You joined a Discord server. A games publisher now wants your Windows device ID.

Grand Theft Auto 6 footage started appearing online on 17 August, posted by somebody using the name Cyberleek. Take-Two Interactive, which owns Rockstar, answered three days later with paperwork. The paperwork is why this story matters to people who have never touched the game.

On 20 August the company filed DMCA subpoenas in the Southern District of New York against Microsoft and Discord. A DMCA subpoena is a shortcut: a copyright holder can compel a platform to identify an alleged infringer without filing a lawsuit first. What Take-Two asked Discord for isn't only the accounts behind Cyberleek and a few related handles, but identifying information for every member of three servers - one of them the editors' server belonging to streamer Matthew Judge, better known as DarkViperAU, who said publicly that he's named in the filing and knows nothing about the leak.

The Microsoft list is the part to read twice: IP addresses, phone numbers, linked Google and Xbox accounts, the contents of OneDrive, plus MachineGuid values and Microsoft account device IDs. MachineGuid is a value sitting in the registry of a Windows installation that identifies that particular install; the device IDs identify machines that have signed in to Microsoft services. Both companies have until 4 September to respond, and Malwarebytes reckons hundreds or thousands of people with no connection to the leak could be swept up.

No software stops a subpoena. What this is worth remembering for is simpler: the chat servers you sit in and the account you sign in to Windows with are records somebody else keeps, and those records can travel a long way from where you left them. Predictably, the leak has also produced a crop of "GTA 6 early access" downloads that are password stealers. If you want to see what your own PC is handing over, Tendvane's Privacy and accounts check gives a plain reading of how each account on the machine is signed in and what it's connected to.