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NVIDIA Adds Telemetry to Latest Drivers; Here's How to Disable It

Nasher said:
New geforce cards are literally going up in smoke due to crap VRMs, and now their bloatware drivers spy on you as well :/

The list of blocked, known ad hosts in my hosts file is already huge.
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That's not all thats off, drivers in certain titles can be pap too now having to roll back for stability(personally with BF1) their DX12 performance is almost non exisistant too.

Nv needs to up their game imo as their getting carried away on complacency, I mean there's hardly any investment in GW's titles now because they have a hardware capable performance lead.

Considering AMD has nothing at the top end, they are still gaining market share back.
 
I've checked several of the links posted in the thread, and some refer to the drivers reporting back home, some refer to Gaming Experience only doing it. Is it the drivers themselves that contain the telemetry, or is it just the Gaming Experience software? I'm just wondering if it's simply a case of unticking the GE software during install and you're fine, or if just installing the bare drivers will also have the same issue.

Before any members call foul, my main rig does run AMD cards, but my other PCs (such as my LAN ones) run a mix of AMD and Nvidia cards - with an HTPC, a tablet and a laptop even running Intel graphics so I have an interest in every camp! :D
 
DarrenM343 said:
Me, I don't care about this stuff personally. It's just how things are now. If you use facebook I'm sure you'll see adverts popping up from other sites you've visited recently, amazon ads appear if you're viewed something recently, car manufacturers, shed suppliers......even shed suppliers can use these new tracking ads.

I just buy stuff when I need it.

Also seems to me that at least Nvidia are informing you. When I look at sheds I don't expect to find their advert following me around (they never told me!) but now if I see Nvidia adverts on facebook I know why and they've at least explained it.

As for phone numbers, not received any calls yet.

Big data!
Think this stuff is happening anyway but not all companies tell you about it.
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Use Facebook Purity to get rid of all ads, requests etc...
 
The big issue with companies doing this kind of thing is people other than them hijacking the data (excluding the ones they sell it to themselves!), or the processes being used as a backdoor for malware etc. Nvidia (and others) are profiting at your expense and they don't care if it punches a security hole in your system as it's trying to connect to their servers.

Thing is, the people Nvidia are messing about know their IT. Unlike the average Facebook user who can easily have the wool pulled over their eyes. They are going to find out what's going on and won't put up with it.
 
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Gee said:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/industry/2672-geforce-experience-data-transfer-analysis
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That makes the assumption that you browse the web with baseline Internet Explorer or something though, allowing every page to track you across the entire internet via scripts and cookies. I use Firefox with uBlock Origin, uMatrix and Self-Destructing Cookies (as well as several other more specific privacy-enhancing addons), plus a VPN. This has been the case for me for a decade or more. I don't agree that browsing the web is more of an invasion of privacy either, and certainly it's much easier to circumvent. These companies tracking you there would kill to have a program constantly running and monitoring you on your local machine. That is quite literally the dream for every company looking to harvest information.

Of course, I'm sure most people just don't care (several in here have already stated as much), and that's fine. It's your choice.

Confused Stu said:
I've checked several of the links posted in the thread, and some refer to the drivers reporting back home, some refer to Gaming Experience only doing it. Is it the drivers themselves that contain the telemetry, or is it just the Gaming Experience software? I'm just wondering if it's simply a case of unticking the GE software during install and you're fine, or if just installing the bare drivers will also have the same issue.
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The telemetry software is installed even if you uncheck everything but the driver in the installer. I ran DDU just yesterday and did a clean install, with no GFE as usual. Still there:

botnetspkeu.png
Fortunately my firewall software alerts me to things like this right away anyway, so it didn't have a chance of dialling out. Most people are only going to be using the baseline Windows firewall though, which only stops inbound connections by default, not outbound ones.
 
Aretak said:
The telemetry software is installed even if you uncheck everything but the driver in the installer. I ran DDU just yesterday and did a clean install, with no GFE as usual. Still there:
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Thanks for clearing that up, mate. Appreciated. :)

In that case, put me in the "unimpressed" camp. I expect with enough fuss (e.g. tech news sites picking up on it) Nvidia will remove this from the next driver and claim it was a test/mistake it was released. If it's still in there after the next driver release, I will be very surprised, and very disappointed in Nvidia's attitude to its customers.
 
Confused Stu said:
In that case, put me in the "unimpressed" camp. I expect with enough fuss (e.g. tech news sites picking up on it) Nvidia will remove this from the next driver hide it in the main driver and claim it was a test/mistake it was released. If it's still in there after the next driver release, I will be very surprised, and very disappointed in Nvidia's attitude to its customers.
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Fixed.
 
Gee said:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/industry/2672-geforce-experience-data-transfer-analysis
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The piece contradicts itself and states we'll need to take Nv's word for it...

The privacy policy indicates that nVidia can share data between social networks for ad placement via tracking cookies. This is fairly standard, and is done by most websites on the internet
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Not surprised at the authors balls of steel as he's quick to pick up the cheque-regardless the vendor on these types of 'nothing wrong' spreads but not surprised at those in here that can't make the succinct distinction or try and cloud the issue between running free software using ad based revenue and paying hundreds of quids on hardware to have ad based revenue imposed on you either.
 
tommybhoy said:
The piece contradicts itself and states we'll need to take Nv's word for it...



Not surprised at the authors balls of steel as he's quick to pick up the cheque-regardless the vendor on these types of 'nothing wrong' spreads but not surprised at those in here that can't make the succinct distinction or try and cloud the issue between running free software using ad based revenue and paying hundreds of quids on hardware to have ad based revenue imposed on you either.
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Most collect/track anonymous statistics. Nvidia are after actual personal data, which is not acceptable when they hide it inside drivers which everyone needs to install :/

The courts have already slapped companies down for stuff like this. I'm hoping someone brings it to light.
 
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Gee said:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/industry/2672-geforce-experience-data-transfer-analysis
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See this is such BS, we CHOOSE to use a service like Amazon. I recognise that in placing an order for anything from a Star Trek DVD to a double ended dong, that I have to share that particular information from the retailer I'm buying from.

I wouldn't choose for a driver required for hardware I've paid a premium for to then decide to record that information also.

When I buy from Amazon, Amazon knows what I bought, not OCUK, not google, not pornhub. When someone has processes running on my computer that monitors every site I visit, every page I visit, every search I make and does it surreptitiously that is something entirely different.

This mentality of, you choose to share data with A, thus B accessing that same data is obviously fine is insane and completely stupid. Choosing to share information with one individual or company doesn't automatically mean I'm fine with everyone having the same let alone much more data.

My bank and I share details of my account, and I share those details with people I deem necessary, that doesn't mean I want to nor approve of sharing that data with anyone. ALso again I was given the option of upgrading to Windows 10 and the toss up was, £10 for a new OS that has a lot of tracking, but basically all of the tracking has official options to turn as much of it off as possible and in a lot of situations while I don't agree with it, I understand that part of the tracking and usage is in an attempt to offer more personalised service from the OS. Nvidia isn't taking personal or extra data to improve your gaming experience but purely to profit from you. Again everyone knew upfront what Windows 10 was, no one who bought a 1080 or a Titan X was told hey, paying a huge premium for these cards, you'll allow us to track all your data. If it wasn't a feature and wasn't advertised as part of their service they shouldn't be doing it.

Adding features post launch that benefit gamers is one thing, adding something that solely benefits Nvidia and provides a potential risk to the user with zero benefit to the user is awful behaviour. If they want to sell tracking your every move as a feature and advertise it with the next gen and only enable it with next gen cards... while I think terrible business practice and worthless to the user... it would be honest about it and people who buy a card AFTER being told Nvidia will do this is fine ethically. Doing this to users who bought a card with absolutely no indication Nvidia would do this is completely unethical.
 
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Was about to say that Intel already do all of this anyways as well as facebook as well as may other sites, services, products that link to the internet. Nvidia are really playing catchup on this.

If it is ethical or not I am not going to get involved in but to suggest that suddenly Nvidia are evil because they do this and we already use/do stuff that also does this really does say a lot about how people perceive the issue differently.
 
Curlyriff said:
Was about to say that Intel already do all of this anyways as well as facebook as well as may other sites, services, products that link to the internet. Nvidia are really playing catchup on this.

If it is ethical or not I am not going to get involved in but to suggest that suddenly Nvidia are evil because they do this and we already use/do stuff that also does this really does say a lot about how people perceive the issue differently.
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Do we have to go through this again? :confused:

The thread is not about websites and cookies. It is about software installed on your pc gathering personal information.
 
Curlyriff said:
Was about to say that Intel already do all of this anyways as well as facebook as well as may other sites, services, products that link to the internet. Nvidia are really playing catchup on this.

If it is ethical or not I am not going to get involved in but to suggest that suddenly Nvidia are evil because they do this and we already use/do stuff that also does this really does say a lot about how people perceive the issue differently.
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Intel are scummy and have always been scummy. Facebook don't run processes 24/7 on your computer to gather your personal data and there is no requirement to run facebook drivers. Nvidia aren't playing catch up here, this is way beyond what the massive majority of companies are doing.

It is in general hard to know what Intel are collecting directly because their privacy policy covers all their services including websites and various tools. In which case a lot of that data is not particularly relevant, much like Nvidia's policies for collecting data when you go to their website is not the question here.

Intel has a bunch of services running on most computers as will AMD and Nvidia, however most are their to provide a service for the user, not a service purely to provide a service for themselves. Nvidia is installing services which take resources which specifically do nothing at all for the user and are not required for anything you've installed, aren't required for the hardware nor required to help your system in any way.

It's spyware, nothing more or less. Even if Intel is spying on you, at least they aren't dumb enough to install a service which basically tells the user they are being spied on.
 
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