this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2026

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Privacy

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Fuck Github, Microsoft has made it impossible to create an account without linking to hardware or phones (lemmy.ml)

submitted 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) by someone@lemmy.today to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Github has made it impossible to create an account when using a VPN and a privacy browser with fully spoofed hardware identifiers. (Use Firefox or Firefox-based Privacy Browser, VPN, install Canvasblocker to test this.) I create an account with Google or Apple (both requiring hardware identifiers and numbers and birthdates) or I can use an email. When I use an email, it comes back with this horrible test, and even if I do it completely correctly, it tells me after I didn't do the test right, gaslighting me with a picture of what I chose (which I didn't choose) and showing me the correct picture (which I did choose and it claims I didn't select).

It's fucking bullshit and it's more corporate control of open source software. For people who have their discussion or issue tracker, I can't even participate without hardware identifiers likely linked to me some other way and phone numbers. It's fucking bullshit. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!

I am so tired of this bullshit. I just want to post an issue about a piece of software. You don't need my fingerprint, hardware or personal, or biometric shit. This is a slippery slope. Fuck them.

I really hope more developers just get the fuck off Github. Honestly, if you are developing privacy-oriented software and using github, there's a mistmatch and it's bullshit, and I know it's time consuming and annoying to move, but please do. This is fucking bullshit and it's not like it's going to become LESS annoying over time. FUCK THIS.

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[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

I'm not seeing anything that's not a great look about requiring strong authentication for access to sensitive portions of a users account. What you're saying is akin to calling it a bad look that they force users to use complex passwords against user wishes.

I'm not sure what "trust me bro, my cloud is safe" has to do with anything. Passkeys live on your device. There are ways of facilitating device to device migrations of the keys if you want. You don't need to use them to use passkeys. And at least on Android you don't need to even use Google to manage the keys.

Most semiconductors are closed source. The processor, ram, and radio are also more than likely closed. The software interfaces to all of them have open specification and implementation. There's like, six for Linux. Microsoft open sourced theirs.
Tpms are not security through obscurity. They are obscure, but that's not a critical component to their security model.

What they do isn't really what "collecting biometrics" implies. They're storing key points in a hashed fashion that allows similarities to be compared. Even if it wasn't encrypted in a non-exportable way you still can't do anything with it beyond checking for a similarity score.

You've done a good job explaining what I said previously: there's sometimes a disjoint between privacy and security concern, and so sometimes people don't understand something about security.