- Mar 10, 2011
- 981
- 44
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http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/stor...o_latest_drivers_heres_how_to_disable_it.html
"It's been brought to our attention that nVIDIA now has telemetry included with its drivers (most likely) if you installed GeForce Experience with the drivers. I'm getting conflicting reports whether it's specific to GeForce Experience or not. Regardless, it also continues the bloat further with nVIDIA Wireless Controller and ShadowPlay services, something many don't need.
First, let's go over what these are.
Telemetry is essentially considered spying by many as it is a way to send data back and forth. It's nowhere near that simple, but we'd like to know what it's doing in our video drivers when it's never been needed before.
nVIDIA Wireless Controller requires you have, you guessed it, a nVIDIA Wireless Controller.
ShadowPlay is a way to capture and record gameplay."
They listed a way to disable it in the majorgeeks article if you don't want it. Now maybe you're like, surely this is just for collecting driver crash reports right?
Maybe not. From reddit.
Nvidia Privacy Policy (which covers their drivers and software).
http://www.nvidia.com/object/privacy_policy.html
"When you use our Services, we may collect "Personal information," which is any information that can be used to identify a particular individual which can include traditional identifiers such as name, address, e-mail address, telephone number and non-traditional identifiers such as unique device identifiers and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses....
We may from time to time share your Personal Information with our business partners, resellers, affiliates, service providers, consulting partners and others in order to provide our Services to you.
We also permit third party online advertising networks and social media companies to collect information about your use of our website over time so that they may play or display ads that may be relevant to your interests ...
We may combine personal information that we collect about you with the browsing and tracking information collected by these technologies. We or the online advertising networks use this information to make the advertisements you see online more relevant to your interests."
Also apparently from this thread. CanardPC Hardware discovered that as of driver 368.25, Nvidia was collecting your information and transmitting it (without encryption) if you had Geforce Experience installed.
However since then it looks like there have been some changes, now all users have the NvTmMon process, and if you are using Geforce Experience 3 Nvidia has your email address or facebook account in addition.
The article states:
"A detailed description of your hardware is sent a few minutes later to gfe.nvidia.com/getsugar. This description includes: brand and model of your motherboard, serial number, BIOS version, information regarding USB drives currently plugged, RAM capacity, GPU frequency, etc....
GeForce Experience will communicate the software you use (not only games), when you use it, for how long...
record where you click on the various utilities provided and how long you stay on each page. Almost 100Ko of information, along with Google trackers, are sent to Nvidia.
This is clearly a breach of your privacy. Nvidia's privacy policy does not mention these activities in the French version, only in the English one."
Am I over-reacting here? It looks like personal data mining here to me. Hardware vendors should not be doing this. Even if I'm completely wrong shouldn't users get an option to opt out of this?
"It's been brought to our attention that nVIDIA now has telemetry included with its drivers (most likely) if you installed GeForce Experience with the drivers. I'm getting conflicting reports whether it's specific to GeForce Experience or not. Regardless, it also continues the bloat further with nVIDIA Wireless Controller and ShadowPlay services, something many don't need.
First, let's go over what these are.
Telemetry is essentially considered spying by many as it is a way to send data back and forth. It's nowhere near that simple, but we'd like to know what it's doing in our video drivers when it's never been needed before.
nVIDIA Wireless Controller requires you have, you guessed it, a nVIDIA Wireless Controller.
ShadowPlay is a way to capture and record gameplay."
They listed a way to disable it in the majorgeeks article if you don't want it. Now maybe you're like, surely this is just for collecting driver crash reports right?
Maybe not. From reddit.
Nvidia Privacy Policy (which covers their drivers and software).
http://www.nvidia.com/object/privacy_policy.html
"When you use our Services, we may collect "Personal information," which is any information that can be used to identify a particular individual which can include traditional identifiers such as name, address, e-mail address, telephone number and non-traditional identifiers such as unique device identifiers and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses....
We may from time to time share your Personal Information with our business partners, resellers, affiliates, service providers, consulting partners and others in order to provide our Services to you.
We also permit third party online advertising networks and social media companies to collect information about your use of our website over time so that they may play or display ads that may be relevant to your interests ...
We may combine personal information that we collect about you with the browsing and tracking information collected by these technologies. We or the online advertising networks use this information to make the advertisements you see online more relevant to your interests."
Also apparently from this thread. CanardPC Hardware discovered that as of driver 368.25, Nvidia was collecting your information and transmitting it (without encryption) if you had Geforce Experience installed.
However since then it looks like there have been some changes, now all users have the NvTmMon process, and if you are using Geforce Experience 3 Nvidia has your email address or facebook account in addition.
The article states:
"A detailed description of your hardware is sent a few minutes later to gfe.nvidia.com/getsugar. This description includes: brand and model of your motherboard, serial number, BIOS version, information regarding USB drives currently plugged, RAM capacity, GPU frequency, etc....
GeForce Experience will communicate the software you use (not only games), when you use it, for how long...
record where you click on the various utilities provided and how long you stay on each page. Almost 100Ko of information, along with Google trackers, are sent to Nvidia.
This is clearly a breach of your privacy. Nvidia's privacy policy does not mention these activities in the French version, only in the English one."
Am I over-reacting here? It looks like personal data mining here to me. Hardware vendors should not be doing this. Even if I'm completely wrong shouldn't users get an option to opt out of this?