[systemd-devel] What information does machine-id leak?

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 02:02:07PM -0500, Bryan Quigley wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I see that there is a concern that we need to keep machine-id private
> (and local?).  I haven't been able to determine exactly why though*.
> In most cases it's randomly generated afaict.

It's a unique identifier for the machine.
It is also used to generate other unique identifiers.

> I'd consider using it to replace whoopsie-id which is generated from
> the machines BIOS information now to track bugs reported from the same
> machine in the Ubuntu error tracker[1].   It would need to stay
> constant for that install and be easy to get locally via file
> collection which is why I think I'd prefer using the straight
> machine-id to the just added app helper function[2].
Please don't do that. The app helper function is there for a reason.
You can use that, or do the equivalent steps in a different way.

Zbyszek