But if you are using TelemetryOS (i.e. you cannot fully switch off the chatter) and your daily Web browser doesn't offer privacy extensions, you are the product.

If you want to escape that, you have to use dedicated privacy-enhancing tools / browsers, but even then, it's very likely that you can still be identified by motivated adversaries.

It doesn't mean you have to give up, but, if such id is necessary for technical reasons in systemd (I guess it is), I wouldn't worry too much.

This sounds like you're referring to state actors and intelligence agencies, but really this applies to the entire advertising/surveillance industry of people trying to sell you a new flavor of soda.

Unless anonymization is provided by your browser, there is nothing you can do to prevent such identification technology run by these advertisers to build your profile, and send you targeted ads.

The OS could treat certain apps as untrusted and spoof or limit the access to these unique identifiers.

It can take a lot of effort to make yourself truly just blend in and disappear.

Double-check that this method actually works though.

Machine ID is used for things like dhcp leases, log rotation, etc. IPV6 addresses or transient MAC addresses are derived from it

The DUID is designed to be unique across all DHCP clients and servers, and stable for any specific client or server. That is, the DUID used by a client or server SHOULD NOT change over time if at all possible; for example, a device's DUID should not change as a result of a change in the device's network hardware or changes to virtual interfaces

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1498611/ubuntu-dhcp-client-u... (linked because depending on version, there are several different ways to make this change..)

I have the urge to grab a pitchfork, but I know better than to make assumptions about why that functionality was added. Time to do some homework I guess.

I'm running Arch Linux and /etc/machine-id is present.

There's also an optional /etc/machine-info file that could exist. It's not a part of systemd and won't be created by default. It's more of an informal way to have details about the system in 1 spot. It was more popular when provisioning bare metal servers but still has value in the cloud. You can have key / value pairs on who to contact, where it's located, what type of machine it is, etc..

https://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-uuidgen.1.html

The number of things you need to try to keep track of merely _improve_ your privacy is maddening. The whole world seems to be against you.

I’ve seen that it uses a different init system and doesn’t rely on either dbus or systemd

Other BSDs don’t have that, but have equivalent PCI tree identifiers. “hostid”, too, is found on many systems but is much less unique as it’s often a function of local network address.

It’s best to focus your efforts into rotating these IDs.

Anyone serious about privacy is using Firefox or Tor Browser, with various settings to harden it against tracking.

And you should be running the browser inside firejail at all times.

If the privacy reasons are driving you, see if you can find fixes to these issues without getting rid of systemd.