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Your Windows PC Has a Permanent ID That Follows You – Even With a VPN (archive.is)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

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[-] Sickday@kbin.earth 4 points 2 months ago

Just want to point out that /etc/machine-id is unique to systemd systems. AlpineLinux, for example, doesn't generate this file on install.

[-] forestbeasts@pawb.social 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We tossed systemd out the window on our Debian. Stuff broke when we removed /etc/machine-id.

Turns out dbus ALSO uses it, but if it's not in /etc, it makes its own at /var/lib/dbus/machine-id (which was symlinked to /etc/machine-id on our system).

So we just wrote 00000000000000000000000000000000 to it instead. 🙃

-- Frost

this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026

360 points (99.2% liked)

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