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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.
Will it report the percentage of pixels that are flesh colored?
Installing nvidia has always been a bit of a pain in Linux, with each distro having their own way of packaging the closed source drivers. I guess even THAT is a feature in backwards 2016.
Not that we should ban telemetry outright, but in the very least, we should know what data is being reported.
For entertainment value, here's the Nvidia driver download page from 2001, with the driver weighing in at 6Mb.
Compare with 15 years later, driver is now 300Mb....
Software bloat at it's finest.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I am 100% certain that they would only be able to collect only crash data from EU citizen, as anything else, including usage or even something as simple as the percentage of pink pixel would break privacy laws and the right of correction.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
if you can't explain what the data is, you shouldn't be sending it.
Or will the driver not function without it?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You don't have a right to the data on my machine, even if you wrote the software that generates it.
-- The End-User Manifesto
All this time I wondered what AMD could possibly do to convince me to try their video cards again. Now I know it was nVidia that had to do something all along.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
See subject: This is task scheduler driven in windows so cut out these entries there & poof/voila, it's gone:
NVidia Telemetry monitor
NVidia Crash and Telemetry reporter (2 of these are present)
(Each is GUID/SID marshalled (OLE type))
* Each time you update your drivers using the std. installer, this will PROBABLY have to be done (this is also the case w/ .exe's they used under %Program Files% in 64-bit & %Program Files (x86)% in 32-bit as well for nvtray.exe (if you don't like it, OR, NVBackend (can be disabled in tools like MSConfig start up area OR autoruns (far more comprehensive)).
(Personally on that LAST group, I go into the program files area & rename .exe files involved for 'geforce experience' IF you don't use it (I don't) along w/ DLL's those .exe files call functions from, but you have to be careful if you run STEAM games (bullshit imo, I like local diskbound games) there...)
Lastly - on updating a driver?
You don't REALLY need to use their std. installer - just extract it (goes beneath a NIVDIA folder & driver folder is what you use) & go to device manager & use it's properties page to update the driver (iirc, this doesn't install ALL NEW files, only strictly .sys driver related ones - feel free to correct me IF I am off here). This worked FINE for me going from build 375.63 to 375.70 current driver build.
Of course, you can also monitor what servers these things talk to w/ say, NirSofer's Network Latency View (or his other network tools) & block it by hostname (if it's done that way) OR ip address in firewalls too.
APK
P.S.=> In the end, this invasive spying is really, Really, REALLY getting "outta control" imo (well, not out of MY control or yours @ this point per the above)... apk
The thing about software like this, whether it be Microsoft, nVidia, or whoever, is that they have FULL access to your computer. Not just the current user, they have administrator access. They could, either by choice, accident or malice, send ANYTHING they want off of your computer. Tax forms, SSN's, bank account information, passwords, personal photos, etc.
That's fucked up.
A boilerplate shrinkwrap EULA does not count as asking for it. There is no meeting of the minds.
Telemetry is also there to help product owners to determine which features of the software are used the most. It allows product owners to have a better understanding how their software is used over all.
It's a frigging driver. First, "product owners" should stop insisting on bundling 5 different crap software packages when all I want to download is a driver (not easy to get individually).
According to TFA driver itself comes with telemetry too. But I am guessing that "driving of the hardware" is the most frequently used feature in that case. It's the only reason for getting that driver in the first place.
Basically just don't use 'GeForce Experience'. Honestly unless you're just one of these weird-os that can't live without social medial integration of your games then you can avoid all of this by not installing Experience. And honestly, why would any one?
Of course then this will only probably work until they make it mandatory, as these companies always try to do.
Give me a checkbox to disable it (even if it is enabled by default) and I'll not whinge. Make it a PITA to disable and I'm livid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have a GTX 980, so I immediately RTFA and looked for the task they referenced in the Task Scheduler. FWIW, I did not find the task referenced in the article or anything at all related to nvidia. I have the latest driver package from nvidia installed. YMMV.
Just confirmed this on my own system. This telemetry is all a part 'GeForce Experience'. People should just uninstall that crap anyway as there's really nothing of value in that product anyway.
Security is a bitch and we can't secure anything if we don't have complete control over the complete set of source code needed for each and every component including keyboard controllers, LCD controllers, graphics chips, wifi chips, and so on need to be released in full and not just an 'open source' wrapper around some proprietary firmware either (I'm looking at you AMD).
It's why I'm hostile to Lenovo, HP, Dell, Toshiba, Apple, and Sony (computers) as these companies implement digital restrictions in proprietary components (BIOS). It's why I'm hostile to Intel (CPUs backdoor'd), NVidia, AMD (not just graphics but also backdoor'd) for keeping everything proprietary and compromising my system's security. It's why I don't have an NVIDIA or AMD graphics card.
It's why I put my money into funding EOMA68 project (ThinkPenguin's the main sponsor and a crowd funding campaign was done here: https://crowdsupply.com/eoma68)- a modular computing standard which aims to open up hardware in the free software sense (even though they are also opening up schematics for boards it's the sources are what matter for individual components the most and modularizing ensures it's cheaper and easier to pressure component manufacturers to release code- whereas currently we have Intel or AMD for laptops for example EOMA68 is opening the way for non-x86 laptops with CPUs from other companies).
If companies allowed me to install my own telemetry software on their systems to report back to me, it would be very helpful and give me a better understanding of how the company is run and how their products are developed. It would help consumers determine what features of the software the companies are putting their funding and effort towards the most.
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?
That ain't just for "understanding" that's for exploitation and profit from "personally identifiable" customer data.
This shit is spyware.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
You suddenly find £2,000 gone from your bank account and the bank blames you (as not in this Tesco case). You audit; you are up to date with all virus bashing software, etc, ... how else could your data have gone ? You then find that 'telemetry' is being sucked from your machine, Nvidia/Microsoft/... refuse to disclose what they have taken from your machine; they will not say how they protect what they have taken or who they share it with. Can you go after them ?
I just checked my Task Scheduler, and none of those Nvidia telemetry tasks identified by MajorGeeks have ever run. I've just enabled "tasks history" (i.e.: chron logs) from admin to see if it's actually doing anything. The tasks only appear when you run Task Scheduler with admin rights, so access is restricted to users with administrator rights. From the history, I think this telemetry might be in the works, but not running yet.
It's possible that since it is an admin task and I run in a limited user account (standard account), it's not triggering the task, but the tasks are supposed to be triggered by login of "any user," with a daily report at 12:45 on my machine if there's no login to trigger, so I can't see how that's happening. This all should be working, but it appears to be dead at this time on my machine with the latest drivers.
I do have GeForce Experience 3 installed, and it *is* asking for a login, however. So it seems they're tagging *something* to an account.
The GeForce forums are a shitstorm of "ditch the login" posts in every GFX thread. People are threatening boycotts, etc. It's really quite interesting. Here's the initial feedback thread when GFX 3 went live. Bring popcorn.
Give me a checkbox to disable it (even if it is enabled by default) and I'll not whinge. Make it a PITA to disable and I'm livid.
That's no good, though. These checkboxes tend to become "accidentally" re-enabled with every software update.
The only solution is to remove telemetry from the driver and provide driver as a separate easy-to-find download (and then they can include what they want in add-on software).
Yeah, these tasks all run as a local user rather than SYSTEM, so when I log in with my standard account, the admin account that it's running under isn't logged in, and the condition for launch on any login is not met.
Error message:
Task Scheduler did not launch task "\NvTmMon_{B2FE1952-0186-46C3-BAEC-A80AA35AC5B8}" because user "[COMPNAME]\[ADMIN_USERNAME]" was not logged on when the launching conditions were met. User Action: Ensure user is logged on or change the task definition to allow launching when user is logged off.
This is par for the course with Nvidia software these days. Running a service as a local account? They should know better. ;)
Until all competing products do the same thing. Then all you're left with is complaints. And make no mistake, if this is determined to be a success (or at least not a big disaster) then its almost certain the rest of the industry will follow suit, sooner or later.
nVidia is risking pissing us all off by this move while their competitors aren't, but AMD would be risking essentially nothing if they do the same thing in a couple months since there's not really any other options for people to move to. Intel's a very distant third place and not really attempting to compete at the cutting edge. Whoever is below Intel isn't even worth discussing at this point.
A low-competition market doesn't have to be an actual oligopoly to screw over their customers. Sometimes it just takes one producer to risk pulling the trigger on something only-kind-of-bad and everyone just follows along if the action shows overall benefit to the bottom line. This scenario might not get away with actions as bad as a true oligopoly but it can still fall well into the "not good" category.
That ain't just for "understanding" that's for exploitation and profit from "personally identifiable" customer data.
This shit is spyware.
I am glad I moved to Linux exclusively once Windows 10 was released and I tried it out. Everyone whines about how their most important software does not run on Linux, how Linux is unusable because you have to debug crap, etc etc.
I think it is time to put a different spin on this: A computer is not worth using if everything you do is monitored, monetized, examined for legality, and stored forever to potentially use against you should you ever become the target of an investigation.
I can hear the objections now, "but but but I HAVE to use a computer."
Well, you can still use a computer without all of that crap; although Redhat and other distributions are starting to distribute crash reporters and such... which is the first step along the path already followed by mainstream software.
You will be completely encased in a cocoon of surveillance from birth until death unless it is fought. It needs to be fought yesterday, it needs to be fought now, and it needs to be fought in the future.
I have reclaimed my freedom from surveillance through my operating system by using Linux. OpenBSD is even better. FreeBSD seems to populated with SJW types so I avoid that like that the plague.
Regardless, Open Source is your only path to freedom when all closed source software starts implementing tracking/telemetry. Use it. use it now. The applications you need will eventually follow; however, it is better to live without a computer than to be tracked constantly. What was that what Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death!"?
Yeah, stop spying on me or I will stop participating. Windows, and now NVidia, are out. Forever. There is no recovery from such a decision. It is a death sentence to NVidia.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen