A Hacker's Arrest Reveals How Microsoft Tracks Users by Device ID

Citing the circumstances surrounding the arrest of one hacker, PCMag has reported that Microsoft has the ability to track users of the Windows operating system through a unique device identifier.

According to the report, it was this identifier that played a part in the case that led to the perpetrator's capture. The mere existence of such a mechanism in Windows is no secret, yet this particular instance of law enforcement putting it into practice has drawn wide attention.

The news generated a notable stir in the Hacker News community: the post scored 116 points and gathered 54 comments, a sign of heightened user interest in the topic of digital privacy and corporations' capabilities for identifying devices.

The details of exactly how the identification mechanism is built and what data it makes it possible to correlate are not disclosed in the available account. Even so, the very fact that such an identifier was used in an investigation raises questions about the degree of transparency of Windows telemetry and about how aware users are of the data the system collects.

The discussion on Hacker News centered on what consequences such a tracking capability could have for the privacy of users of the operating system, as well as on how widely such identifiers might be applied beyond the specific case mentioned.

Source: Hacker News