,

You let Steam scan your PC for all your applications and that's cool because it's a "hardware survey."

Verizon do the same and it's SPYWARE.

"Verizon has announced new plans to install software on customers’ devices to track what apps customers have downloaded.", isn't that what all app stores (Windows App store, Google play, Apple store, Amazon whatever...) do anyway? Whether it's free or not, they know exactly what you downloaded, installed, when and how long you're using it. Let's face the fact, when you're concerned about privacy you don't use mobile devices.