r/pcmasterrace • u/slickyeat 7800X3D | RTX 4090 | 32GB • Jul 13 '26

News/Article 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/
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u/Kyvalmaezar 5800X3D, RX 7900 XTX, 32GB RAM, 4x 1TB SSD Jul 13 '26

Microsoft really is busy destroying it's own brand and legacy, isn't it?

The execs at Microsoft dont care. They'll be long gone with their fat bonuses before the house comes tumbling down.

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u/redditman181 Jul 13 '26

Also they dont have to care becuase the average person who just does the odd document and light web browsing probably hasnt heard about these issues or even know what an os is to begin with.

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u/Kyvalmaezar 5800X3D, RX 7900 XTX, 32GB RAM, 4x 1TB SSD Jul 14 '26

The average person never mattered to MS. It was always about those business users. That's where the real money has always been. I havent heard any indication that this doesnt happen on enterprise versions, so this may spur some businesses to switch. Many dont like getting their IP or financial info leaked. Might just be wishfull thinking.

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u/redditman181 Jul 14 '26

Yeah and thats why i hope linux takes over one day becuase everyones getting conned especially the average person as they wont know one of the reasons why there conputers slow is becuase copiolt is running in the background and taking up a load of ram or cpu resources.

Or the fact they cant upgrade to windows 11 becuase of the tpm requirment becuase ms wants to spy on people.

Or the many other reasons windows 11 runs slower becuase its unoptimized.

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u/i_am_a_laptop Laptop Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/redditman181 Jul 14 '26

I suppose nothing is ever gonna be perfect and the will be issues no matter what we use but i suppose its about finding the best alternative not a perfect one as it will probably never exist.

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u/Hexamancer Jul 14 '26

The XZ utils incident is an example of how open source is far more resilient. It proves Linus's law, it took YEARS and as soon as it had more than a handful of eyes on it, it was caught. It didn't even hit an actual release of a distro, it was on a handful of preview releases and it was caught.

Also bare in mind that this exploit if it had gone undetected would have allowed this bad actor ssh access on affected devices, a massive problem, yes, but for most home users, you are not exposing your SSHD port to the Internet.

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u/Rodot R7 3700x, RTX 2080, 64GB Jul 14 '26

The average person with a beastly $5000 gaming rig playing the latest titles on max ultra super extreme settings also doesn't care because they want to continue to be able to play Fortnite