Ultimately, the problem is much bigger than /etc/machine-id since there are dozens of hardware IDs on any PC that can be used by malicious telemetry to silently to uniquely identify and track you, and the only solution to this problem currently is to make sure you really trust any software you use.
Systemd, in particular, acts a lot like malware for Linux because if you try to reset your machine-id a long list of stuff that breaks in in it. You could make a cron script to reset /etc/machine-id every day, but machine-id is so deep in the stack that you’d also have to reboot to ensure it’s updated.
Well browsers are apps, just like any other app on your system. So the same advice applies. If you don’t trust chrome and firefox but you still want to run them, use a container/distrobox/VM. There are plenty of more private browsers though, like Brave or Mullvad Browser.
Web apps, on the other hand, run inside the browser sandbox, which is an entirely different environment. They don’t have access to machineid unless the browser gave it to them, for example via a browser extension. There’s still a lot of fingerprinting vectors though, so use Tor Browser or Mullvad Browser, ideally with JS disabled. This website is a great way to check your fingerprint: https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/
Browsers aren’t just apps, they’re effectively platforms which run all kinds of apps you end up accessing online when you visit sites. Since the browser leaks the id to these apps, you’re effectively trusting the apps. Sure, you could run your browser in a VM or whatever, but that’s missing the point entirely. The real question is why your machine needs to have a unique identifier, and why the fuck it’s baked into functionality of systemd which is now replacing the traditional tool chain with a monolith.
And yes, I’m fully aware of other metadata that the browser leaks, and the fact that people are just starting to talk about that is also a problem. Running with Js disabled or putting a browser in a VM, is not really a solution for vast majority of people. The issue is that we have systems that are designed to enable tracking by default, and you have to jump through hoops to get around that. Telling people here are the hoops isn’t really helpful.
I’m not familiar with the purposes or history of machine-id, I’d guess that it’s just a legacy artifact that can’t be easily removed now.
There’s definitely a lot to be desired when it comes to privacy on Linux. Unfortunately Linux was designed before many of the privacy and security best practices became established, which is why is it less secure than modern systems like Android (source). Trying to re-architect Linux at this point would be an insane undertaking. Machine-id is just one thing in a long list that would need to be changed. Nothing wrong with advocating for it, but I just wouldn’t expect it to happen for at least 5 years.
Containers are a modern technology with isolation and security as a core goal from the start. And by now, containers are already deeply integrated into the Linux community, for example look at how the entire Fedora Atomic project (including Bluefin, Aurora, Bazzite) uses container-based infrastructure to build the OS images. So that’s why I’ve been moving towards it as a solution for my privacy needs, and I recommend others look into it as well.
Edit: rewording some sentences
Systemd was designed long after a lot of these security practices and problems with tracking were well understood. There’s very little excuse for it doing a lot of the things it does. Systemd is literally re-architecting how Linux was meant to work originally, and for the worse. I get the impression you’re not actually familiar with the history of Linux or Unix philosophy in general.
Having to put everything into containers is really just a work around bad architecture that keeps being pushed in the Linux world. Containers are useful, and probably the only way to actually keep apps from having too much access to the system at this point, but I don’t see why bad architecture should be accepted and then have to be worked around.
I’ve read enough mailing lists and issue trackers to know that they are far more complex than they look on the surface, so I definitely won’t claim authority about them.
Take this one that I found recently: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1618257
It’s a bug report about Firefox’s favicon cache. They started looking into it, but found out that if they fix this bug, it creates fingerprinting risk, so they have to address that as well. And so the issue gets stuck in limbo for like 10 years, and is still open till today.
Regarding systemd, it had to be built on top of the existing architecture, and more importantly, had to appeal to the Linux community to be adopted, so it couldn’t change too much. I assume they have their reasons for depending on machine-id. It might not even be a direct dependency. Maybe it allowed easier adoption by the big players.
I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t really care about digging into every single fingerprinting vector (of which there are probably tons more), when I can just use containers. And while using containers might feel like a hack or workaround, if we look at Flatpak, it seems like containers are becoming the framework for app isolation on Linux, similar to what already exists on Android. So it may very well become the official solution to privacy and security on Linux.
My point is that systemd did not have to be built at all. It’s an abomination that goes directly against the original philosophy of Linux creating a monolithic monstrosity to replace individual and composable programs that used to be the way init works. Now, everything is tied to it and it’s become like a cancer in a linux system that’s inoperable. The whole system-id problem is just one example of why this is a terrible design.
Well I’m not here to argue about systemd in general, that’s a far larger topic. All I’ll say is that from my experience, systemd felt cleaner than the competitors at the time and created a lot of conventions and standards that are taken for granted today.
For example, to bring this back to the original topic, another commenter in this thread mentioned that systemd provides an API for generating randomized machine-ids that flatpak utilizes.
Though flatpak is gaining more dependency on systemd, and I don’t think that coupling is necessary, so I’ve been keeping an eye out in that space.
Edit: researching a bit more on the topic, there’s some interesting comments here about how systemd is not as monolithic as people think
My view is that systemd was a mistake and I disagree with it on a philosophical level. I see stuff like machine-id getting baked in as a direct extension of this philosophy.
Many software decisions are more about strategy than philosophy. Compromising on ideals and principles to gain adoption. As mentioned before, I would not be surprised if dependence on machine-id was simply strategy.
Systemd might be replaced in future. But currently it’s used in all major distros. It’s design and ideas will probably inspire whatever replaces it. If they had spent their time clinging to philosophy and ideals rather than making compromises, then they might have never left the ground.
After reading through this whole comment thread, reading this was the last straw. I’ve been planning my exodus for a while.
Soon, I shall say “I use Artix, btw”.
amen and try sharing this view on c/linux or c/privacy. lol
i struggle to understand why both communities are such fervent systemd and proton supporters when other similar communities on other lemmy instances aren’t.
Yeah, I have a hard time understanding the justification for systemd. The only real argument I’ve seen is that it standardizes the process, but that could’ve been done as a spec where you define a common config format, lifecycle, etc., and then keep the actual utilities decoupled from each other, but behaving in a uniform way.
Running browsers safely in a Linux container/sandbox is not straightforward, for instance Flatpak blocks unprivileged namespaces which breaks the browser’s own sandboxing so it’s recommended to avoid Flatpak browsers.
Tbh I haven’t kept up with that issue for a while now. I’m guessing it still isn’t addressed. I usually disable JS anyways so that mitigates almost all attacks. But I have installed browsers in Distrobox before, installing the browser as a system package instead of a Flatpak. Do you know how the sandboxing works in that case?
Not sure, although I just did some searches and it appears that Distrobox uses rootless Podman which supports nested unprivileged namespaces. And if it broke the saneboxing there probably would have been an error when you tried to run it.