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Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

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Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#131

Post by landemva »

arcticbull wrote: post #129
landemva wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An airline put me in precheck a few years ago due to FF status. Now it requires an application to government and fingerprint. And global entry (immigration) wants an eyeball scan. Biometric collection to avoid a TSA massage is not privacy.

It basically always required all those things. For a brief period they were doing a trial with frequent fliers, but it was always the exception and never the norm. But uh, make no mistake, they were only putting you into Pre because they had all the data you are being asked to provide already. The application is like your tax returns - the goal is to see if you provide what they already know, not to surprise them wit…

That seems reasonable using existing data, but why a finger print?

And I thought the checkpoints were to prevent physical contraband on planes. TSA facial recognition, while also allowing old people and precheck to wear shoes, doesn't stop that.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#132

Post by GrinningFool »

Espionage724 wrote: post #97
soraminazuki wrote: post #68

All the more reason to avoid Windows I guess. MS is busy crippling the user experience in exchange for short-term profits and now this. I'm glad Linux has good driver support and maintainers who would say no to BS like this.

Lmao. Anyone who cares about this likely isn't using Windows to begin with, and has already fallen into some Parabola Trisquel rabbit hole. Microsoft isn't crippling their user experience considering that doesn't benefit them; it's bad-actors cultivating that idea to push people on less-secure platforms, and/or naive Arch Linux first-time installer bros that want to push the idea of a worst desktop experience everywh…

> or leak data that I share with them in some manner

Like when their video drivers overstep their bounds and gather information on what applications are run and what websites are visited?

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#133

Post by landemva »

smoldesu wrote: post #121
xnx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The general population isn't going to care about "privacy" in the abstract, Totally agree. It's better to frame it in terms of "Nvidia tracks every porn site you visit and what you do there" or "company x knows everything you buy online and sells it to anyone who can pay".

Well, be careful how you word it. At the core of the problem, nobody has control over their devices. If you beat a drum complaining about Nvidia having DMA access then you have to go after Apple and Microsoft next, which would probably lead to most people getting confused. If they found out about PRISM or XKeyscore, they would probably feel hopeless and give up. Treating privacy in the abstract is how you help people…

> how you help people meaningfully resist it.

Poison the data wells to such an extent that data becomes unuseful. For hardware drivers, submitting plausible or random info may be a good start. For handset apps which send geolocation, developer mode which spoofs a city circle tour may be a good start.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#134

Post by Retric »

magicalist wrote: post #96
Retric wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope they are looking well pat the top 500, top 5,000 or 50,000 perhaps but then the bottom of larger lists also vary more. I think we can all agree the most likely explanation isn’t so flattering here, but it’s possible they really are trying to model the real world accurately in their test environment.

> I would hope they are looking well pat the top 500, top 5,000 or 50,000 perhaps but then the bottom of larger lists also vary more. How are they going to do that if they only know the website category? Conveniently useful for marketing, though.

I was considering the reverse. How well can they assign a category for a site your visiting if they are only have mapping for the top 500 websites to those 30 categories? Anything they don’t have a mapping for is presumably just ‘other’ which isn’t useful.

ARC gammers will likely be spending a lot of time on game specific message boards for example, but individually few of those websites are going to rank high on global top 500 lists.

Having such wide categories seems useless, but it might help justify fixing bugs on say pornographic websites if a large percentage of users are having issues. Not the kind of conversation you want to have with your boss, but it’s exactly the kind of problem that could harm sales without anyone noticing.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#135

Post by kube-system »

landemva wrote: post #131
arcticbull wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It basically always required all those things. For a brief period they were doing a trial with frequent fliers, but it was always the exception and never the norm. But uh, make no mistake, they were only putting you into Pre because they had all the data you are being asked to provide already. The application is like your tax returns - the goal is to see if you provide what they already know, not to surprise them wit…

That seems reasonable using existing data, but why a finger print? And I thought the checkpoints were to prevent physical contraband on planes. TSA facial recognition, while also allowing old people and precheck to wear shoes, doesn't stop that.

Because dactyloscopy has been mature for a long time.

The purpose of trusted-traveler programs isn't to screen for contraband, it is to establish an elevated level of trust.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#136

Post by nine_k »

Espionage724 wrote: post #98
nine_k wrote: post #44

The problem is that the driver is closed-source. Even if the driver sent data in a format which is easily inspectable by user, and with only benign-looking data, it would be really hard to prove that something nefarious and underhanded is not being sent instead under that guise.

How is that a problem? Nobody is reviewing open-source driver code aside from the people actually working on improving it. Also lmao; do you really believe Intel is going to sabotage their own platform? If you're doing something so "nefarious and underhanded" on your computer for that to be a concern, you likely have no reason to be concerned since you should be using a platform and OS that makes this a non-issue. On…

Not only bad actors would be concerned. There is a rather small but vocal minority that values privacy extremely high. They make noise, even when a threat of identification, or of siphoning out any consequential information, is extremely low.

To avoid sabotaging their own platform, Intel should remember about that, and give no food for bad PR.

As they write in employment agreements, you should avoid any real conflicts of interests, and also any appearance of conflicts of interests, because if it gets reported in media, but you end up completely clean and conflict-free, the hard-to-repair damage to public perception already would have been done.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#137

Post by gunapologist99 »

fsflover wrote: post #88
jwells89 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desktop software has been a consistent and egregious offender when it comes to overstepping bounds for a long, long time… especially big corporate desktop software (hi Adobe). It’s honestly kind of shocking that all desktop OSes didn’t gain something like mobile permissions over a decade ago. macOS has some as do a few configurations of Linux, and yeah Windows is happy to hand over not only your farm but also a few a…

> It’s honestly kind of shocking that all desktop OSes didn’t gain something like mobile permissions over a decade ago. Consider Qubes OS if you need to isolate the apps on desktop. I'm a happy daily driving user.

I wish the advances in Qubes would eventually make it out of Qubes and be available in other distros.

Re: Intel's GPU Drivers Now Collect Telemetry, Including 'How You Use Your Computer'

#140

Post by shrimp_emoji »

JohnFen wrote: post #105
Espionage724 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lmao. Anyone who cares about this likely isn't using Windows to begin with, and has already fallen into some Parabola Trisquel rabbit hole. Microsoft isn't crippling their user experience considering that doesn't benefit them; it's bad-actors cultivating that idea to push people on less-secure platforms, and/or naive Arch Linux first-time installer bros that want to push the idea of a worst desktop experience everywh…

> Microsoft isn't crippling their user experience considering that doesn't benefit them I have to use Windows at work, and have done so for decades. From where I sit, Microsoft is absolutely crippling the user experience. Every release after Win 7 has been a degradation in that.

Compare KDE's Dolphin with Windows's Explorer (tabs, split view, dark theme a decade ago, file size/mod date under filename...)

Ten Dutch guys can make for free a better piece of software than a multi-billion dollar corporation can because better UX isn't profitable when you've already captured 99% of the market. :p

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