Nvidia adds Telemetry to their GPU drivers

[Rehok]

https://www.overclock3d.net/news/sof..._gpu_drivers/1


As the title says. Seems nvidia taking a book out of microsoft? Seems strange they randomly added it and never said anything.

[Alantor]

It does not seem worrisome to me, although some transparency would be nice.

[Unholyground]

It does not seem worrisome to me, although some transparency would be nice.

Honestly who cares? Every online app or game already does this.

[Vash The Stampede]

Honestly who cares? Every online app or game already does this.

Because these are drivers and should be nothing more. The ability to send data back to Nvidia wouldn't be such a problem if Nvidia has given you an option to opt in or out of this. I wouldn't mind it if they used the info exclusively for fixing driver bugs and performance and only for that reason. But since data is big business and through Nvidia drivers you have to wonder what untold amount of info Nvidia could gather from someone?

[Unholyground]

Because these are drivers and should be nothing more. The ability to send data back to Nvidia wouldn't be such a problem if Nvidia has given you an option to opt in or out of this. I wouldn't mind it if they used the info exclusively for fixing driver bugs and performance and only for that reason. But since data is big business and through Nvidia drivers you have to wonder what untold amount of info Nvidia could gather from someone?

I have a feeling it is for the nvidia streaming technology.

[Vash The Stampede]

I have a feeling it is for the nvidia streaming technology.

I have a feeling it's for statistics. Like what settings users run their games at, or what games they run, as well as what applications are used to access the GPU. Seems harmless at first, until you realize that Nvidia can use this info to influence users behavior. We're at the point where games have graphic settings that get to a point where it's beyond reason. Like you will need a snapshot of the game before you can see the difference between high and ultra settings. I don't even go by those settings, I like to use custom settings. I like to use little or no AA in my games because it puts a massive hit on performance that I don't think is worth it. Lots of games like to auto detect my hardware and throw me on medium, but by turning off AA or lowest AA I can have high textures and etc.

My fear is that with this data, Nvidia may influence developers to have game settings that only have Low/Medium/High/Ultra and nothing else. Nvidia only makes money through hardware sales and they want to incentivize you to buy newer and better cards.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

My fear is that with this data, Nvidia may influence developers to have game settings that only have Low/Medium/High/Ultra and nothing else. Nvidia only makes money through hardware sales and they want to incentivize you to buy newer and better cards.

If they really wanted to do that then there would only be high and ultra settings which are purposely gated behind a hardware wall. Well, more on purpose than just shitty optimization.

[Remilia]

Someone posted for an older version that was linked to GFE and not the driver.
http://www.canardpc.com/download/cpc...9.getsugar.log

Disclaimer: CanardPC Hardware is a printed magazine thus I do not have any link to an online article for now. They have already published online some popular articles in the past but it is still very uncommon and, if it happens for this one, it will be in French. I will add a scan of the article if they authorize me to do so (usually they don't mind if it is on a non-French website).


Anyway here is the best summary I could make in English:


When installing the latest driver (368.25), the process immediately send the current driver version and the PCI ID of your graphic card at gfswl.geforce.com using HTTP without encryption.


After transmitting some miscellaneous information like ID and size of your monitor to Adobe and a Google Analytics' tracker Nvidia will send information regarding your hardware such as CPU and SSD model reference to telemetry.nvidia.com.


Now if you agree to install GeForce Experience, which is the default option, a detailed description of your hardware is sent a few minutes later to gfe.nvidia.com/getsugar. This description includes: brand and model of your motherboard, serial number, BIOS version, information regarding USB drives currently plugged, RAM capacity, GPU frequency, etc.


But wait, there is more! GeForce Experience will communicate the software you use (not only games), when you use it, for how long and, if it is a game, a framerate history, current settings and various statistical data.


It will also record where you click on the various utilities provided and how long you stay on each page. Almost 100Ko of information, along with Google trackers, are sent to Nvidia.


A decrypted log intercepted from our test setup is available here.


This is clearly a breach of your privacy. Nvidia's privacy policy does not mention these activities in the French version, only in the English one.


Regarding AMD (Crimson 16.5.3), some basic information are sent during driver installation, just like Nvidia, but we detected nothing more afterwards even when launching various applications or games.


This short article is part of a 15-pages dossier regarding privacy. There is one page on Steam, Origin, Battle.Net and GoG if anyone is interested (spoiler: besides GoG they use a lot of third-party cookies/trackers).


Now regarding the magazine's reputation, they are not anti-Nvidia or pro-AMD. In the same issue of the magazine they blame various websites and AMD for what happened at Computex 2016 and their lack of ethics (here is one of their many tweets regarding this event). They have also advised their readers to chose Nvidia's graphic cards over AMD's in the mid/high-end segment for a while now.

[Serpha]

This must get leftists really wet.

[Vash The Stampede]

This must get leftists really wet.

But I'm right handed and already wet.

[Serpha]

And all this after I switched to nvidia...maybe linux is safe...i hope.

[Cows For Life]

I'm glad another company is happy to quietly help themselves to some more dataz.

What anyone does on their own computer is none of Nvidia's business.

[Vash The Stampede]

And all this after I switched to nvidia...maybe linux is safe...i hope.

Linux would be safer if you don't use Nvidia's drivers and instead use Neavou drivers which comes with every Linux distro. The problem is that Neavou is shit. AMD on the other hand has dropped their drivers in favor of putting it in Mesa. Which means you can download Ubuntu 16.10 and don't need to do anything. AMD has a special addition to the drivers, but otherwise not needed. Of course AMD's open source drivers are very behind compared to Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Deus Ex is now ported to Linux and runs like arse on AMD.

If Nvidia doesn't do Telemetry on their drivers for Linux, that's because there's not enough Linux Nvidia users to make it worth it.

[Afrospinach]

I'm glad another company is happy to quietly help themselves to some more dataz.

What anyone does on their own computer is none of Nvidia's business.

Oh buddy we are loooooooong past that line.