https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20190311#news
A discussion has been opened up on the Devuan mailing lists concerning the topic of machine IDs. The FreeDesktop documentation indicates there should be a file (/etc/machine-id) on every Linux system which uniquely identifies the computer. While the documentation says the file should be considered confidential, it appears some applications, such as the Chromium web browser, may report an error if this file is not present. This has led some developers to question whether the unique identifier should be removed, for security purposes, or if it holds any value for administrators. Some have suggested the value should be randomized to prevent the file from being used to track Devuan users.
A discussion has been opened up on the Devuan mailing lists concerning the topic of machine IDs. The FreeDesktop documentation indicates there should be a file (/etc/machine-id) on every Linux system which uniquely identifies the computer. While the documentation says the file should be considered confidential, it appears some applications, such as the Chromium web browser, may report an error if this file is not present. This has led some developers to question whether the unique identifier should be removed, for security purposes, or if it holds any value for administrators. Some have suggested the value should be randomized to prevent the file from being used to track Devuan users.