It's amazing how in 1999 OP was worried about UID=Big Brother, but today we've all willingly handed over security and privacy to 3~5 companies, even without talking Facebook, Google or Amazon. Jeez, did everyone forget LexisNexis? They were doing this way before FAANG. But it's game over: there is no more privacy or security. We lost, they won. I give to EFF every year, but it's more and more futile every year.
I remember a time when people circulated lists of software that phoned home calling them out as spyware for collecting nothing more than our IP addresses. These says everything wants to connect to the internet. The EFF is still one of those groups I have no reservations donating to, but yeah, it feels like we're only going in the wrong direction.
This was a self-own by Intel where they claimed that the processor serial number would be used for online authentication which was then exaggerated to "the processor serial number will be a super-cookie sent in every HTTP request" which does sound pretty big-brotherish.
The ME, on the other hand, is obviously good since it "allows" you to watch 4K Netflix on your PC.
> The ME, on the other hand, is obviously good since it "allows" you to watch 4K Netflix on your PC.
The ME has nothing to do with this, it's entirely about the GPU. 7th generation Intel GPUs and 10xx or newer nVidia GPUs support the DRM that Netflix requires, the CPU just needs to be fast enough to handle its part of the equation.
Intel did release a browser plugin/activex which claimed to expose the processor serial number to websites. But this was such a scandal that it almost immediately disappeared, along with the documentation, so I never found out how it actually worked.
Every single iPhone and iPad transmits its hardware serial number to Apple when you launch the App Store app, or on first boot after restore for "activation".
> Intel has revealed that each Pentium III chip will carry a unique serial number that can be read by the computer's software. Intel claims that the serial number will facilitate e-commerce, promote "digital content protection," prevent counterfeiting of Intel processors, and help to track stolen ones. We know users have questions about this controversial feature, so we assembled this FAQ. Q: Why are privacy experts concerned? A: Privacy experts are concerned because the CPU's electronic serial number could be used for purposes that may not be in users' best interests.