Can't be circumvented unless you stop using Steam VAC enabled games entirely.

No, DNS entries stay stored in your OS for around a day (varies). If you're running a VAC-enabled game during that day, it'll upload all the entries (hashed though) to Valve's servers to be examined.

If it's EA, I think a few notable YouTube celebrities would've made videos and petitions will be up at that very moment itself.

A few days later you would have drama/popcorn time like how it is with Totalbiscuit and his ever growing dev "friends".

VAC is only activated when you play a VAC-enabled game.

You can see the list of games here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Anti-Cheat

This post has been edited by pikachu01: Feb 17 2014, 11:02 PM

They still read your DNS cache ... There's nothing different with what was discovered, only now Valve is making an official statement about it.

It's ok if if your DNS is only locally read by antivirus or any kind of processes. The problem is when it phones home to be checked by actual people. I can't deny that if it's EA doing this, I don't think a lot of people will be singing the same tune here.

Umm, I don't agree to what Google is doing as well, hence I opt out of it's browsing history module as well as block most of the obtrusive analytics. You can't opt out of Valve's unless you stop playing VAC enabled games.

No, antivirus modules are not phoning home user data. If it does that, you'll already see a lot of people going batshit against it. If I remember correctly, there was one free antivirus doing that. In the end someone found out and a lot of people went batshit crazy against it. The antivirus company had to apologize for it and till now their trustworthiness went down the drain.

Edit: If I'm not mistaken, it was Panda.

This post has been edited by pikachu01: Feb 18 2014, 10:18 AM

Sigh, no need to get personal about this. It's not anything against you or anyone else out there. I'm just here to chip in my views so that it doesn't muddled over by Valve fanboys (note I'm also a Valve fanboy so it's not a derogatory term). If you want to make it personal, I have nothing against that, but please look at it from another perspective. I'm sure that there are quite a number of people who will agree or disagree with what I'm saying, but don't get your personal feelings up into the discussion. I'm just trying to be a devil's advocate here.

It can be disabled (the same with Google as well). The keyword is personally identifiable information. It doesn't matter if what I'm sending is anonymous/ non-identifiable. What matters here is privacy, not the type of information that was sent.

And do note that I'm not playing any VAC enabled games at all. Personally, it doesn't concern me at all. But I'm not talking in a personal level here (and I expect you not to as well). I'm talking about how ethical a company can be from their actions. However, there is a limit on privacy violations here that some people will be uncomfortable at when they know this.

This post has been edited by pikachu01: Feb 18 2014, 10:24 AM

Yeah, and what happened to the reputable companies that did it decades ago? They're now fallen to obscurity, or have had some flak that people distrust them or disable any modules that has privacy concerns. The point is, it's bad no matter who is doing it. The only difference is how the companies involved handled it post-crisis.

This post has been edited by pikachu01: Feb 18 2014, 03:37 PM

Facebook isn't a good example here. It's very nature involves private information presented to the public for consumption. If you are already presenting your photos to your friends (and even non friends can access it just by copying the exact address), how can you stop Facebook itself from not violating your privacy here? The only thing Facebook doesn't do is to snoop your Windows OS looking for unuploaded pictures or to snoop on your browsing history of other websites to learn things they shouldn't. And yes, there are already many petitions/outcry against Facebook for their privacy issues when tracking actions people do in Facebook.

However, whatever you do in Facebook is fair game to Facebook as it's in their TOS already and most that read it already know what they're in for.

If you say on that level, privacy is a concern. Then every website that accepts email address as login would be violating your privacy as any network admin will be able to see. Remember, it's not a privacy violation if you willingly gave information that they are asking for. It's a privacy violation if they are either using it for other purposes or doing something underhanded to fish information that you're not giving them.

As for the article in question, it doesn't mention antivirus companies phoning home/snooping on users/invading their privacy by uploading personally identifiable information.

70% off.

It's in my wishlist

Buy it for the DRM free and music offer. You can't go wrong with them.

Your average will stick even if it increases/decreases. AFAIK I think you can BTA anytime till 2 weeks or so after the Humble Bundle ends.

Yes.

No. The BTA you need to pay always stays static. This means that, if you bought $1 when the BTA is $10, then even if the current BTA is $1.50, you're better off buying a whole new bundle rather than BTA-ing your older bundle.

Context: http://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments...camelee/cfiie43

This post has been edited by pikachu01: Feb 19 2014, 03:03 PM

The BTA is getting higher. My guess is that it'll get higher. If you want to BTA right now, it's good to do that.

Need to wait till the last 6 hours before giving up.