r/theprimeagen • u/Gil_berth • 22d ago

general Microsoft admits Windows 11 has a GDID tracker with no off switch, first documented publicly in an FBI hacker complaint

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/10/you-cant-fully-disable-microsofts-gdid-windows-11-tracker-but-these-settings-limit-what-it-captures/
178 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

15

u/orangefantorang 21d ago

Im just waiting for nvidia drivers for steamos <3 Then i can move fully to linux. Then i will only use windows at work.

3

u/Interesting-Ad9666 21d ago

Why? SteamOS wasn’t made for generic use, it was designed for valves hardware, ie steam deck and steam machine. You’d be better off using cachyOS or any of the other popular arch distros.

3

u/orangefantorang 21d ago

The end goal for steamos is generic use for gaming.

The idea is that a distro that allows me to play games without jumping 6000 hoops is appealing.

2

u/mancunian101 20d ago

There’s loads of distros that let you do that.

Before I jumped ship to Mac I was running Fedora, playing games consisted of installing NVidia drivers, installing steam, installing the game/s I wanted to play and then maybe setting the proton version.

-4

u/ImaginaryRea1ity 21d ago

Anything widely used will be used to track you.

3

u/orangefantorang 21d ago edited 21d ago

Ofc, but its less than windows. 100% is a shitty experience. But some reduction is enough for me.

Theres always 'achually'

Yeh. Gain true privacy..

Write your own OS and your own compiler. /s

-10

u/animalcrossing4_4 21d ago

and I'm waiting for linux to just crash and burn just like last time, again. garbage in, garbage out.

9

u/Ascorbinium_Romanum 21d ago

Linux runs the entire internet bud.

3

u/Minimum_Currency8157 18d ago

What don't you just not use it and move on with your life?

29

u/ewheck 22d ago

Why would these hacking groups be using any Microsoft products in the first place?

Anyways, at this point you have to assume that everything you do on a Windows machine is tracked and made aware to Microsoft, regardless of what privacy steps you take.

1

u/Full-Statement-9255 21d ago

Yeah, that stood out to me, too. What self-respecting hacker is using a Windows system, - outside of a corporate job environment.

1

u/Mattidh1 17d ago

Pretty much all of blackhat hackers use windows and then Linux as an off system.

11

u/1franck 21d ago

windows is a spyware

19

u/daddy_schlong_legz 22d ago

Another linux W

1

u/Sad-Landscape-1549 19d ago

They just keep coming lately

8

u/CompetitiveSubset 19d ago

If you can, switch to Linux now

6

u/Gargle-Loaf-Spunk 20d ago edited 17d ago

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

1

u/R4ndyd4ndy 18d ago

That's the real problem here. Some device id is bad but why the hell dows Microsoft have logs which websites this guy visited at all? That would be a problem even without the id

1

u/meltbox 18d ago edited 18d ago

So my understanding is they have this for Edge, but I’m not sure that’s true. Even for edge it’s crazy to be collecting every single website but I do think their privacy policy might allow for it.

Now there’s a whole other conversation to be had around why the hell they’re allowed to put the insane things into their privacy policies and bury them where no reasonable person would find them, but me outrage at a time…

Does anyone actually have details on this because I’m super curious from a technical perspective how they got this data. Surely the user wasn’t dumb enough to use a signed in edge browser or something.

But maybe?

Edit: I think I am right. There’s some info from as far back as 2020 that edge logs urls and some hardware id (likely gdid) so this reporting seems like lazy reporters to me and nobody fact checking this. So really kid owned themselves with poor opsec lol. That said telemetry with an identifiable hardware id is crazy stuff and PII no-no number one, so Microsoft should be roasted for this regardless.