tomshardware[.]com/software/windows-11-identifier-used-to-track-scattered-spider-perp-after-microsoft-shared-info-with-fbi-19-year-old-us-estonian-hacker-arrested-over-alleged-ties-to-infamous-extortion-group
Microsoft has always used a secret hardware ID tied to your Windows license, so you couldn't use the same key for more than one PC/laptop. This hardware ID is made up of the IDs of somewhere between a few and several components, e.g., if you change too many, or the wrong component, Windows looses its activation. It's been reported with a fair degree of confidence that one key component is the network adapter. I believe the CPU's individual, unique ID is another -- I built my son a PC, reusing a CPU & RAM, with everything else new, and when I installed Win11 it self activated, I assume because it recognized the CPU's ID.
What this article about the arrest of a hacker tells us, is that Microsoft Does Not keep its info &/or data about you separate -- like its many statements about collected telemetry being anonymized -- but all together forming a sort of dossier.
... the court documents from the case reveal that Stokes used Windows, from which investigators were able to link his physical hardware to specific internet activity and locations.From what we can tell, GDID pretty much had a comprehensive report on Stokes ready before the prosecution even built its case and it was only a matter of connecting the dots. Stokes' web activity, videogame history, IP addresses, tool usage (including Ngrok), Azure status, and more were logged with timestamps, and were provided to the investigators by Microsoft.
One way to beat that is of course to use Linux, but what if you want or need Windows? I **think** that probably the best way to avoid Microsoft's tracking and subsequently building a dossier is to create a Windows VM but either leave it unactivated or *maybe* activate it using one of the scripts at massgrave[.]dev. Then once you have whatever software installed, close the VM & delete it -- just save the VHD where Windows and your software is installed. Then set up a new VM and use that VHD with Windows on it whenever you need to use a privacy respecting copy of Windows. That way Microsoft sees a different PC, though of course you'll still want to turn off whatever telemetry collection you can, maybe use a VPN, the TOR browser etc. If you really want to get paranoid, VeraCrypt lets you create an encrypted VHD inside another encrypted VHD. The idea is that if you're forced to give someone access, you give them access only to the outer VHD, not the inner one with Windows or whatever.