[Windcatcher]

Here's a good way of putting it from the article:

VPNs aren't broken. They're solving a different problem than most people assume. GDID is the serial number stamped into the chassis — your VPN only swaps the license plate.

[dayglored]

> VPNs aren't broken. They're solving a different problem than most people assume. GDID is the serial number stamped into the chassis — your VPN only swaps the license plate.

Not exactly. Correct that a VPN solves a different problem.

But the GDID is not "stamped into the chassis" the way the VIN is stamped into a vehicle. The GDID is only part of the Windows installation, not the computer hardware.

The computer hardware is unaffected.

And if you run Windows as a virtual machine (VM) inside of a different operating system (Linux, MacOS), only the Windows VM has the GDID. The host OS (Linux, MacOS) is unaffected.