I don’t think Microsoft recorded the URLs, just activity from a GDID and IP address at particular timestamps. The authorities would also have subpoenaed records from other accounts they knew were his e.g. Snapchat and Facebook. The GDID was just a way of assigning activity from his device to particular VPN endpoints at particular times. The point of the story is essentially that the GDID allowed them to track his device across multiple IP addresses. But this wouldn’t have been possible without at least some other pieces of the puzzle such as knowing which was his Microsoft account, or Facebook account etc. in the first place.

+1 would like to see some screenshots of your fantasy desktops!

Personally I’ve found my happy medium by using Ubuntu desktop as my daily driver with a few old Windows VMs e.g. for when I’m feeling nostalgic or need to run a pre-enshittified app. I use Proton Web (proxy for browsing 90s era websites) on Windows 95, and Adobe Creative Suite 6 under Windows 7.

Woah, that’s way more invasive than I thought. Thanks for the info.

I’m outside the US and have only vaguely been following the Flock camera epidemic. What’s the threat here exactly? That Flock will have record of where you work? Or that they’ll have photos of your face or vehicle? Are you on LinkedIn? Props to you if you aren’t, but if you are, anyone can already see where you work, what you look like, and make an educated guess as to your start and finish times. For what it’s worth I wouldn’t like my workplace putting them up either.