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

Does it track flesh tones?

[RogueWarrior65]

Will it report the percentage of pixels that are flesh colored?

Re:No Linux support?

[StormReaver]

Installing nvidia has always been a bit of a pain in Linux...

In the *buntus (and I would presume Debian), it is very simple:

apt-get install nvidia-current

Or you can use the newbie-friendly GUI to install it.

That said, I stopped buying NVidia cards about a year ago. The Open Source AMD driver is good enough for my needs (desktop, simple gaming, 3D modeling), and continues to improve rapidly. Now, I can add "respects my privacy".

We probably should have a law for this

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that we should ban telemetry outright, but in the very least, we should know what data is being reported.

Pepperidge Farm Remembers

[lobiusmoop]

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.

Pretty sure this would against EU privacy law

[aepervius]

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.

Re:its not always about tracking "issues"

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Holy Shit

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Holy Shit

[Anonymous Coward 912]

Your list is way shorter than mine. For me AMD would also have to start following hardware specifications, lower the power consumption on their cards to reasonable levels, and figure out how to write drivers for their products.

Re:its not always about tracking "issues"

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:its not always about tracking "issues"

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

Re:No Linux support?

[myrdos2]

Yeah. It's getting kind of ridiculous.

Smithers: Do you know where I can buy some, uh... spyware?

Shopkeeper: SPYWARE?! Everything is spyware! Operating system made of spyware! Browser made of spyware! Look! All computer made of spyware!

Smithers: (picks up a graphics driver) I'd like to buy this.

Shopkeeper: Only Bitcoin! (whispers) American money is made of spyware.

I wonder the liability

[Alain Williams]

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 ?