here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id.
Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else.
So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that.
Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier.
Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier.
The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that.
here’s a fifteen year old stack overflow thread where someone asks where a unique system identifier can be read and someone suggests machine-id.
Lest that be considered old and bad information, I just checked /etc/machine-id on a new install of Debian 13 and the permissions were 444, readable by owner, group and everyone else.
So programs can read machine-id. If programs can read it they can transmit it. I hope someone capable of writing a program that can id my machine doesn’t need a proof of that.
Further, programs reading machine-id don’t necessarily fall into the spyware category by default like you say. There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to request a machine specific identifier.
Getting rid of the literal “papers please!” “Okay officer!” File literally makes investigation more difficult and puts a barrier up to tracking where there was none before. Presenting a unique hashed output based on the systems machine-id prevents a tracking method that is currently as easy as read file -> get identifier.
The fact that other methods of tracking exist doesn’t make preventing this method not worthwhile and you should be ashamed for suggesting that.