cheschire• 16 days 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.

merb• 16 days ago

Well Enterprises can also enroll Linux machines in intune

tremon4• 16 days 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...

givinguflac• 16 days ago

Is this specific to Debian?

heikkilevanto• 16 days 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?

CoastalCoder• 16 days 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.

alimbada• 16 days 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

ezoe• 16 days ago

But does browser send these id?

ux266478• 16 days ago

Wow, three pieces of software I don't use for other reasons, just gained a new reason to evangelize against them!

anthk2• 16 days ago

As an Hyperbola user both systemd and dbus are a no-no there.

heresie-dabord• 16 days 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.

everdrive• 16 days 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.

teaearlgraycold• 16 days ago

Trying to imagine a world where I use Chrome unironically.

MisterTea• 16 days ago

Sounds like chrome is the problem.

jcarrano• 15 days 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.

reactordev2• 16 days 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...

noisy_boy• 16 days 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.

mc32• 16 days 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…

gigel82• 15 days 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).

drnick12• 15 days ago

Edit: and Brave.

I would suggest staying away from Brave. I recently compiled the debloated Brave edition from source and was rather disappointed. Brave was slower on my machine than Firefox and Chromium according to Speedometer 3.1. The built-in adblocker does a worse job at cosmetic filtering than uBlock Origin on Firefox. On top of that, I had to build the browser from source because the only binaries I could find are Brave's own. Their builds aren't reproducible, and no Linux distro packages their own.

If you think I am being paranoid, you may also want to take a look at this:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-...

xnx• 16 days ago

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

crtasm2• 16 days 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]

x______________2• 16 days 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.

crtasm2• 15 days ago

This tells us nothing about whether non-Microsoft browsers are involved

pluc3• 16 days ago

US Tech is fast becoming like Russia's and China's.

d5lt53• 16 days ago

Have you heard of a website called facebook?

inigyou2• 16 days ago

It was originally called LifeLog and sponsored by the military as a data collection system to help them identify terrorists.

pluc3• 16 days 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.

pessimizer• 16 days 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• 16 days ago

Duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48807767

contubernio• 16 days ago

Does this not violate European privacy laws?

tosti• 16 days ago

Probably yes it does. Not that it matters when you hack a website to have some expensive jewelry sent to your home address.

Kipters2• 16 days 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.

totaa• 16 days ago

unfortunately under GDPR, anonymous IDs are personal data as they are used to single out a data subject.

tjoff• 16 days ago

If they associate it with a Microsoft account (or anything that is identifiable) then it becomes PII.

And of course they are.

weberer• 16 days 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.

Someone• 16 days 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.

Kipters2• 16 days 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

embedding-shape• 16 days 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• 15 days 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• 16 days 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• 16 days 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.

boopig2• 15 days 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.

ptidhomme• 15 days ago

It's all parallel construction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

dlenski5• 14 days ago

My suspicion as well. I don't see any crystal clear evidence for it, but I'm sure looking for it.

Alien1Being• 16 days ago

The most surprising part of this is a "hacker" using Windows ...

materialpoint4• 16 days 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• 16 days ago

Big news: Fork found in kitchen

materialpoint4• 16 days 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".

failbuffer• 15 days 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.

ChrisArchitect• 16 days ago

[dupe] Full Writeup of the Windows GDID

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48811081

lorislab• 16 days 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.

llm_nerd3• 15 days 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.

mysteria2• 15 days 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

nailer6• 15 days ago

Good question. My understand is that it was licensing:

Hackers cloaked IP address -> VPN license -> Windows GDID -> Hacker's name.

J-Kuhn• 15 days 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...

drnick12• 15 days 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 also completely exposed to programs such as games and anti-cheat software.

felooboolooomba2• 15 days ago

Yep, and firefox ships it to it's servers.

dlenski5• 15 days 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.

nickphx• 15 days ago

from the microsoft store. the ngrok app was downloaded via microsoft store...

srichard162• 15 days 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.

specproc• 15 days ago

I'm not even clear if it requires Windows. Say if one had a Surface running Arch, would that still be traceable?

Asking for a friend.

Terr_5• 15 days ago

Exactly how does Microsoft's device identifier get associated with the ngrok session

The article has a link to "39-page criminal complaint" PDF, and I'd summarize the prosecution's claims (from sections 21.e, 22, 26) as:

1. The ngrok client was downloaded onto hardware owned by the victims and used by the attacker.

2. The client was later discovered along with an ngrok auth token. (2x0b1363KPV35LCUuZCkJag0G84_2btDjSM5oY82TQuiLZvaz)

3. The ngrok auth data was linked to an ngrok account. (ac_2x0b16MSTJk4PvjLZMoqt4vOvZM)

4. Although a VPN was used by whomever created the ngrok account, the creation-time of the account correlates to Microsoft's telemetry, which indicates that the accused's computer was visiting ngrok sign-up pages.

Bender• 15 days 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.

nubinetwork• 16 days 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.

diogenescynic2• 15 days 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• 15 days 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.

diogenescynic2• 12 days ago

It's down to the component level in many cases...

nashashmi• 15 days 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.

haussman• 15 days ago

Could this identification be through some alternate Windows service like Windows Update, Windows Time ntp server or Windows Defender?

bigbuppo2• 15 days 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.

materialpoint4• 15 days 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.

bigbuppo2• 15 days 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?

zaptheimpaler• 15 days ago

I'm probably going to called a lunatic but I'm convinced this kind of telemetry is somehow linked to and behind the huge coordinated advertising push for VPNs in the last few years. More and more, the "invisible hand of the market" seems like literally the hands of a few very large conglomerations of power and capital that shape the economics of the entire market to effectively control it - they shape the gradient and make sure companies optimize loss. VPNs are either directly spyware that increases tracking capability, or are being offered now because they don't need your IP to track you anymore so they might as well make money off your fears while still tracking you. More broadly, I don't see much of a free market or democracy left anymore, now every government is doing a coordinated push to eliminate privacy as well.

RandyOrion• 15 days ago

The criminal complaint missing in this article: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/media/1450651/dl

Basically, Microsoft logs things from windows users, including and not limiting to, the machine GDID, IPs that come with the GDID, and when and what exact URLs accessed. So for windows users, privacy, an important part of information security, is totally destroyed by these logs enforced on windows. Another important part of information security is bug fixing, and microsoft did make at least one security researcher angry [1].

And a simple solution to that problem is moving to linux. You save yourself a lot of time and energy for leaving the adversarial information security condition imposed by windows and microsoft.

P.S. You may consider debloating windows for a more information security friendly environment. However, that is nearly impossible, as long as you realize that windows is an OS composed of thousands of closed source softwares, and doing security audits on all of these will be costly.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48315968

super2562• 15 days ago

Related thread by some Massgrave.dev devs explaining some GDID mechanisms:

https://x.com/massgravel/status/2074304593303892354

Terr_5• 15 days ago

Convenience link for those who don't want to create a Twitter account to see more.

https://xcancel.com/massgravel/status/2074304593303892354

The sites' anti-bot measures seem unhappy with my current computer/location at this time, but hopefully it works for everyone else.

super2562• 13 days ago

I can recommend the LibRedirect extension for doing this automatically: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/

(I don't use it for Twitter, because I find the 5s xcancel redirect more annoying than logging into Twitter. But I use it for Imgur and Tiktok, as Imgur straight up denies serving many VPN IPs, and Tiktok serves a really annoying captcha.)

Microsoft Can Track Users via a Windows Device ID

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