| May (Mayson), 29 | | genderfluid/nonbinary/pan | | (they/he) | | russian, freely speaks english | | IN FANDOM HELL | | art blog is @maybe-arts | | refererence/recipes/tutorials dump blog is @maysonfuckwronglayer |
[image description: a drawing of Roswell against a white background. Roswell is a small red bird with a black band across their eyes. They’re taking off in flight, and there are small twisting vines and a gold sheriff badge beneath them.]
Ants have the most badass lives of anything in the animal kingdom, life as an ant is like warhammer
Wake up in enormous underground cyberpunk metropolis
Venture outside with your ant buddies to forage scraps from an incomprehensible civilization of alien gods (each one several times larger than the city you’ve spent most of your life inside) for the glory of your GodMomEmpress
Get attacked by a platoon of soldiers from a rival megacity, they’re an offshoot of your species except like twice as big (basically orks) and like 10% of them are genetically modified supersoldiers with wings
Luckily, you’ve been engineered from birth to spit acid so you and your antfriends successfully defeat the rival ants and their winged miniboss
Hey. If people aren’t aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can’t survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn’t like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
Here’s the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.
Please do me a favor, reblog for reach!! This went through several days of research and testing!! THANKS
You can get and use windows 11 without logging in with a microsoft account, as of five days ago. I am a local user on my computer. Don’t ask me how to do it, because my computer repair guy did it when he reinstalled windows, but there are tutorials out there. Refuse to connect to internet until you’re set up and can use the computer freely.
Refusing to connect to the internet doesn’t help. You have to open a Command Prompt (Shift+F10) and typing start ms-cxh:localonly (and pressing enter) during installation when you get to the sign in/create stupid ms account screen
every time i start to feel cringe for being too deep in the hyperfixation i remember the intense depression i have waded through and have to remind myself that enjoyment is fleeting (so grab it with both hands), and life is for loving (so hold that love close), and if anyone thinks i’m cringe they must not be having a very good time (and i hope they can find a good time soon).
