Well, wow, Google Analytics really tracks you inside Steam client where you are only being tracked on Steam store/community? I don't see any reason to block it ;)
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Well, simply, you can't. Steam opens external links in external browsers, so you'll only see Steam sites within the client. There's no connection between the internal Steam client browser and your browser, so the tracking data generated in the client will no time effect or be added to your tracking data in the normal browser.
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Well, ok, haven't thought about the ingame browser since I'm not using it. How did you manage to open origin in Steam client?
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Could you tell me how? Must be some kind of steam://-link? I've already searched for this, but haven't found anything.
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lol, my QRCode decoder recognized an EAN 8 code in your linked image, just noticed
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Some clarification,
It's not the case that Google Analytics is embedded into the client itself as much as the Steam client is a web browser that visits the steamcommunity/steampowered pages and they themselves use GA.
Of course Valve doesn't change the contents of their webpages based on whether you use your own web browser or the Steam client. So if you block content only in one browser it's still going to be present where you didn't block it.
The result is the same but this still is an important distinction to be made.
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Yeah, I agree. It's a good thing to be aware of and it's nice that this post gives a solution. Especially since you don't have much say in what the Steam client does or doesn't do.
I just wanted to point out that this is not really surprising or something Valve tried to hide away in the client itself as some of the comments started to lean towards.
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In fact the content IS changed when you use the client to browse it. They use custom GA variables to track different user behaviour. "Client type" is set to "Steam" when browsing with the client, while it's set to "External" if you use a different browser.
Not that it really matters much. Being tracked is kind of to be expected in all of those gaming clients.
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This is true, I guess I wasn't being completely truthful. But if they wanted to they could basically track that using the user agent string instead.
I was just trying to, without getting too technical, make the point (badly perhaps) that Steam is a web browser like any other and behaves like expected.
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You cannot block those addresses in your antivirus program. An antivirus program does not look at internet traffic. It does not care who you are communicating with. It cares about files/data on your hard drive and in memory.
You can block them with your firewall, however this is more difficult to tell people to do--every single firewall product has its own interface and a different series of steps to go through to block a website. However, the hosts file is a simple, multiplatform solution to block a file on any computer.
Every modern (since the introduction of TCPIP) operating system has a hosts file of some kind--Mac OS, Linux/bsd/other posix, Windows (from 3.x to 8.1 + phone & mobile), and mobile operating systems like Android, iOS, even Amiga supports it. The hosts file is basically the precursor to the entire DNS system.
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Glad to see you linking the prism break site. I don't agree with everything on it but it's still a good basic one ( no AirVPN ? ).
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Thanks for the link, this actually really helpful information. I was especially glad when i found Open Street Map on the prism break site as a real alternative to google maps.
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yes. about you. information being collected about you.
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There's a huge difference between monitoring someone (which I would guess is waht you being paranoid about) or just collecting data for statistics.
It's like you'll see someone standing on the entrance of a shop that counts how many people buy what and you'll just start hitting him because for some reason you don't want the world to know that there's another person in the world that buy whatever it is that you buy.
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It's not actually inside Steam client, it's on Steam's website. The client only show pages from that same website. And the consent is between Valve and Google since it's tracking traffic on Valve's website to provide Valve with statistics on visits to that same website.
Basing on his example, Google is the guy at the entrance of the shop counting the purchases.
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So, the fact that it works as intended is an oversight? If you don't want to give data to Valve, don't use their website at all then.
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yes, oversight for me.
I run noScript on browsers which disables google analytics bugs and trackers. But Steam client browser(although I don't really use it for browsing, just steam store) doesn't have noScript so yes again, an oversight for me.
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lol, what a piss poor generalization on your part. Go on, report me to valve. I'd like to see you get me banned from steam for not giving data to valve.
Unless you can link me to a clause on their terms and conditions that I need to submit data for them to continue using their service, then you have no right to tell that to me.
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Report you for what? All I'm saying is that the only way for you not to give any data to Valve is to not go on their website at all. Whether you're using any king of script-blocking tool, you're still giving some level of information to them. As soon as you log in on Steam, they can track pretty much all you do on the website and tag that info to your account. It's all server-based so there's nothing you can do about it. (It also applies to any website where you need to log in in some manner)
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Yeah, everytime you access anything on the internet you send out the exact same information that google analytics tracks and more. If google and valve wanted to, they could build google analytics directly into valves servers and you would never even know google was tracking you because it wouldn't be in the html anymore. People can be paranoid about privacy as much as they want but the only way to truly have privacy is to not use the internet.
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It's is your right, and you're welcome to block it, I didn't argue whether you have the right to do so or not, I argued that people shouldn't overreact about it so much.
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Really, why people mind it so much? Unless it's for some kind of vendetta against Google, then it's pointless, what could they possibly do that would affect you by collecting some data? :|
People are either really really paranoid or overly stubborn about this "breach" of "privacy".
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With the recent news about the NSA and involved companies I can't blame the people for being paranoid about basically everything, that involves some kind of tracking.
Edit: I'm not going to answer pointless questions as "why do you bother", because you clearly didn't understand my post. Speaking about something in general, doesn't imply, that it affects or bothers me. Get some basic reading skills before you go for someone's throat for pointing something general out.
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Why? So they know what you prefer for breakfast or where do you keep your masturbatory material, bid geal. How exactly does it affect you?
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Why do you guys close your doors at home, or when you take a dump ?
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Becase the former protects me from miscreants and annoying passers-by. And the latter is not very pleasant act to watch and more importantly we were programmed to be ashamed of it.
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Even with NSA, why would you mind? the only reason you would be afraid on NSA business, is if there's something you really don't want the government to know. And NSA is just another security measure, why I hate on it especially when it doesn't affect anyone. Tho the one thing that actual bad, is that they monitoring things outside USA, but even with it, It has absolutely no affect on me personally, it's only bad from political perspective.
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Why is it that you don't have any problem giving away your right to privacy? Google or any other party doesn't need to know what I do online. The "I have nothing to hide" attitude is stupid. People with that attitude probably don't even mind having their letters opened and read before they're delivered to them. In most countries, if not in every country, doing that is illegal. Tracking your activities online and spying on your conversations etc. is equivalent to having your letters opened and it should be illegal.
In addition, having systems in place that are susceptible to malpractice is never a good thing.
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Ok, so your whole argument is just calling this attitude stupid and not telling why is it so, just great, really proves your point. And saying something is illegal doesn't serve as a point as something illegal doesn't make something necessarily bad. Can't really say anything else because you didn't actually give me any point to argue.
Yeah, that's true, but this disadvantage is really small price to pay for security benefits given by that system.
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The attitude is stupid, because it means you're willing to give your rights away. There is plenty of articles like this one, which say that "I have nothing to hide" is a dangerous mindset. It's not you who decides, if you have something to hide or not.
Mass surveillance can be used to identify people with certain type of opinions, which is very dangerous, because that makes silencing those people a lot easier. The security benefits are very minor and should be disregarded entirely when the system can be used to attack free speech. Feel free to list the security benefits gained from spying on normal citizens. The real "bad people" are smart enough to use completely anonymous ways to contact each other online or access the things they're after.
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Give away my rights? right of what? that's what I'm calling it being stupidly stubborn. If you will be offered a number of donuts, but one of the donuts is in flavor that you won't ever eat, so someone else takes it and eats it, and in response you will start cursing him for taking the donut, even if you didn't plan to eat it. What the hell is the harm if they know who call you and who you call? The problem here you being against it not because it's something that is bad and should be opposed, it's just because you being stubborn and just want to be against because you feel like to. I'll even go as far as call it a complex, shouting your "right" not because you need them, but because you want to feel as if your the boss of everything related to you.
Yeah, and the government will go silencing ten thousands of people of same opinion. This is just getting too funny. And if the government comes to such state that they would do it, they'd create such system even if one didn't exist. So why the hell make such stupid argument? Would you stop eating potato because it's possible to poison the, even tho if someone wanted to poison you there will be other means so potato is not what you need to fear but all foods so in that case you would need to stop eating at all? And if you don't want the possibly that the government would do something you don't like, go live in a deserted island.
EDIT: "It's not you who decides, if you have something to hide or not." yeah, they'll just go after whoever they want even if he doesn't break the law or pose danger to it. Really, can you say something even dumber than that?
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Your right to privacy. The fact that you might not need privacy now, doesn't mean might not need it in the future and then you won't have it anymore, because you used to think you didn't need it. That donut metaphor doesn't make any sense. It's not even comparabable.
I don't have anything to hide, but that doesn't mean I should let government or anyone else invade my privacy. If I don't have anything to hide, then no one has a reason to spy on me. Doing so is an invasion of my privacy.
You seem to have completely missed my point in the second paragraph or just ignoring it on purpose. If there is no surveillance, it's much easier to organize resistance against a government that has turned against its people. The internet most likely played a big role in organizing the protests that have happened in the Arab world i.e. the Arab Spring. You don't even have an argument, so why is my argument supposedly stupid? And what's with the nonsensical food metaphors?
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Errr, why the hell suddenly in the future I'll need "privacy" from the government unless I do something that against the government? Was the donut metaphor really that difficult for you to understand? If you have "right" for something and you really don't need that thing, and then if someone takes even when it doesn't affect you in any possible way and yet you start criticizing them for taking something you don't need, is being just stubborn. (to avoid any other possible argument, note that I didn't say you don't have the right to criticize them, I said it's just being stubborn).
facepalm really? you are being just self centered. there are other people beside you, and there is some that do have something to hide. God I just wanna cry, you say the most ridicules things.
Most Ironic thing ever, because it seems you missed my point or ignored it. "Would you stop eating potato because it's possible to poison the, even tho if someone wanted to poison you there will be other means so potato is not what you need to fear but all foods so in that case you would need to stop eating at all? And if you don't want the possibly that the government would do something you don't like, go live in a deserted island." Or is this metaphor too difficult as well? Putting an unlikely scenario as your argument is being plain and simple paranoid. Let's stop nuclear development, because it can also be used to create nuclear bombs! And in this argument is even stupider than that, because even if there will be no tracking now, when a government that wants tracking will rise, it will create tracking system whether there was one before or not. So it''s plain stupid to criticize something for something that would happen even if it didn't exist.
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That donut metaphor has nothing to do with privacy. I don't give a shit about a donut I didn't like. I could easily throw it away, if no one else wanted it. That's why it was retarded. You can't compare donuts with rights. You're seriously telling me I don't need privacy? Who are you to say that? How do you know whether I need privacy or not? One of the basic rules of internet security is to never reveal information you're not okay with revealing.
Do you have problems following the conversation? You think it's ok to spy on you and other people, because you have nothing to hide, but other people might not be okay with the spying even if they have nothing to hide. That's the point I was trying to make. It's pointless to even argue with you, when you can't follow the conversation and just resort to ad hominem. You never even mentioned any of these security benefits you think the surveillance provides.
You are a very naïve person, if you trust your government that much to not even see it turning against its people as a possibility no matter how small it is. You're just ignoring history. It would definitely be easier for the government that wants to track its people, if the system already existed.
I'm not going to bother with this conversation anymore, because you just use ad hominem and haven't even tried to argue why the surveillance is a good thing. Not my problem if you don't care about your right to privacy. I do care about my rights and will fight to keep them. Many, if not all, security experts think the surveillance done by the NSA is a bad thing, but apparently you know better.
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The metaphor is to show stubbornness in case of scenario of someone talking/doing something that won't affect you in any possible way. Funny how you think just because NSA stores information about you in the server, not even directly inspecting you means you have absolutely no privacy and all of it is exposed to everyone's eyes. So yeah, you think revealing information to private entities and just other people on the internet is the same as revealing them to the government. lol XD
Really. I was trying to hold myself from saying it all along, but; you're an idiot. Just because some people are stubborn about something that wouldn't even affect them, the government shouldn't do it? Hey, I don't like that there's police, the government should disband the police force! You being so ironic considering you can't follow the conversation for damn, because all along I was debating that there's nothing to be so stubborn about NSA, and not its benefits. And if I actually need to explain the security benefits that surveillance provides, go back to school.
Hey, we should stop nuclear development because in the unlikely case of nuclear weapon development it will be abit it easier for them. And you say I can't follow a conversation. You can't even understand the simplest of metaphors. And great use of strawman. My argument was about that if the government turns against its people, even if there isn't surveillance, they would create one, so there's no point criticizing the current surveillance, and you reply that I'm naive for trusting the government.
Because I add ad hominem, it doesn't affect the validity of my arguments, and it says alot about your "arguments" if the volume of me ad hominem is bigger than usual, because usually I use none. Oh you made a thru research reading all articles and opinion of security experts all around the internet, or just read someone saying "Many, if not all, security experts think the surveillance done by the NSA is a bad thing."?
Anyway, you are such a silly person, don't have much to add. Really, I was in many arguments (it is my hobby), and this one is by far one of the silliest I've ever been in, especially the parts where it just overflowed with irony.
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Everyone has secrets, and everyone has the right to not disclose them. Especially if revealing those secret can virtually or potentially harm them in any way.
The "I have nothing to hide" attitude is simply naïve and not at all stupid. What's stupid is treating any and all tidbits about yourself as a for your eyes only material.
Tracking one's activity online is not even close to opening one's letters, it's more like a guy sitting outside a mall and counting people that go in and out. It could be annoying, but not illegal per se.
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The guy sitting outside the mall doesn't know you have a certain type of disease or somewhat embarrassing problem, but someone tracking your online activity most likely knows that. The party tracking you knows a lot more about you than a random observer outside a mall ever will.
The tracking that google-analytics and the like do isn't that bad, but when the tracking extends to your private conversations, then it's a problem. The things you say in the conversation is probably meant for the other person's eyes only. When someone spies on that, it's definitely equivalent to someone opening one's letters. Letters are also meant for the other person's eyes only.
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This is amazing, you seriously treat the government as an individual (not talking about the metaphor, but about the fact that you would be embarrassed if the government knows something about you). XDDDD
Yeah, there's thousand of NSA employee sitting and reading all chat massages and logs in the world. That is just too funny. Or you think you're some kind of VIP and NSA personally checks your emails and chats? XDDDD
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The fact that you're just mocking me and resorting to ad hominem shows that you don't have any real arguments. You're just twisting my words to make me look bad. I never said anything about being embarrassed if the government knows something about me. No idea where you got that from or that other thing too.
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You know, I can't really put much of an actual counter argument when there's no argument to counter. No idea where I got it from? "or somewhat embarrassing problem" At first it would seem it was part of a metaphor, but really isn't metaphoring anything, so I would presume it is actually what you afraid of, that the government would know embarrassing stuff about you.
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It was not about the matter being embarrassing for the government to know. That doesn't make any sense. I meant it more like being something embarrassing to you like things you don't like to admit. If you're a guy, I doubt you'd go telling everyone you meet about having erectile dysfunction, but it's something you'd likely do a Google search about.
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Now you make absolutely no sense. If you say that you not embarrassed if the government knows, then why would you care if the government knows that? Hell, it's not even like they would even know, it's just gonna be in their database lying and collecting dust, so unless the most bored guy ever will appear and just read all the searches people made and who made it or AI will rise and process all that information, there will be no sentinel being that would be aware of your problem. And if you simply feel embarrassed that somewhere out there (where no one will ever see) there's a record that you once searched for it, then you really have some issues.
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How the hell does government knows about your embarrassing problems? And why can't a person sitting outside the mall see you going into a drugstore and buying some pills with Vardenafil in them?
Do you have any proof that Google Analytics tracks your messages?
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By 'you' I didn't mean you specifically, but more of a general referral for argument sake, sorry if it had offended you in any way, wasn't my intention, but still you shouldn't have been so pissed about it.
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I don't get it either. People act like their putting their lives in danger by having analytics provide stats to Valve about visitors on their website. Any respectful website or app will use some kind of analytic to better understand it's customers and provide them with a service that's better tailored to their need.
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1- not every analytics is respectful of my privacy, i don't want anyone, admin or gov, to know when i log in, for how long, what i am looking at, and from where.
2- my life is not in danger. but my privacy is. it's gonna get fun thought the day we have a hitler the 2nd or Stalin the 2nd or Pol Pot the 2nd. Fortunately we learn from the past so it's never gonna happen. That's why the 1st world war was called the last of the last.
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Any website can know when you logged in, how long you spent, what you looked at and from where (at least, according to the IP it received from you). People use pre-built analytics like Google's because it saves them the trouble of coding the whole thing into their own sites, but at the end of the day it does the same job.
If ever there's a 2nd Hitler, I don't really care if he knows that I spend more time in the Steam community than in the Steam store. Or that I use Chrome more than the Steam client to visit those pages.
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Your second statement is absurd and nonsensical. There is absolutely no connection between privacy and tyrants. They rise to power not because they know how long you are logged on on some site, they manage to do it because they are charismatic and persuasive.
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It's not about making them rise to power. It's about making things easy once they are in power. Do you think that if hitler or stalin or pol pot had access to the data of today, they wouldn't have been more efficient ?
As to analytics, i know it well enough, used it when it was taking care of various websites. I know all about the advantages of using it. But if i can avoid it, i avoid it. As to the IP, it's extremely easy to have a fake one.
And no i am not saying that steam collects info on my religion ( unless i join a group ), i am just saying that i want to keep as much privacy as i can.
I don't see why protecting ones privacy is so surprising ?
You got curtains on your windows, you close your doors when you take a dump, you wear clothes on the street, you don't distribute your phone number to everybody, but you don't understand that people want to keep some privacy on internet ?
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Curtains, clothes and closed doors are of different origins. On Internet you inherently have the level of privacy they provide. The kind of privacy you demand is blinding people on the same street as you so they wouldn't see you. That's totally unnecessary and doesn't provide any benefits.
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I don't post my phone number on any odd website on the Internet, or have pictures of me naked or taking a dump anywhere on the web. I know enough to know that ANYTHING you do on the Internet is never completely private. I also don't care if the ads I get are tailored to my browsing habit. If it means I get ads about good deals on electronics or software instead of tampons and luxury lawn chairs, then all the better.
I close my doors to prevent intruders, and mosquitoes. I have curtains and close my bathroom door because I don't want to be seen naked by the neighbors and have some sense of decency. However, I'm also fairly certain that when I buy stuff in a store they're building statistics about what items are the most sold and what items people buy together as a mean to compile statistics and provide store placement that encourages people to buy more stuff.
Privacy is about keeping my private information to myself. Paranoia is about keeping any and all information about you a secret. You seem to have trouble understanding the difference between the two.
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i consider my location, my ref ( where i come from ), and the time i spent on a website as private. I consider that a company tailoring ads by building a profile of me is an invasion of my privacy, whether i get good deals out of it or not.
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Oh no, they will show ads that is more suited to me instead of random ad. Oh, what a tragedy, this must be avoided at all cost! Don't tell me you hate on it just because it's "breaching your privacy" and not because whether it has any harm to you or not. You're like 'Hey, that sounds like something I should be mad about, let's disregard whether I actually need to be mad about it or not, and be mad."
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Do you not talk on a street with your friends, lest someone hear you? Do you cover everything you write in public places, lest someone read it? Do you not go out at all, lest someone see where you went? Why exactly do you consider all those things in your post private information?
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When i talk on the street or write in public, funny thing is it either stays private or nobody cares, and then the moment is gone.
The difference with internet, is that this information is not assembled from various places to build a profile of me that will be kept, used to make money, and in many cases resold to another company.
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In other words you're just bitter that they don't share with you.
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Wow, just wow. So in your mind companies are just people, and would do anything they want and be irresponsible with data about you like douche, they will start blackmailing you with the data on you, will publicly shame you with it and just laugh at your face about it. I would suggest you to stop trying to argue, because the things you say, it's just too much. XDD
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If you never heard about a company being a douche, you missed a lot. What about companies selling the data they have about you ? What about "responsible" companies being hacked and then millions of people discover that their data was stored in clear or equivalent to ? There was this cool case of a guy surfing the net, and he got this pop up ya know of a girl living around wanting to have sex ? Funny thing is it was his wife. After getting mad at her, they discovered her photo had been sold to a sex site by a social thing she was on. But i guess companies are not people and they are very responsible with my data, it's just my imagination. Like healthcare.gov, they would never never send my username and pswd reset code to a bunch of third parties right ? Oh wait, they do. And that gives access to my medical data, adress, social security number... I love the assumption that a company is responsible with your data. Wether intentionaly or by mistake like in those two examples. If responsability is your dada, you'll find enough cases to have a laugh as to the sense of responsability of many a company. And as to your blackmailing part, the nazis did use gathered data both by the government and private companies to find many of their targets. The cops recently used facebook with their own soft to find thousands of people from the london riots, and the israeli army used it to check if some people were lying about their religious fervor to avoid being forced joining the army. It always sounds nice and cool when it's for stuff you like, ads or security. Then you discover it might not be so nice and shiny. Forgive me if i don't trust what companies do with my data. Forgive me if i read the privacy policies and have a "no thanks" when i read that they will sell my data. And forgive me if i am not surprised when i read that an activist has been arrested in the middle east or south east asia because the gov has hacked a website and used the data he left on it ( yes, google analytics among others ). Google satellite service is now used by many governments to check on your house and garden if they suspect you of tax evasion or growing weed. It's cool because they have good reasons. Just like the drones flying over peoples heads in the US ( you know about the US drones in afghanistan being accessed by the talibans ? i had such a laugh ). Now you just have to pray that history won't repeat itself. It never does right ? And again if you don't care about the advertisement part, fine, but getting my face scanned when i am doing my shopping in Tesco, i'll pass.
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Do they sell the data just to anyone?
The argument is about company's policy not about to what danger it is exposed.
If I'm not wrong there was some clause in number of social sites that said that the site have the right to do whatever they want with their picture (might be wrong).So in this case the person simply shouldn't upload his pictures if he don't trust the site.
Wait, why would healthcare.gov to such things? :S
In all those three examples it does the work it intended to do, support the government's enforcement. whether the government's enforcement is good or not it's a whole different story. Things if the same thing used to find pedophiles or rapists? Is it bad?
Also the main argument was about analytics or other data gathering for statistics which is a critical data, of the data stored in single sites and not data centers like Google Analytics or NASA, then don't use the internet. The argument wasn't about separate sites.
If you really don't like your face scanned, you need to remember that thru out all history security always came in cost of our personal comfort, there's no other way.
Also when I said douche I didn't say in the sense of being irresponsible, but in the sense that they would use data against you for personal things, as I said, like public shaming and such. Also in the first places I talked about NSA and Google, I didn't talk about all companies, obviously it's impossible to all companies to have the same level of responsibility and ethics.
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facepalm Even if there was no Google analytic or anything like that, they'll create any means for monitoring people, you know, like they did in the past. So how actually having Google Analytic creates this danger? It's like going out outside because you might die of dying because from slipping on a banana pill. And if someone like that rose power you wouldn't be able to enter the sites they don't want you to enter by any normal means, you know, just like in China. So the only thing that's gonna be monitored is when you enter the sites the government don't mind, and why would you mind if they knew that you enter the sites they don't care about? Anyway, don't try to find silly reasons as to why hate on Google Analytic.
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1 Don't blame others for taking care of their (online-) privacy. If you are careless and don't give a shit, that's your deal.
2 If Valve collects data about the usage of their sites, games I play and like and so on, to improve the service and to advertise new games that I might like and buy, that is totally fine with me. But I completely disagree that they outsource this to a company that is doing more with the collected data than just telling Valve how their service and sites are being used. And this is where 3 jumps in.
3 I am not sure if you are fully aware of how much data is actually collected about you and how far this goes/can go. Let's stick with Google here (of course they are not the only ones tracking you and your browser behaviour). According to techcrunch, GA "is used by more than 55 percent of the top 10,000 websites". (On a related sidenote, when using Google Chrome you can be tracked on 100% of the pages you visit, but that again should be obvious) On top of that, quite some sites that don't use GA use Google APIs (googleapis.com, ajax.googleapis.com) for the use of Google services and content delivery. So what happens is that Google collects data from more than every second site you visit (and ofc. from their own services like search, YT, Gmail and Maps) and links it together using your IP-adress. A very good example that shows how they link information is that a Youtube cookie is stored on your Computer when logging in to Gmail (and yes, this also happened before they switched to the centralized login for all Google services). When using Gmail, they might as well know your real name, by using GMaps they might as well know exactly where you live (and not just approximately based on geo-IP localization). And to link all this information, they don't even need your IP-adress ("To meet German legal requirements, Google Analytics can anonymize the IP address."), they can just use your browser fingerprint.
After having a small database saved about you, they can also cross-reference and track you on other machines you use (home/work) simply based on your browsing behaviour (favourite sites/sites you visit on a daily basis/how long you stay on a site/videos you watch over and over again...and so on so on)
But the worst part is that they also sell this information about you to advertising companies and whomelse, and it wouldn't surprise me a single bit (get it, get it? /sarcasm) if they also sell it to governments. Especially a lot of "claiming to be democratic" ones like there are in europe seem to be quite interested in such information. More than often do they show that they will collect every bit (again ;)) of data they can get their hands on.
It looks like that you have a different understanding of privacy than I do.
Maybe Google doesn't collect as much information about me than i suspect they do.
Maybe they don't sell it to my government.
Maybe there will never be the rise of a more fascistic governtment that will use the collected information against me (e. g. if they see that I support an opposition political party).
But I won't rely on a fucking "maybe". I care about my privacy (which is a constitutional right by the way) online and offline.
Rant about it as much as you want, but it is actually people like you with a "i don't care" attitude that make it easy for governments to pass more and more laws with the goal to collect more and more information about you, but of course this is all done to protect everyone from terrorists (-.- yeah terrorists my ass).
TL,DR: What I do online is my private thing, no company or government has the right to collect and store my browsing habits and behaviour. Nuff said!
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Your whole argument . . . nah, who am I kidding, this wan't an argumrnt. You just talked about the extent and the system of survailance. When I ask why people mind it, and how does it actually affect that they would mind it so much. You don't go talking about some 101 basic stuff, you answer my argument. Good luck next time say why do you actually mind this whole thing. Because from what I read , you don't have an actual reason, just because it's "breach of privacy, even tho it doesn't affect yoyu, so in conclusion I'd say you just being stubborn. Go read my arguments with others before repeating like a broken record.
P.S: I'm reasonably more on the offesive because you just made me read all this post that contained nothing to actually argue, so it was really just pointless waste of time.
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facepalm How the act itself can be a reason to anything? A reaon would be the cause/result/affect/intention of the act. it's like you will say you hate a certain food just because it's that certain food, no matter what it actually taste, which is outright stubborness.
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No, it doesn't. What difference does it make whether or not Google is aware of your online activity?
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No, why do you mind if Google "knows", because the only thing that is "aware of all that data is the computers that processing it, there's no one bored enough to check data for each person individually. SO yeah, why exactly you are bothered that a computer process your info? And even if there was someone to see individual info about you, why the hell would he care?
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Ok, enough with the same question a thousand times :
WHY I DON'T WANT ANY DATA COLLECTED ON ME
read it, and you will have the answers to your questions. Thanks.
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That doesn't answer anything. It's just a long version of "just because" argument.
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Thanks for sharing but I personally do not mind as long as I keep my beloved PC clean and free from malware and etc. Online businesses needs this data to make better decisions either navigation wise, demographic wise or even product offerings. I mean potentially if it is through studying site analytics will make sites like HumbleBundle, BundleStars, IndieGala and etc come out with even better offering, then I am all for it :)
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http://panelsyndicate.com/
Somewhat related comic about where too much of your personal information online can lead to bad things. I know the topic of this thread is how to block potentially unwanted information gathering as opposed to what you volunteer to be known, but I feel that line is going to become more and more blurred over the years.
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i always edit my hosts file by running my text editor as administrator. an even easier way of blocking sites though is through a service like opendns -- set it once there and it's blocked for all computers, game consoles, tablets, phones, etc. that connect through your router.
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it's slightly more complicated one-time setup, and then a little tweak each your ip changes. change dns on the router (so it affects all devices that connect through it) to opendns ips (the two you listed), go to opendns.com and create an opendns account, set it to your ip (this is the step you need to do again when your ip changes), go to web content filtering and enter all the domains you want to block. they have built-in filtering for adult and illegal sites, or even video and time-wasting sites, but i just maintain my own list.
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OpenDNS sells your data.
Go for OpenNIC of you want something major, there is also a bunch of small indie ones such as cloudns.
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Thanks for the info! I use my hosts file to block all kinds of unsavory stuff, there is a dedicated group that compiles a huge list of "nasty" sites to lead to 127.0.0.1 (local host) MVPS HOSTS Works great although it's so big that it can slow your browser down (there are ways to fix it but it's not for everyone) I never knew about google analytics so I will add this to the list and see how it goes. Cheers!
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Thank you so much for this thread. Very helpful <3
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A few of you are using NoScript to block Google Analytics and other crap in your browser, but I discovered that the Steam-Client is using Google Analytics as well (you can see so by right-clicking inside Steam and select "View Source...", that's how I became aware of it by coincidence).
The good news is that you can block it by editing the hosts file.
If you are on Win7, you first have to give your user full control in the properties > security tab to edit the file.
Adding these lines:
127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 www.ssl.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com
should do the trick.
There are also a few hosts files on the web that include a variety of ad- spam- tracking- and other pages and are frequently updated:
hosts 1
hosts 2 with additional info
You are welcome!
Update: It is not embedded in the Client, but used on the pages Steam browses to. (Thank you Xure for pointing this out!)
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