VPN Provider Fights Microsoft's Hidden Windows Device Tracking
A hacker’s arrest exposed a little-known way Microsoft can track users on a Windows PC, but VPN provider Windscribe says it developed a process to shut it down.Windscribe says its experimental computer script can remove the Global Device ID (GDID) from a Windows PC. That identifier was used by the FBI to identify 19-year-old Peter Stokes, an alleged member of the hacking group Scattered Spider. Agents uncovered that an IP address associated with his hacks was linked to Stokes’s Windows PC through the 16-digit GDID.
- ▪A hacker’s arrest exposed a little-known way Microsoft can track users on a Windows PC, but VPN provider Windscribe says it developed a process to shut it down.Windscribe says its experimental computer script can remove the Global Device ID
- ▪That identifier was used by the FBI to identify 19-year-old Peter Stokes, an alleged member of the hacking group Scattered Spider.
- ▪Agents uncovered that an IP address associated with his hacks was linked to Stokes’s Windows PC through the 16-digit GDID.
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| Original publisher | PCMag |
| Canonical URL | https://www.pcmag.com/news/vpn-provider-fights-microsofts-hidden-windows-device-tracking-gdid |
| Publication time | Tue, 28 Jul 26 20:36:19 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-28T20:45:37.405Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-28T20:45:37.405Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | -qoe29jFP6Ga · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
A hacker’s arrest exposed a little-known way Microsoft can track users on a Windows PC, but VPN provider Windscribe says it developed a process to shut it down.Windscribe says its experimental computer script can remove the Global Device ID (GDID) from a Windows PC. That identifier was used by the FBI to identify 19-year-old Peter Stokes, an alleged member of the hacking group Scattered Spider. Agents uncovered that an IP address associated with his hacks was linked to Stokes’s Windows PC through the 16-digit GDID. A GDID on a Windows 11 PC. (Credit: PCMag) The unsealed criminal complaint also revealed that Microsoft can associate a GDID with third-party services, including the time a Windows PC accesses them.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at PCMag.
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