A little-known Windows identifier that can uniquely follow a PC across Microsoft services has come under renewed scrutiny after a US court filing revealed it helped investigators trace an alleged member of the Scattered Spider cybercrime group, raising fresh questions about privacy and device tracking.
The identifier, known as the Global Device ID (GDID), surfaced in Microsoft's complaint against the suspected hacker, where the company described it as 'a persistent, device-level identifier designed to uniquely identify an installation of a Windows operating system on a device ... across certain Microsoft services and scenarios.'
