Steam does this. Origin does this. Windows did this before Windows 10. Browsers report on a lot of statistics. Most antivirus systems can both scan your hard drive(s) and upload data and usage stats. Skype did this before Microsoft bought them. The notion that any of this is new is rather foolish. And sure, you can criticise MS for it. Just make sure you're not being hypocritical at the same time, aye? Criticise everyone else.
This. I had one friend say that depending on the company he'll either be fine or not with that policy. He trusts Valve and doesn't trust Microsoft. I think it's silly, but at least he puts thought into what he signs.
Well, it depends on the uses. I don't use steam to store and access personal info or communications. I'm fine with Steam monitoring me because of what I use Steam for; I'm not okay with Microsoft monitoring everything I do.
Valve retains the rights to monitor you, regardless of what you use the program for. They aren't limited to monitoring games and the client.
"Steam and the Content and Services may include functionality designed to identify software or hardware processes or functionality that may give a player an unfair competitive advantage when playing multiplayer versions of any Content and Services or modifications of Content and Services (“Cheats”)." While the refer to only searching for cheats, that doesn't mean they can't look everywhere for them. Cheats can use bots, so cheat detection software can be made to be able to look for applications outside the game. Now, they don't do that to my knowledge. They just can.
And Microsoft only use their targeted systems when they have to, and they don't do it all the time. It's amazing the lengths people go to to defend software they like, even when it does exactly the same as software people don't like
I can't believe we're comparing scanning for running scripts targeting and allegedly altering the purchased product running on their service all to just be able to have legit proof for a ban in a video game to methodically having an AI read your private messages in the name of targeting ads. first off targeted ads have never done anything other than make me feel awkward and they feel intrusive but really are we really expected to believe this data won't be sold to parties other than advertisers? the grey area of the law? stalkers? pedophiles? human traffickers? organised crime? high-rise syndicates? Political parties and companies wanting to throw mud at each other through slander? What the fuuck does microsoft care IT'S A GREY AREA OF THE LAW. Until the crimes happen and they are finally settled in court ergo there exists a precedent and a law, they have no reason to keep themselves away from all this money as they won't ever be held accountable for something like that until laws forbidding them clearly to do so for them to break are put in place. So basically it's open bar until the issues break out and I'm just going out on a limb here and predicting that they'll help themselves.
more people with these priveleges is not a good thing. we trust(ed) our country to be responsible with spying on people because that's the job of a country.... TO BE RESPONSIBLE. .....and you saw how that turned out.... now you're telling me you'd trust a business (by definition an organization hell-bent on flirting with the fine line between what's legal and not) even MORE than your country?? it's not a good thing. This is most definitely not a good thing.
You're trusting other businesses with exactly the same privileges. I outlined a great number of them in a previous post. Other examples include: you trust your ISP with your browser and IP history. "more people with these privileges" is not an argument, because you're already tolerating a hundred or so of "these people". One more isn't going to make a difference, moreso when you consider how much people are getting wrong about Windows 10.
three?? four? (counting windows which i DIDN'T trust and nowadays run in a sandbox?) that's a "great number" ?? "exactly the same privileges"? actually no. far from windows did not have this policy before in it's EULA that's why there's a change steam and origin does nothing at such a scale and skype is personally a program i've never trusted and don't currently run. actually in france it would rather be you trust your browser. a bit different. I went to a Big Data conference and learned alot about how spying actually occurs. so your browser choice actually matters way more than your ISP choice. But in france we have certain ISPs which are a known red zone for no respect of privacy, and some which are not perfect but better. definitely nowhere near the level of what we're seeing in windows 10's EULA today. Wheras apparently in the US you have only null privacy ISPs I take it? It kinda is either way, actually yeah. and a hundred is rather inaccurate, I'd say.
Microsoft, Steam, Apple, the Ubuntu software foundation or whatever it's called, ISPs, Mozilla, Google and all of their related subsidiaries. Your government, the EU or whatever regulatory body sits above your government, other world governments with data access treaties with your government (so most of the Western world, really, including the USA). Windows 8 had very similar policies; the thing that it lacked was Cortana. Apple already has similar things with regards to Siri and iOS, and Google has similar things with Google Now and Android (as well as platform-specific brands such as Sammy ROM and S Voice). You're fixating on a very specific rewording of something that has been reworded for Windows 10 and claiming that it's somehow worse than everything else that already exists. If you're not claiming it's worse, you're saying that you don't trust Microsoft with it. Which is fine, in of itself. But hold everybody else to the same standards. Don't pick and choose excuses for different companies. I don't really have anything else to say, either hold every other major company to account, or don't. The former is fair, the latter is hypocritical. Your choice.
Thats why google doesn't have my full name, address or anything else directly. And I disable location tracking for everything. Facebook gets my full name and that's about it; besides I hardly use it. I am absolutely not a fan of Microsoft looking through my personal info (not a fan of Google doing it either). Claiming to do it to prevent piracy and other bs is not acceptable to me; they are not the police. I also expect that VAC scans the RAM and not the file system to check for active cheats, though they likely scan game files for modifications too. Valve doesn't explicitly state that they can (and will) look through personal communications. While I get that Microsoft owns Windows and I use it as a platform, I'm also VERY limited in effective alternatives. OSX is too expensive and limits the types of files I can use; indirectly limiting the software available to me. Linux,while being free, isn't all that user friendly (I have used it before and making me go into terminal to download/install updates or applications isn't user friendly relative to Windows) and it doesn't support many file types and applications that Windows does. WINE is not a suitable alternative either.
You can turn these things off in Windows as well. Valve has been scanning the contents of your hard drive since EA were accused of being the devil for doing the same thing with Origin. You also give AMD and nVidia permission to do the same when they build up hardware and software-based profiles for gaming. Valve doesn't need to explicitly state something for them to be able to do it. For a thread that has very quickly turned into "don't trust MS on anything", why are people here so very willing to trust Valve? Their entire objective is to provide value for money paid to them. Everything they do is geared towards them earning more money. That is their right as a company, but for crying out loud please be aware of it. Also a repeated reminder that Ubuntu, one of the most well-known and prolific Linux distributions, uploads and sends user metrics and data to the owning company.
Everything about Windows 10 ever released, including the critical articles. If you don't know what you can turn off, you probably don't have Windows 10, nor should you be talking about it in the first place. Sorry for the tone, but I've been dealing with people shouting this stuff at me for weeks now. I'm not here to Google for you.
well you haven't said you personally turned anything off so it looks just as much like an assumption of the best to me as it looks like an assumption of the worst to you.
