Each popularity-contest host is identified by a random 128bit uuid (MY_HOSTID in /etc/popularity-contest.conf). This uuid is used to track submissions issued by the same host. It should be kept secret.
Oh, and by default, IP, unless usetor is enabled
A machine I'd is just a hash too
Can you explain to me how you track Mac address, serial numbers over the internet.
Just fyi, the backend project I made 20 years ago was hardware related. There's potential reasons to grab this info..
But, if it is a concern, I'm sure they'd welcome submissions to improve the parsing and allow things to be filtered.
In fact, popcon could be used for digital fingerprinting technically
In all likelihood, op never spoke to the manjaro developers either
Especially looking forward to all those Biden ethics violations they spent months trying to find and millions of dollars
It will probably be a short read compared to the comey report though