Electronic serial numbers
Electronic serial numbers (basically a pre-programmed device with usually a 64 bit ID) have been a thing for decades and have a lot of decent use cases; this is actually one of them (in a way) but it does open up a very large can of worms.
Great for tracking whether your goods arrived somewhere but as with all technology, it is agnostic and can be used for nefarious purposes.
I have designed these things into products for very good reasons in the past as there are clear benefits - automatic scanning of device ID to eliminate human error at manufacture or repair return comes to mind, a use case I have had.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
