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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 do one set up rules to block Steam from accessing firefox profiles? (Linux obviously, though guide for Windows is fine too. Also Chrome.)
So security researchers who also game are pretty much screwed then?
Actually, the article doesn't say anyone has been banned using the data. It specifically says that NO one currently knows what happens with the data. So that's a pretty large red herring. That doesn't negate the heinousness of them tracking the websites you visit *just* in case you might cheat. Very NSA-esque.
I've been trying to switch my gaming purchases to GoG anyway, mainly because it's a pain to game on both a laptop and desktop with Steam. This is just another reason for it.
All GoG needs is to start supporting Linux...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
So all I have to do to limit the competition is search a cheating site from my buddies computer?! Thanks for the tip!
Done.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I've known gamers to frequent cheat sites just to see what the cheaters are using and what is possible to exploit When a legitimate player suddenly faces inexplicable challenges sometimes they go find where people are downloading their skills/advantages from in order to explain their new struggles. Often times it starts with the feeling "that HAS to be a cheat" then digging around finding if there is a cheat the enables that behavior.
Keep in mind they're talking about the VAC software and not the steam client. VAC runs when you run a game that supports it. (The wiki page has a list of games though I do not know how up to date it is.) The Steam client doesn't do this reporting itself.
The article is based on a REDDIT post. We all know they are always 100% accurate and credible. They did catch the boston bombers afteralll!
journalism at its finest.
Obviously it blocks malicious behavior such as this.
Perhaps its time to put certain applications, such as web browsers in their own "VM appliance" to isolate them from being spied on or misused by other apps.
In the meantime, get into the habit of using your browser's "privacy mode."
If games and other apps that don't "need" to work with your other applications can run in a VM without an unacceptable performance hit, consider putting them in such a box as well.
If your OS supports running apps in sandboxes/jails and your favorite games work well in such an environment, that may be easier than putting them in a full-blown VM.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How do one set up rules to block Steam from accessing firefox profiles? (Linux obviously, though guide for Windows is fine too. Also Chrome.)
The only useful workaround is to boycott steam. Otherwise they will work around your workarounds till they finally just install a Sony rootkit. Do you really want a company that even takes even one step over the line? teach them a lesson.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Why gee, such skills in online browsing history masking leave me speechless...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This story is being debunked in the original reddit thread.
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1y4za5/steams_vac_now_reads_all_the_domains_you_have/
This might be a way to bully/troll someone. Find what their account name is, then make an account with the identical name on every botting site. Of course, account names are hard to come by, but it is a way for someone to cause mischief, similar to people who create bogus FB profiles.
I thought the point of playing a game was to relieve stress. Getting online to play something is starting to become more involved and complex than most people's jobs. It is kind of a shame, though, that people take Counterstrike and Call of Duty so seriously that they need to scam the system. Defeats the purpose, no?
Luckily, not everyone lives in the US.
Some countries have different laws, even consumer protection laws that are worth that name.
And yes, even companies operating out of the US have to conform to at least some of these laws if they want to do business in Germany/Europe. An yes, they WANT to, because Europe is not an insignificant market.
> Indeed, it also says the the actual entries themselves are not sent back, but only the hashes
DNS names are easily enumeratable, the only reason to emphasize that it's hashes is if you're clueless or dishonest.
From a privacy perspective, they are sending back DNS names, saying that's hashes is only fooling people.
flush the dns cache before you launch steam:
on a mac that command is:
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
However since steam is normally installed with admin permissions it may very well be running some sort of spyware deamon that is violating your privacy even when the application is not running, making that dodge useless. Since they are willing to go that far I would not put it past them to also be running a spyware daemon as well.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
... unless an employee decides to use it, a secret order of the NSA requires to disclose it, their servers get hacked (by the NSA, other countries intelligence agencies, hacking groups, or script kiddies) or the protocol have a vulnerability or the information can be captured and decrypted. The respect of privacy by US companies had become an oximoron. Is a promise that they can't possibly honor, and they are too big to close doors like Lavabit if the NSA want their customers data.
Last I checked that doesn't do shit about your OS' DNS cache.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Doesn't WOW have public test servers? Why didn't you do your work on that?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The easiest thing to do is, is created a batch script that empties your history and flushes your DNS. After that, it opens steam. Assign your steam icon to that batch file. Problem solved.
I'm not so sure.
1. Are you sure the EULA actually states that they may monitor your non-steam related activities? I would appreciate a pointer to the relevant paragraph if so.
2. My understanding is that it's still somewhat up in the air exactly how legally binding an EULA really is. Though I doubt most people could afford a good enough lawyers to press the issue
3. Even assuming the EULA is binding, it's generally accepted that a contract cannot demand that either party surrender their constitutional rights, and the 9th Amendment specifically states that the enumerated rights are only a sampling, not a comprehensive list, or even a list of the most important, and in no way should be interpreted to detract from the importance of the rights not so enumerated. Privacy included.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Not browsing history.
Run cmd.exe and in the command prompt type "ipconfig /displaydns" (without the quotation marks). That's your DNS history, and that's what Steam is looking through.
To clear that, type "ipconfig /flushdns".
Won't make any difference if they're monitoring your DNS cache instead. Sorry, did you not realize that your porn-browsing habits leave secondary footprints on your system as well?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
WHY HELLO, MY FELLOW LOYAL, SLASHDOT-READING COMRADE. LET US TALK OF DNS CACHES AND GAME SUBSCRIPTIONS AND VALVE AND STUFF.
[whisper] Would you shut up? You're gonna get us killed. All the first wave of revolutionaries have already been lined up against the wall and shot. Keep it under the radar. Now see if you can sneak over to the Facebook love analysis article, and another resistance operative will brief you there.[/whisper]
It wouldn't, for example, prevent anyone from cheating by doing some browsing at the local coffee shop to find the cheats and then coming home to play games on the desktop system at home.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If an individual does something like this, you can bet the government would charge them with computer crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. If a company does it, nothing gets done.
>My point being that dns histroy is only the grossest of measures of what you're doing on your pc
Don't worry, it's still enough to let the NSA send you to Guantanamo indefinitely if you do anything else suspicious, or if someone doesn't like you. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before such privileges extend to their secret corporate sponsors as well. And for those kinds of privileges who *wouldn't* sponsor them?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I have a non-addictive personality in general... perhaps it would be more accurate to say "anti-addictive" as there have been times when I would go overboard with some activities. X-Wing vs Tie Fighter, for example, cost me hundreds of dollars in "sick days" after calling in to work because I wanted to accomplish something. (Sick and stupid right?) I came to my senses after a paycheck demonstrated the value of my lost time. Anyway, I don't really play games which are time consuming and/or deeply involving... not often anyway.
But if I were a gamer, I would be intensely offended by Valve's activities. Then again, I spent some really late nights playing Halo 2 losing sleep and feeling miserable... yeah... I did it again. Didn't cost me money, but cost me in health and rest and all that. It was while playing that and similar games that I really appreciated how much I hate cheaters. Aim-bots and all this other crap just served to anger me...which kept me awake playing. Eventually, I woke up to what I was doing (again) and restored myself to healthier ways. But I do know cheaters see cheating as a game in and of itself which is why they do it.
So I understand why Valve wants to do it but as a Bill of Rights guy, I am deeply disturbed and disgusted by Valve's actions as well. (Yes, I know Valve isn't government but the principles have a way of bleeding into all walks and areas of life and it's quite likely that they are sharing data with government as just about everyone seems to be. Go visit Dick's Sporting Goods and see how much information they try to get from you when you buy guns and/or ammo. Holy crap it's scary and disgusting. And they CERTAINLY and DEFINITELY share data with the government electronically.)
I'm not going to say I don't care about this or that I don't have a dog in this fight. I do. I see many of the principles laid out in the BoR as common sense and as a structure for how to maintain mutual respect for various parties not only government.
Personally, I think people should stop playing shooting games and buy real guns and ammo. It's harder to cheat, for one, but is more expensive to be sure. But the effect of practice and skill certainly serve to trigger those accomplishment feelings. Also, PC gamers can also appreciate the desire to acquire high performance devices of all sorts ranging from scopes to lasers and all sorts of creative and amusing shotgun ammo. Caution: Guns and Ammo are expensive... way more than PC gaming. But the fun is unquestionable.
Stop using the software and services of these rights offenders entirely. They need to understand where the line should be drawn.
DNS names are easily enumeratable, the only reason to emphasize that it's hashes is if you're clueless or dishonest.
From a privacy perspective, they are sending back DNS names, saying that's hashes is only fooling people.
Oh? If they're really easily enumerable, pray tell, which DNS name does the following hash point to?
c0ff3e297157c1e60bc2a2bedb5f6532
Use another user profile on your box to play the game that is not an admin. Problem solved
That doesn't negate the heinousness of them tracking the websites you visit *just* in case you might cheat.
They aren't tracking websites you visit. They are tracking your DNS-requests. They are not the same thing, DNS-requests only show what domain names your system has queried and doesn't even say if the queries have come from the browser, IM, games or anything else -- there is no way for Valve to deduce the websites you've been visiting from these if there's more than one site behind the domain, like e.g. many blogging platforms and such host thousands of blogs under a single domain-name.
These are different things.
Also, not to apologize for Valve, but there are games far more invasive than this. Some NFS games (NFS:S2U for one) will trawl your actual browser history to put targeted ads on in-game advertising surfaces. Unless you use a software firewall to block their Internet access ;-)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Going on a website and getting the info is 1 thing but using that info to your use might be another thing. For example I could go on a cheating website to report it to steam at the end but I have to at least go on the website to verify if the app is available. To steam unfortunately it doesn't matter but it should. The lack of effort from Steams side is surprising as they should involve its users in the fight against cheats instead of fighting against users. Users pay for games, I'm pretty sure some of them wouldn't mind report cheats as I don't know a person who likes to get cheated in games.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
So, what you gonna do about it?
Download the games & crack them, just like I used to do before Steam made them dirt cheap?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Disconnect from net, Open command prompt, Type: ipconfig /flushdns
Reconnect net.
Oh, wait. I'm a slash-dotter. I have lots of computers. So I'll Steam on one computer and get cheats on another. Sorry Valve.
linquendum tondere
Its related to your dns cache. In windows you type ipconfig /displaydns to get the info steam could use against you but doing a ipconfig /flushdns might do the trick to flush what steam would use but i don't know when steam fetch the info so the best way is to either use a proxy (some are free as well) or use VM. If you have Windows 7, you could use the XP Mode and after doing some test, whatever you do or go on xp mode, the dns of your host is still clean. So do your cheat or browsing in xp mode then close it down and your dns will always be clean.
PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
Sounds like they are solving the wrong issue. The issue isn't what sites I go to and to be frank that's none of their damned business. I don't cheat on multiplayer, but on single player I download trainers because I don't want to waste time grinding most of the time, and my enjoyment comes from the story. Online cheating punishes the whole server and to think that Steam can solve the issue like this is just plain wrong. This just punishes people for browsing and doesn't stop the cheaters.
Just don't support valve with your money for pulling crap like that.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Browsing the internet only from a VM is actually the most secure way to do so whether or not you're running Steam. With a VM, you can do some browsing, click on all the most depraved and unsavoury sites and then close it down and revert to a snapshot.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
...but all Steam users have agreed to abide by specific online conduct and not to use cheats.
So?
Doesn't necessarily mean "any means necessarily" is necessarily what they agreed to, or legal - especially something to goes that far without being explicitly confined. *sighs* I wish people who cite the EULA, etc not as an argument, but as a shutout to opposing arguments would just shut up and learn that it doesn't cancel out all arguments, particularly since it being written doesn't necessarily mean it's legal, nor does it negate that people will/can have an opinion about it.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
c0ff3e ...
Starbucks.com
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Oh? If they're really easily enumerable, pray tell, which DNS name does the following hash point to?
c0ff3e297157c1e60bc2a2bedb5f6532
I have no idea, but even you must be able to see that it would be trivial to put together a lookup table of the top million or so domain names indexed on their corresponding hashes. From that you can easily work out the domain name from the hash, without actually reversing the hash function.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
In case you're not familiar with Steam and VAC, it doesn't work worth a shit and people cheat all the time. It's a complete joke that makes even Punkbuster look good. MW3 was a huge budget game that was ruined by cheaters. It's a complete mess roughly equivalent to a low budget game like Renegade where over 50% of people are shooting through walls with unlimited ammo, etc. That's all on top of VAC too, which does NOTHING.
Good on ya. If you really miss not being able to play many newer games though may I suggest a slightly different perspective? Steam doesn't sell games, they make long-term rentals. And there's nothing wrong with that - I occasionally rent movies, watch hulu, or borrow books from the library - none of which make any pretense to transferring ownership in the first place. As I see it the biggest problems with Steam are twofold:
1) They claim to be selling the games.
2) They charge full purchase price for the rental.
Now (1) is deceptive advertising, and if you consider it worthy of boycott I won't argue, except to point out the general ineffectiveness of a boycott without widespread popularity and organization. But (2) has a solution for the conscientious consumer - wait until the "purchase" price falls to what you'd consider an acceptable rental price, and then rent it. It may take a few years, and the graphics will no longer be quite as impressive as compared to new games, but at least for single-player games the gameplay's all there.
There's also some DRM-free games sold through the Steam storefront, they don't compel publishers to incorporate Steam DRM after all, they just make it easy. I have no objection to such games, and you've got to admit Stream is doing some wonderful things for the indie game market. Plus being a Steam-store customer who will buy full-price DRM-free games but only rents games when deeply discounted is likely to send a far clearer message as to the nature of your objection to those data-mining the sales data.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What he means is that there are rainbow tables available for many MD5 hashes. There is software that can search hundreds of thousands of possible hashes per second. You don't need to calculate the MD5 hash over, you just have to do a simple text compare, followed by a lookup in the rainbow table. If you have a rainbow table of the major hack sites in which you're interested, I bet it doesn't take more than a second or two to determine if the hash you sent is of one of those sites. Maybe that doesn't fit your definition of easily enumerable, but it fits mine.
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
... allow for harvesting of information on your computer. If you read the full agreement you'll see that it specifically states, "By using Valve's online sites, products, and services, users agree that Valve may collect personally identifiable information (as defined below)."
No where does it say they will go through your DNS cache. At best, the policy covers things such as your Name, Address, Phone Number, CC #, etc for billing purposes, and the use of cookies and the like.
Unfortunately the Steam TOS has a binding arbitration clause which effectively keeps you from suing them. (See section 12 of the Steam TOS)
Linky things:
Valve Privacy Policy: http://store.steampowered.com/...
Steam TOS: http://store.steampowered.com/...
Just one more reason to avoid Steam, and that's even considering that TFA is largely bogus and bans based on this data gathering are a myth.
But that a fucking game center spies on your browser history is crazy. It has no fucking business doing that. Prevent 3rd party tools from accessing the games and modifying them in-memory, etc. - fine with me, that's what I expect with an anti-cheat software. Gather statistics on my online browsing habbits? Quite honestly, this should be illegal and carry jailtime penalties. Why are we giving corporations stalking permissions when private people can go to jail for much less?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Gaming rig for gaming, general purpose rig for porn, finding hacks and cheats, and everything else. Duh.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
then its time to pull out a second system for web searching and bring in your cheats via flash drive. Steam can only check the system it is running on
Given how one of the main points of SteamOS is it's openness - does it make sense to have VAC on it?
I mean, it's a LOT easier to make a Linux kernel module that finds out what the VAC (or Steam) processes are, then having the kernel module modify responses to hide stuff from it.
I mean, lets say you have an aimbot or other cheat. You can run it on SteamOS, and have the kernel module hide that process (or even the fact network packets are redirected through it) so VAC can't even run anymore.
And I don't see VAC as a kernel module as every component in SteamOS is supposed to be replaceable so even compiling a new kernel is an option.
So I guess the question is - how is Valve protecting against SteamOS cheaters? It's a lot harder to do it on Windows since you have to do a lot of hooking and kernel signing and all that (plus trusting random binaries), whereas on Linux it's way easier to hook things.
What do you mean? An African or European lesbian?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Did you carefully read and understand the lists of permissions before installing these Android games?
They are just mining browser history until they get the pre-cogs on-line.
Once you allow custom software and especially device drivers to run on a box, it is theoretically impossible to automatically discover what that software is capable of doing. Any workarounds are sleazy in some way. Even basic DRM hides stuff and restricts rights of the legitimate owner of the hardware and software.
In this case, the alternative is no or ineffective VAC and, accordingly, not much fun in multiplayer games. I guess it would be nice if Valve gave users the option to opt out of VAC and play on special open servers or only with specific trusted players.
Back when I was a fansite and game admin I'd check the hack sites once per week or so to keep tabs on things.
the $94,000 question is
Is it using System V or System D to look up the dns cache ???????
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
Happily enough, Alexa offers a download of the top million domains. Even calculating the MD5 hash for every domain every time and doing a simple string comparison using node.js, it takes only a couple of seconds to run through every single entry in that table.
arth1's domain isn't in the top million list, though.
But still, there are plenty of sites in the top million list you may not want to share with Valve that you visit, like #83, pornhub.com, or #84, huffingtonpost.com.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Her name happens to be Borderlands 2 --- yeah, her parents are strange -- will Valve help me find out who she's seeing?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Some guy has decompiled (what he claims to be) a VAC (Valve Anti Cheat) module that seems to be downloaded and executed when you connect to a game server. He has found code that scans the dns cache, hashes the domain name and adds it to an array.
Its not clear what is done with the data - whether it is compared against a blacklist sent by the server, whether it is used as an anti-proxy measure to verify that the VAC module was downloaded from the correct server, or whether this data is indeed sent to Valve. Tellingly, the guy who found the code where Valve scans the dns cache, has not found any code where this data gets sent to Valve.
So until someone actually finds code that sends this data off to Valve, I'm leaving the pitchfork party early.
See also: http://www.reddit.com/r/Global...
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Home Owners' Associations
They're almost the perfect example of American Greed: "We forbid _you_ from doing anything that might affect _our_ property values."
Fascists.
Trans-racial lesbian porn is always a tense experience: Which colour will the dildos be?
I just want to play I don't want all of your bullshit. Between anti-piracy hoops, spying, forcing Internet connectivity and removing LAN functionality it just isn't worth it.
When you play "Valve Anti-Cheat" (VAC) enabled games, you agree to allow Valve to scan your computer for evidence of cheat/hack programs. This is what VAC does. It's like Punkbuster, Warden, etc - depending on your point of view, it tries to level the playing field for multiplayer games, or it is an invasion of privacy because you have the right to cheat all you want.
Valve's VAC, Blizzard's Warden, etc are all "spyware" by definition. Their job is to find and collect evidence of suspected game-tampering cheats, both known and unknown, and report them. They already sniff your running processes, window titles, loaded drivers, USB devices, filesystem, etc. Scanning your local DNS cache is probably one of the least invasive things that VAC does, *and it only happens when you play games which advertise the VAC feature*.
If you don't like this, don't play VAC-enabled multiplayer games. It's that simple.
Well. I've browsed sites like Milw0rm ad Packetstorm without https. I'm sure there's non-https warez sites... Pirate Bay? So maybe you just don't need HTTPS. Or maybe you just accept the exception for this session, and the 1 or 2 sites you hit you just browse.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
What blogging platform hosts thousands of blogs under a single domain name?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I don't use/allow steam or similar programs or services. True or not it's a headache I don't need.
There's even a third type which includes *both*...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Must be true if it's on reddit :)
So, would you be okay with everyone knowing that you hit goatse.cx every day at 11pm?
They do have test servers, but I'm talking about just researching the bot issue - looking up web sites that discussed technical information that maybe WOW would consider "cheat sites" -
Warcraft wasn't using VAC obviously, but I was trying to give an example of researching information that may be on sites that if you looked at my DNS, you might assume I was cheating - In other words: DNS doesn't in and of itself tell the actual story.
The Digital Sorceress
Well, indeed, with the way things are today, you may have a point. /looks nervously over shoulder
The Digital Sorceress
http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming...
Basically, they're looking only for the DRM servers used by some very specific kernel-level cheats (apparently even cheats have DRM now - and these are not web sites, but DRM servers they're looking for, you won't trigger it by searching for or even buying cheats unless you use them). They do this comparison client-side, transmitting only if there is a match, and only transmitting the hashed value (which is used so the VAC servers can confirm it was a cheat when issuing the ban - otherwise one would be able to forge a "cheat" and get someone else banned). They also only do this scan at all if VAC has detected the cheat in the first place, which they claim has affected less than 0.1% of their users.
Valve is explicitly denying that they are gathering your browser history.
So my overall analysis:
1) If what they say is true, then they're doing everything they can to *not* gather your browsing history, and are only gathering the hashed value to protect users.
2) This should be possible to verify - see if the code doing the checks is triggered at all during normal use, and see what a packet sniffer picks up.
3) Even though I like Valve a lot, after recent events (Snowden, some personal betrayals, etc.) I feel I can't trust anybody. I'll let others do the verification (I'm not technically skilled enough to trust my own work on it), but if it turns out that this is all they are doing, it's a good thing that is very, very close to being a bad thing. If, however, they are not just spying on us but then lying about it, I will be downloading a Steam crack immediately (I spent over $1000 on Steam games, they're mine no matter what the law says) and taking everything into offline mode.
Youtube?
I guess the next thing to do is to start making websites with hidden iframes that loads pages of "questionable" content so that it will posion your DNS history. You may not have actually seen the "questionable content" in question, but your browser certainly loaded the content which in technical terms would fall in-line with the profile of this "anti-cheating" system.
It's as if you are assumed guilty of any sex crime simply by walking through the red-light district.
DNS-cache doesn't cache the times you access the domain, either, or how often. They only cache the fact that such a domain has been queried. It doesn't even say that it has been you who queried the domain -- it could be your IM-application when someone throws you a link to that domain, it could be your browser that just queries the domains for all the links on a site or something completely different.
You're right, it doesn't record the date. But if you monitor it all the time, you'll see the entries come in. And they will have to come in eventually as it is a cache - entries don't stay cached in perpetuity if not regularly visited. OTOH, if the entry does remain in the cache past the usual TTL (which is known), then that website was visited at least once in that period.
Re: IM and browser querying domains... you'll have to explain that to other people when someone tries to blackmail you like that.
OTOH, if the entry does remain in the cache past the usual TTL (which is known), then that domain was queried at least once in that period.
Fixed that for you.
Re: IM and browser querying domains... you'll have to explain that to other people when someone tries to blackmail you like that.
Eh. I don't. Everyone knows I'm a creep.
Explaining the reality of a situation does not imply that one condones it. Don't read between the lines and think that I like the way things are. And unlike you, if I'm stuck making a choice between two crappy options, I'm not going to delude myself into thinking that one is a "good" one just because it's slightly better than the alternative. You seem to be content to do so, however.
EULAs are legal and have been upheld in court repeatedly. I don't like them, but that's how it is. Denying them doesn't make them go away. You're living in a fantasy if you're pretending that the alternative (physical media) which hides them a bit more is a better option. At least my eyes are open and I know what my choices are. You? You're still convinced there's a difference.
And if you're getting hacks only for non steam games, and they cut you off, isn't that THEM violating the contract? And where in the steam contract anyways does it say they are entitled to look at your private browsing history? And re offline mode, Valve says there's no time limit and the users say there is.. Who's right?
So basically, shut down Steam completely then run a simple console (e.g., Windows) "1. ipconfig /release all, 2. ipconfig /flushdns, 3. ipconfig /renew"; Not to condone cheating, but this is something that can clog your system if it's having to be constantly checked.
If Steam can access the internet, and be running (to put it plainly) with permissions to install, then it runs as Admin on your stuff -- good luck setting up rules to not have to manually shut down if cheating is something you want to do.
Although, have you seen so-called "cheat" sites? They basically list achievements/trophies for games, because these cheats aren't coded in like they used to be in old consoles. It used to be something fun, I don't know what's happened to the judgement of it.
At the risk of saying too much, is privacy even an issue, really? I was filling out a form today for some website, and it struck me that so many services online have access to our personal information, and copy the same sort of security questions. When you're filling out a form for a new site, would you choose the same security questions and answers if they appear? And, since there are so few "common" security questions, would that be a clue to which question/answer combo you would pick on, for example, a banking site -- given its relative importance to a marginal or third party site (like one for shopping that has your CC info but doesn't hold your actual money). It seems like the more you want to do online, everybody is going to end up with your information. Not really a big deal when you give it some thought. Less stress on you since they won't have to fight eachother over your info, they'll all have a piece, and likely leave you alone. It's like devaluation of the currency of privacy, I guess?
But I digress. Doesn't seem like Valve's changes are that big of a deal - if the old days of button combos are dead, and walkthroughs are plentiful -- then the only cheats that are really out there are console or specific technology hacks that circumvent fair gameplay in a more massively multiplayer world of gaming. To go even further on the privacy bit, why not demand they share it with other parties and see what happens. It would relax controls on gaming companies and you may even get better offers, freeing up the market.
Anyway...