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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Privacy
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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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Wat? If you have something running on your system that's tracking you, you are already fucked. It doesn't require that file. It can just create one anywhere on the system and use it, if need be.
A browser is one example, what's the alternative to that other than sticking it inside some sandbox or something?
Sticking it into a sandbox is reasonable, but you can also use more privacy aware browsers like LibreWolf. Chrome and Chromium will track you 100%, so don't launch those unless necessary.
At least that's what I do.
The problem with machine-id specifically is that it's become a standard way for the browser to identify itself. There obviously other ways you can be tracked, but this is a very low bar and a common way of sites tracking people.
this is really shocking. wouldn't browser makers concerned with privacy like librewolf, mullvad, ungoogled-chromium, etc, try to block this by default? is it that they don't know? is it that it can't be blocked?
how does a regular user of a typical linux distribution like fedora or debian block this?
is this machine-id used to track people on hardened distros like tails or qubes?
can this machine id be read by sites when using tor browser?
i don't understand why debian, for example, who removed telemetry from keepassxc before putting it in their repo because they didn't like a password manager phoning home, would allow a persistent id that could be easily read by many sites.
I believe liberewolf does hide your machine id