Slashdot Mirror
Report: Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) Scans Your DNS History
dotarray writes "If a recent report is to be believed, Valve is looking at your browsing history. Reportedly, the company's Valve Anti Cheat system (VAC) looks at all the domains you have visited, and if it finds that you've frequented hack sites, you'll be banned. 'The new functionality has been slammed by gamers, who claim it is "more like spyware than anti-cheat". Valve has not responded to the allegations, but all Steam users have agreed to abide by specific online conduct and not to use cheats. The company's privacy policy also explains that Valve may collect "personally identifiable information", but promises not to share it with other parties.'"
How many Linux users do you think have the idea of sandboxing Valve applications, just in case they might be peeking inside other applications' user data?
There's no "Linux obviously" about it. It's a matter of trust, and Linux or not, users are far too trusting of the applications they install.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Create a separate virtual machine where you do all your clandestine browsing from.
If the steam engine is able to access the VM and the disks there then they really are insisting on digging through your computer, but I doubt that they will be able to go far with it.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Still pretty fucking invasive if true. I'm going to have to watch this and, if true, protest. Not quite sure how yet, I'd hate to lose my game library but this sort of invasive behavior can't go unanswered. The "repeatedly redownload your gaming library" idea has some merit if done en-masse along with vocal enough complaints. Perhaps we can dig up the phone number and address of the company executives so we can send our complaints directly to the parties responsible for allowing such a thing .
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The reason I *started* using Steam was because I bought a game in a store only to find when I got it home that it was pretty much a dummy disk that just made me install Steam and download the game in order to play it. The game was Civilization V. I don't get outraged by much, but come to think of it, that kind of is an outrage, but one just borderline enough that I was willing to accept it rather than not play the game. I don't/didn't know what else to do.