Intel graphic drivers collect Telemetry By default in windows.
This shit should be illegal. Or, specifically, should be required to be opt-in only.
Data is a commodity, and has been for a long time. Collecting / using users’ data without their express consent should not be as accepted as it is.
Bless you AMD
AMD handles its version of CIP and Telemetry in arguably the most transparent manner. The installer of AMD Software Adrenalin presents the option to prevent its data-collection tool from being enabled at the completion of driver installation, regardless of whether you’ve chosen the “typical,” “driver only,” or “custom” install options. There’s an entire page of the installer dedicated to this, you see a large checkbox about data-collection that’s checked by default, but which you can uncheck, and complete installation.
How bout just don’t install privacy-invading data collection services alongside a fucking device driver at all.
They provide relevant system information for issues which some people are willing to provide. Why not let them?
Crash reports are one thing, but web browsing data and enumerating devices on your local network go well beyond that objective
From https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/topics/idsa-cip.html
Other devices in your computing environment
The categories of websites you visit, but not the URL itself, Includes universal plug and play devices and devices that broadcast
information to your computer on a local area network: for example, smart TV model and vendor information, and video streaming devices.
The categories of websites you visit, but not the URL itself, The information collected includes categorized web browsing history that shows how long and how often you visited specific categories of sites (i.e. social media, personal finance, or news). All site visits are classified into one of 30 categories. We do not collect URLs, web pages titles, or user-specific content without explicit permission from you.
How do you think AMD fixes “bad drivers” that some people complain about.
I know. I don’t disagree. I’m just tired of everything being desperate to collect invasive amounts of information about me.
They collect:
The categories of websites you visit, but not the URL itself
The information collected includes categorized web browsing history that shows how long and how often you visited specific categories of sites (i.e. social media, personal finance, or news). All site visits are classified into one of 30 categories. We do not collect URLs, web pages titles, or user-specific content without explicit permission from you.
Software usage: for example, frequency and duration of application usage such as Intel® Driver & Support Assistant, but not the application content itself such as specific actions or keyboard input.
Feature usage: for example, how much RAM you usually use or your laptop’s average battery life.
Other devices in your computing environment
Includes universal plug and play devices and devices that broadcast information to your computer on a local area network: for example, smart TV model and vendor information, and video streaming devices.
(the emphasis is mine, as is the minor reordering to not hide the browsing behaviour stuff at the bottom)
Yeah that’ll be a no from me there, bud.
Thank you to AMD for still requiring neither an account nor collecting data. Crash reports don’t count.
The Windows driver. If you’re using Windows, you’ve already declared that you’re okay with this kind of thing. This whole thread is people pissed about dress code violations at an orgy.
I still haven’t signed up my local windows account Into my Microsoft account, despite the nagging. I’ve opted out of everything I can and I have a encrypted, filtered dns to block tracking and ads system wide.
Just because some people use windows doesn’t mean they are ok with being tracked everywhere.
Unfortunately gaming is still just mostly easier on windows though Linux is making gains.
Imagine being that stockholmed.
Why not just play games that work in Linux, on Linux?
Sometimes you want to play a specific game.
For me, it’s QuickBooks that requires windows. I use Linux everywhere except on the bookkeeping machines for my business.
I care about what’s being tracked on those machines for sure.
I’m not a windows fan. Far from it.
If you want to accuse me of being Stockholmed at least get the ecosystem correct. I’m stockholmed by apple thank you very much 😂
I disable telemetry, block telemetry, ads and trackers at a dns level; which I do no matter what OS I use and don’t worry about which games are supported on my system.
I have a local account on windows and I use that computer for nothing but gaming.
I tried Linux (Mint). It doesn’t even have colorblind modes. It threw weird problems into simple tasks. “Help” forums were full of threads condescending and trying to trick newbies into deleting the OS instead of, you know, helping. I hated the centralized launcher system compared to regular old .exe’s that you can download from websites that have much better info about what you’re downloading.
Also gaming was too much a mess. But that was very far from the only problem with Linux.
I do a hell of a lot of tinkering to make windows something approaching private, but it was nothing in comparison to the amount of unpredictable tinkering and extra time Linux demanded for my use cases. Ostensibly perfect privacy is just not worth it at all to me. I’ve got shit to do.
Yeah, I mean, I’m not telling anyone what they should do. If gaming is more important to you than privacy, game away, and don’t let anyone make you feel bad about it. Personally, it’s an easy call for me, mostly because so many games are playable now. There’s a few than I can’t run on Linux, and that’s fine, I just don’t play those. If no games ever worked… maybe that’s a harder call.
You’re right that this propably doesn’t make much of a difference to the average windows user, but this is a step towards normalizing data collection in broader areas of computing and I think that it’s good to keep up to date with stuff like this and where appropriate call it out (although it propably doesn’t make a huge difference to complain about it on lemmy to be honest)
