Thoralata said:
Google Chrome reports back to Google. Avast and AVG report to their respective companies. Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and 8 report back to Microsoft. Firefox and their company. IE and Microsoft again.
Google policy is for their database to be inaccessible directly by humans except in large quantities that are anonymized. Of course we don't know what access the NSA has, now that it is public knowledge that the agency has a gun to the back of Google's head. However,
Chrome is still open source, and I could look it up if I so needed. Moot in my case since I don't (usually) use
Chrome.
I don't use
AVG or
Avast either. I was considering
Avast, however, and based on your tip (thanks!) I'll make sure to note what info they collect before installing it.
Windows 3.0 through
Me sent very little data to MS given that very few people had internet access during those eras, even dial-up.
XP through
7 would only send anonymized error data and (if you opted in) anonymized usage data.
Windows 8 tracks all of your internet activity (though I don't believe it tracks offline personal computing) and sends a summary of what you are doing back to Microsoft, tagged to your Windows Live account (i.e. not anonymous). I'm still perturbed how little press it got; most
Win8 news was about the lame, inconsistent UI.
"Oh no! They scan your directory tree!" The thing is, unless you're in possession of child pornography, there's no way that information is going to negatively affect you. And every program does some sort of scan of your machine. Whether it to be to collect market data, read hardware specs, or access the registry. This is how computers are designed.
There's a difference between accessing the registry to get your specific system settings and scanning your system for non-anonymous personal data (including what media, including porn, may be on your hard drives) and then sending it online to another party. There's a reason we call the latter spyware or malware, and the former not. There's a reason why the latter is illegal in most countries unless the end user opts-in, and the former is an accepted process. Are you stationed in Wuhan? How do you not know this?
The classic
If you've done no wrong, then you've nothing to fear from having no privacy argument. (You might be in the Hubei region after all.) I wonder if you'd feel that way with people watching you on the potty, but that's beginning of the human need for privacy. Here in the US, it's been recorded that we have over 60,000 statutes that affect us in our day-to-day lives, but it's been estimated that your average US Citizen inadvertently commits
six felonies a day just trying to live. Some of that is from the CFAA.[footnote]The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which President Reagan passed after watching
Wargames. It was used in the Bradley Mannin trial to add more years to the (already dubious) espionage charges because according to the court's opinion espionage using a computer is worse than just stealing or photographing documents. The US DoJ doesn't usually charge someone with a CFAA felony unless someone in the government wants that person to disappear. Then it's up to ten years per infraction.
Oh, and they tried to nail Aaron Swartz with it and were threatening him with 70+ years until he committed suicide.[/footnote] Whenever you violate a websites ToS, you're committing a CFAA felony. So no, we're all criminals as soon as someone in power finds us deviant, subversive or in the way of their career, commercial or romantic ambitions. Privacy can be a matter of survival here in the US.
Maybe in Piranshahr or where-the-heck-ever you are it's not so bad.
Fun Fact: Unless you have zero connection to the internet, you have no privacy. This is not an opinion, it's a fact. The only difference between Steam and Origin is that Origin's is active by default.
And you call me paranoid. Actually for a notion like that to be plausible requires actual facts: Who gave you that idea and when?
Rather most of the Web 2.0's development has been about establishing private communications between two points, such as the Secure Socket Layer that is used to ensure your banking information only goes to you and not everyone else who shares your ISP. There is (or rather there should be) the same kind of
expectation of privacy on internet communications and activities as there would be anywhere else (bank, hospital, school, what-have-you).
This is why the NSA's privacy invading programs are such a shock to the world, and that it's being turned on US Citizens so easily is such a shock here in the US. That's not supposed to happen. It's
going to happen even if we successfully closed down or install effective oversight onto the NSA program, but for most interactions we can counter transgressions of privacy with encryption.
With games, your option is to not play the games offered by a company who poops on you and your rights and snoops into your personal files. It sucks, though, if they have a franchise you particularly like. It sucks to be me, for example, watching EA get the license to make all
Star Wars games from now on when EA has demonstrated they really don't have much regard for their customers. It makes me sad because I like
Star Wars but also don't think I should have to be proverbially naked to enjoy a game.
Okay, the complaints regarding EA USED to be valid ones. Now this is just ridiculous. How paranoid are you?
Before you call me paranoid maybe you can demonstrate EA's new transparency policy and look up how many accounts were shut down (and for what specific reasons) in 2012, so that there is clear evidence that their past odious behaviors have been reduced.
Oh wait, you can't . Because EA doesn't release that information, since a) it's still a problem, and b) making that information available would be critically embarrassing. EA's customer service department
acts without accountability given it still regards their customers as children, and the company has protected themselves with binding arbitration agreements embedded in their EULAs so when someone is dumped, they can't litigate to get their money back.
It's okay to like EA's games, dude. I've heard that between hard-sell microtransactions, turning most IPs into cover shooters and persistent online connection requirements a lot of their titles really stink (and so it was with
Sims 3) But that's just my opinion. I hear Battlefield 3 and 4 are super popular as are the EA Sports football titles. It's rather scary if you have to pretend that EA's really messed-up policies haven't preceded them.
238U[footnote]"How is this a burn? Maybe my mind isn't warped enough by the internet, but I fail to see the joke or the punchline. This isn't a burn. You can't just make an assumption and assume it's funny. What exactly is burn-worthy about using Internet Explorer in the first place? You are not funny. You're just noise."
...Or maybe you don't get the joke. It wasn't a shot at you but at MS Internet Explorer, which is
notorious for splooging tons of unnecessary information to each website as you go there, a
feature which is exploited at length by less savory websites. It's still the case all the way into
IE 11 or whatever's current, which, yes, also sends MS data about your browsing habits which it promises to keep anonymous...but Windows 8 and the required Windows Live account do not.
Maybe in Qarabagh ostentatious tech-sector this bit of information is not so well known.
And maybe other readers know how to look at the alleged
noise and see the secret image.[/footnote]
