Why isn’t anyone talking about how much this link is exaggerating all of it’s points? Did anyone read it? Disclaimer: I use steam and I take the good with the bad.

It collects your address, CC info, name etc – It’s an online store. You give it this info to purchase things. It’s quite clear why this is happening. Don’t like it? Don’t shop online. Actually, don’t use a credit/debit card at all because they are certainly recording your spending habits and selling that data.

t was proven that Steam’s VAC system records your internet history and uploads it to an official Valve server – This claim is from a Reddit thread. These redditors reverse engineered some VAC stuff (anticheat for some games like Counterstrike) and found that Steam was (and may no longer be) hashing visited URLS. These hashes were checked locally (within the software, not over the internet) against a list of known hashes for URLS for cheat software. If positive, these hashes were sent over the internet to valve, and could be used for evidence to ban cheaters. This is bad! It is recording user’s internet habits without their knowledge or consent. HOWEVER, it is a total exaggeration to claim Valve is just recording all your internet history and sending it to a server somewhere. Could they do it? This is a risk for closed-sourced software but this isn’t what was happening.

Steam records and publicly broadcasts your program usage habits – Steam does track your program use habits and this is bad! Every console does this now, though, unless you decide to not connect it to the internet. But this site also claims it does it publicly and this is an exaggeration: You are anonymous on steam to the “public” unless you de-anonymize yourself, and you can turn off your “public” broadcast of game play in the settings. The author seems to think steam is a social media network: It only is if you use it that way. It doesn’t recommend friends to you or send you news articles or whatever.

Steam attempts to collect your telephone number – Account theft is a problem on steam. The phone number thing is a way they can implement two-factor for people allergic to learning how to secure their accounts (some people on steam are also children, I must point out). This makes their platform harder for scammers to use. I use their phone app for two-factor authentication, I don’t know if they accept other 3rd party authenticators.

Steam requires an internet connection etc It’s an online storefront program??? You knew what you were getting into when you downloaded it. I don’t like how it needs to be constantly connected, this is bad, true.

Steam is self-updating software – It’s DRM yes, true. It’s annoying, sure.

Yes, I totally get it, I could live in the woods, just use cash to purchase everything and only play unpatched games on offline consoles I don’t connect to the internet. Don’t all AAA games come with some form of DRM these days? Does the person who wrote this article also avoid streaming services and digital cable because it also records your entertainment habits? Do you, @[email protected]? Are you addicted to streaming services and debit cards?

Anyway, this is a ridiculous burden for the consumer to avoid all this. That’s my point. If you’d like this to change, it needs legislation to restrict what corporations do with our data, not SCARY CAPS LOCK IN RED TEXT.