Nvidia Adds Telemetry To Latest Drivers (ghacks.net)

An anonymous reader shares a report on Ghack: Telemetry -- read tracking -- seems to be everywhere these days. Microsoft pushes it on Windows, and web and software companies use it as well. While there is certainly some benefit to it on a larger scale, as it may enable these companies to identify broader issues, it is undesirable from a user perspective. Part of that comes from the fact that companies fail to disclose what is being collected and how data is stored and handled once it leaves the user system. In the case of Nvidia, Telemetry gets installed alongside the driver package. While you may customize the installation of the Nvidia driver so that only the bits that you require are installed, there is no option to disable the Telemetry components from being installed. These do get installed even if you only install the graphics driver itself in the custom installation dialog.Further reading on MajorGeeks.

Comments

Re:its not always about tracking "issues"

[Blue Stone]

So why do they make users consent to allow nVidia permission to collect "personally identifiable information" for the purposes of "deliver[ing] marketing communications" and collect "games and applications settings, performance, and usage data" although it is "not limited to" doing just this?

3. CONSENT TO COLLECTION AND USE OF INFORMATION
Customer hereby acknowledges that the SOFTWARE accesses and collects both non-personally identifiable information and personally identifiable information about Customer and CUSTOMER SYSTEM as well as configures CUSTOMER SYSTEM in order to (a) properly optimize CUSTOMER SYSTEM for use with the SOFTWARE, (b) deliver content through the SOFTWARE, (c) improve NVIDIA products and services, and (d) deliver marketing communications. Information collected by the SOFTWARE includes, but is not limited to, CUSTOMER SYSTEM'S (i) hardware configuration and ID, (ii) operating system and driver configuration, (iii) installed games and applications, (iv) games and applications settings, performance, and usage data, and (iv) usage metrics of the SOFTWARE. To the extent that Customer uses the SOFTWARE, Customer hereby consents to all of the foregoing, and represents and warrants that Customer has the right to grant such consent.

That ain't just for "understanding" that's for exploitation and profit from "personally identifiable" customer data.

This shit is spyware.