4 ms·

> This level of data isn't anonymous. It can't be. is there some big list of the hardware I have bought? If not, sure, they can fingerprint me but I don't see

• simcop2387 10y ago
  I'm not sure that they do this, but all it would take is for it to be tied to the license key you bought from microsoft.
  • mmastrac 10y ago
    Which is conveniently taken care of when you sign in using your Microsoft account.
• wernercd 10y ago
  If you get enough info... and compare it to someone else's set of info... there is going to be an intersecting set of information. Combine that with unique combinations... and you get an increasing confidence of who the end user is. It's why they suggest you don't "full screen" browsers when using tor... Stuff like browser sizes can identify you: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/102133/how-can-you-be-tracked-using-screen-resolution-monitor-size-in-tor https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/102133/how-can-... It's easy to tell that if a custom screen size can identify you... what will other unique traits do?
• nbadg 10y ago
  De-anonymization is incredibly easy (bordering on trivial) with any rich data set. For example, 87% of the US population is uniquely identifiable by their combination of DoB, zip code, and sex [1]. The richer a dataset is, the easier it is to de-anonymize. This is a pretty rich dataset. [1] http://latanyasweeney.org/work/identifiability.html http://latanyasweeney.org/work/identifiability.html
• eveningcoffee 10y ago
  Give up your name in any transaction and bye bye your anonymity.