Origin owns you (And your IP address)

Final8y said:
Steam does not automatically collect info for the survey, you have to browse Help, System Information then it will scan & collect info & then you may choose compare with others.
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No. But Steam constantly monitors your processes in order to work out which games you have open and your community statistics (time played).

Origin isn't an always on thing. It's "periodically" collected.
 
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orderoftheflame said:
No. But Steam constantly monitors your processes in order to work out which games you have open and your community statistics (time played).

Origin isn't an always on thing. It's "periodically" collected.
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Well of course because its needed for the social part of it & there is no other way of providing it without doing so & people are fully aware of that.
I have Xfire as well & i know full well that its doing the same as steam.
 
orderoftheflame said:
No. But Steam constantly monitors your processes in order to work out which games you have open and your community statistics (time played).

Origin isn't an always on thing. It's "periodically" collected.
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Tend to agree with the "couldn't care less" sentiment on here but I'm pretty sure Steam doesn't monitor your active processes. Tracking when you launch a game through Steam is a completely different affair to actually monitoring background processes (and would be a really dumb approach).
 
Don't suppose they'd offer to send a helpful email to people who have malicious processes running on their PC like spyware, keyloggers, Origin etc...? :D
 
Frenzy said:
I wouldnt be surprised if they started selling the information they collect to be honest!
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better than giving it away like valve..

make a brand new email account on google or somewhere , use it to make a steam acount , never use steam or that email address ever again.

i bet you get spam within a month ;)

Well of course because its needed for the social part of it & there is no other way of providing it without doing so & people are fully aware of that.
I have Xfire as well & i know full well that its doing the same as steam.
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it doesnt need to send the data back to valve of what processes you have running though so they can tell the world so many steam users have torrent clients etc...
 
arknor said:
better than giving it away like valve..

make a brand new email account on google or somewhere , use it to make a steam acount , never use steam or that email address ever again.

i bet you get spam within a month ;)

it doesnt need to send the data back to valve of what processes you have running though so they can tell the world so many steam users have torrent clients etc...
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It does not send in what processes are running.

When you tell it to collect system info, it will look & collect hardware info & installed software from the registry so yeah it will see if people have a torrent client installed.
 
Basicly they want a backdoor key to a lot of personal information that has nothing to do with games so they can sell the data to "improve our experience".

As long as i don't get constant phone calls claiming my pc has a virus, i could probably live with it.
 
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Except some mod sites use torrents sites to distribute things. They also aren't exclusive to games and downloading the latest episode of True Blood when its shown in the US isn't exactly the same thing. It is possible to have a torrent program and not be a video game pirate and Valve of all people would be aware of that.

As others have said... I don't like the sound of 'whenever we want'. If it asks for permission fine but if it doesn't?
 
FrenchTart said:
Tend to agree with the "couldn't care less" sentiment on here but I'm pretty sure Steam doesn't monitor your active processes. Tracking when you launch a game through Steam is a completely different affair to actually monitoring background processes (and would be a really dumb approach).
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It monitors the processes to check that the one that a game is still running after launch. When the game is closed, it's process ends and Steam can no longer find it, it removes your "now playing" status and stops recording your playtime.

There's nothing within the games or the overlay that communicates with the client about whether or not a game is being played. Hence why if a game crashes, but it's process fails to end in the background, Steam will still claim that you are playing it. :)

It's not doing scanning the exact contents of your memory or anything like that, but neither is Origin. It's just checking that they're still there. :p
 
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For all of you who download free programs. For example free video encoders. Do you read the terms and conditions? im 100% sure they do worse than origin. I cant give examples...because i just click accept :\

 
You know how much I hate the likes of Steam and Origin with their centralised software so I don't see the need to write a massive rant. Just another reason for standalone games tbh.
 
orderoftheflame said:
It monitors the processes to check that the one that a game is still running after launch. When the game is closed, it's process ends and Steam can no longer find it, it removes your "now playing" status and stops recording your playtime.

There's nothing within the games or the overlay that communicates with the client about whether or not a game is being played. Hence why if a game crashes, but it's process fails to end in the background, Steam will still claim that you are playing it. :)

It's not doing scanning the exact contents of your memory or anything like that, but neither is Origin. It's just checking that they're still there. :p
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Indeed. Monitoring the process that is has itself launched is a far cry from what the wording of your other post suggested, though. That was the point I was trying to make.
 
Origin can see your penis and watches you Poo. All streamed live to the EA bunker. STREAMED LIVE11111
 
FrenchTart said:
Indeed. Monitoring the process that is has itself launched is a far cry from what the wording of your other post suggested, though. That was the point I was trying to make.
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Afaik... Steam has no idea which PID belongs to the executable it's just launched for all applications (particularly games that launch a launcher, that launch a game). It can't just pluck it out of thin air as one specific one, it's got to look for it.

Regardless of how you look at it, it's still poking through all the processes running in order to find the ones it needs. It's not dredging through them collecting personal information about what you're doing with them, but it will be more than aware of how long they've been running, what they are etc. All this is almost certainly thrown away, but it's still doing it.

I think people are getting overly worried about the wording of the T&C that says "we'll maybe do this", when a lot of programs they'll already have installed do the exact same things and worse without them even realising it.
 
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