STEAM spies?

profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
edited September 2003 in Gaming
Found this at another website:
Steam gets tricky

» posted on 09-15-2003 @ 2:22 AM by [ siN ]


For those of you metalheads who are also online gamers, it has come to the attention of the gaming community that Steam by VALVe software, the program that is used for the mod Counterstrike, has been (and still is) gathering huge amounts of information off of personal computers that have Steam installed.

To quote:

"1) Browse to steam dir
2) Search for gcache.gcf
3) Open the 400+ meg file in a hex editor
4) Search for 'kazaa' and 'mp3'
----
5) Ponder
6) Curse and uninstall steam"

The question is why is Steam looking at Kazaa user names, mp3 contents, HTM records, and more? Those suspect of these activities are pointing fingers that these actions might somehow be linked to the RIAA and it's attempt to browse through users files and folders in a vain attempt to see what people are downloading. Just a heads up.
Everybody seems to have an angle...:rolleyes2

Comments

  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited September 2003
    I believe this was already answered earlier, what's being seen in the hex editor is merely the leftover bytes from whatever was previously on the physical sectors the cache file is now on. Steam only initializes the space and does not write over it. As we all know, the recycle operation in windows generally only removes the files from the MFT or FAT Table and does not over-write them. Its a whole lot of conspiracy over a well documented phenomenon.

    Steam does suck, but being spyware isn't as yet one of them.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited September 2003
    OK - So first you Defrag your HD, use Eraser ( download here) to wipe empty HD space, then install Steam.

    Then you can verify what it's really doing....
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