If your system uses systemd, it has an etc/machine-id, which is used for a lot of different things. And changing it will break a lot of stuff, probably until you reboot. I guess you could write something to randomly shuffle it every time you reboot? But it is the go-to way for lots of programs (including browsers) to identify themselves. Which means (unless you have done the work to scramble your machine ID) you can be tracked on Linux as well.
I wouldn’t call overhauling your entire operating system, including finding alternatives to software you use daily, making sure your hardware is compatible and relearning your entire work method as an “easy trick”.
There’s a very easy trick to defeat this: use Linux.
If your system uses systemd, it has an etc/machine-id, which is used for a lot of different things. And changing it will break a lot of stuff, probably until you reboot. I guess you could write something to randomly shuffle it every time you reboot? But it is the go-to way for lots of programs (including browsers) to identify themselves. Which means (unless you have done the work to scramble your machine ID) you can be tracked on Linux as well.
Where in the source does Firefox expose machine-id to websites?
With a quick grep I’m only seeing it around audio?
If that hacker only knew about tracking by Windows…
I wouldn’t call overhauling your entire operating system, including finding alternatives to software you use daily, making sure your hardware is compatible and relearning your entire work method as an “easy trick”.
I think you might actually be surprised…