FYI on steam gaming platform, it's a data mine.

submitted by leo from (self.PCGaming)

They save every text you made to every friend and know what games you play, and get telemetry from all games. You don't own any games for real, you rent them so they can data mine. I helped with a team fortress original server called girlpower way way back, we recorded all movements to find data points on every user and how they moved the mouse, we also saved every text they made to collaborate with such data points. At the time I was really young so I thought I would actually get a call from the air force or something bc I used a trackball and was able to flick in the direction and shoot, a high tier gamer, it's much different now and have played professional csgo with regular mouse, much harder imo but I think they track it still. If anyone has a data study on mouse movements I would love to read them. Thanks for your time.

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[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I don't have a study but if you don't know, there are tons of web analytics packages also tracking your mouse movements. They can tell by how you scroll if you're engaged in the content or not. So it's happening on many ecommerce sites, etc.

[–]leo[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Wow good point, I know reddit just went to that model. Any way to block it?

[–]Node 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

uMatrix allows you to block individual elements on a page.

[–]Lambdadelta 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

know what games you play

That's a given with time tracking and their "social stuff," but according to a recent news, they're exposed in such a way that Epic can harvest them in the background. And to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it was intentional.

You don't own any games for real

As a DRM solution themselves, they can also enforce this idea by denying you from playing if they can't log you in for whatever reason (offline "mode" broken, your account deleted, etc), while claiming it's to fight piracy.

[–]leo[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

No I do not game anymore, mostly bc of interest in learning bmx but I lost interest and think the air force made a huge mistake on vetting for drone operators at the time. They prolly knew I wouldn't shoot civs and would know, they want low tier retards who won't figure it out. (toots my own horn a bit hehe)

[–]Brewdabier 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You don't own any games.

It's been that way for a couple decade now, all windows from SOS and Windows 1.01 to W 10. Read the EULA, all software is just borrowed and you paid to use it not own it. As for data tracking mouse movements I know Google Analytics does not track more than 500 events per session. I do however know the company I worked for could track company mouse,keyboard and even knew when your webcam was on. Also scientific games would deduct pay if you were surfing the web.