US Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs

An alleged member of a hacking group was caught, thanks to one hated Windows feature

A 19-year-old alleged member of the hacking group Scattered Spider, Peter Stokes, was arrested and reportedly incriminated by data from Microsoft's Windows Global Device Identifier (GDID) telemetry service. Despite using VPNs, the GDID logged information that law enforcement used to link Stokes to a machine involved in network intrusions and ransom payments totaling over $100 million. This incident has raised further concerns about user consent and data privacy related to Windows' tracking features.