Well I guess its finally GAME OVER. I've loved this game - played since PlanetSide1 Beta. Put up with all the hackers etc. Been there through the PS1 slow death and the PS2 rebirth! But when I logged on tonight and saw the EULA message, and that it was mandatory, for once I decided to read it. And everyone playing this should think long and hard before doing the normal thing of just clicking YEAH WHATEVER I ACCEPT on this one. This EULA is a joke. I think you've just blocked my access to this game with that mandatory EULA button. I read it and thought "So you can scan my RAM and game folders for anything dodgy" - Ok I'm up for that to reduce hackers in the game... But then the bombshell - SERIOUSLY u also want to scan my entire system folders? That's a joke. I'd rather have the occasional hackers! We all know about "Don't collect any personally identifiable info" and how gathering all my account info, my hardware serial numbers and device IDs basically lets you piece it all together anyway. Then a nice motherhood statement - you "value Licensee's privacy and will do the utmost to protect it". SO WHY in the very next line would you then say you "may share the information with its partners and/or affiliates"? SERIOUSLY? So you value our privacy but have made it mandatory that we agree you can give it to ANYONE. Which is it guys? You clearly do value it enough to share/sell it to third parties. I REALLY want to log on, but that EULA and its zero-choice barrier means... well I guess it means I finally have to give up on PlanetSide. I'll check back in a few weeks to see if they've altered the EULA but we all know how likely that is.
Just read through Battleye's own anti-cheat privacy info (pasted below). They are a lot tighter about privacy than this EULA. So Sony appear to have made it broader to allow capture and sharing of data more widely. If it actually looked closer to Battleye's OWN privacy guideance, then I'd be willing to agree to it... Sony - lets see you STATE you wont sell or profit from the data collected in this way. That you will only share it with partners or affiliates who are DIRECTLY involved in provision of the Anti-cheat services. BATTLEYE SOFTWARE As trust is paramount when it comes to anti-cheat, we feel that it is important for us to clarify to all of our users that your privacy is respected and protected by us at all times. There has been a lot of misinformation posted on the internet about BattlEye in recent years and therefore we want to emphasize what exactly we are doing in an unambiguous way without confusing you with typical legal language. While BattlEye needs to have full access to your system’s internals to have the capability to detect all hacks, we do not look at, check, transmit or even sell any of your personal information, data, documents, credit card details, passwords or similar. Our mission is to provide effective anti-cheat protection, not to spy on you. Besides, looking at your personal information does not help us reach the goal of providing a cheat-free environment in any way, so there is absolutely zero point in doing it in addition to it being immoral. Like most other anti-cheat solutions, BattlEye has the theoretical capability to transmit flagged executable code to our servers for further review. This is needed to be able to discover and identify new hacks being used. However, for normal users that do not run suspicious software this should never happen and other than that we do not transmit any of your memory contents to our servers. Furthermore, any data relating to you / your game account is always stored on secure servers. We usually only store data if there is some sort of detection and that includes your IP address, account/in-game name and possibly hardware serial information for identification. This is also mentioned in our EULA that usually comes with the games we support.
HAHAHHAHAAAAAAAA you didn't read it you didn't read it! I did read it, and while it does state a few things you name, it also states that it cannot do anything with the information unless it's directly involved with preventing cheating. It's not allowed to do anything for commercial purposes or for gathering data that doesn't have anything to do with the game. It explicitly says so. But here you are fearmongering. You do realize that every single free application you put on your phone has access to more sensitive information and those EULA's allow them to actually datamine your phone? Edit: Ah you did read on eventually. Edit 2: Daybreak isn't allowed to break the EULA of BattleEye, so even if the EULA of Daybreak isn't complete for some reason I doubt they can just datamine now with it. From the EULA (thanks to FateH): "Licensor values Licensee's privacy and does its utmost to protect it at all times. BattlEye does not report any personally identifiable information or personal data except for any information/data specifically mentioned herein. It did mention that it's allowed to send a ton of information about your PC, but since they promise to do their utmost to protect privacy in their own EULA they can't sell the info or anything, they can only share info with their partners (read: Game developers that have contracts with BattleEye) in pursuit of preventing cheats, nothing more.
If someone wants to look at my ****, I don't care, they might find something really cool and interesting...
Well I agree it does appear to be slightly better than my first reading. And the Battleye's own position does make me feel better about that damn button....
And if BE is penetrated again as it was once in the past? It's a simple fact that if you talk to many security experets they tell you one thing:"If a terrorist/criminal really wants you, and they ahve the resoiurces, they will find a way to get you." Now, that's from the security/police industry side of things, admittedly the military and national agencies tout a different line in order to maintain public trust. Frankly, service like this create potiential bombshells waiting to go off. It's just like the department stores being hacked though. If people used small cash amount disposable cards instead of linking back accounts, these thinsg wouldnt be such a big deal. Still, in the case of BE, it creates a situation where someone would possibly have to buy a whole new computer. For some who dont care, of course they dont. They are ignorant of the society they live in and it's risks, and willingly so. buying a new comp for many i something they do every year anyhow, so no big deal. They think nothing of the next guy, or how it could, even in the short term, be a potitntial threat exposing themselves or someone else to RL privacy invasion.
And you run greater risk of such malware just surfing the internet. I dont know the exact numbers but a large portion of Players unkowingly has their pc's taken over and used for hacking attempts, ddos or simple datamining. Battleeye was hacked 2 years ago, yes, but it hasnt since and the only personal info they seem to store is "this guy on this ip and pc specs is a cheat" theres not a lot of problems unless they rigorously change the Battleeye code and information it gathers
You run a great deal of risk randomly surfing the internet, yes. Also by doing things at random, not maintaining your security or by clicking unknown or blatantly sucpicous links and other things. However saying at one of these factors is only a small part and saying it is ok is simply going "Ok, one more cookie. I wont get fat" and that kind of attitude tends to pile up over time. You simply keep increasing your cookie allowance, your risk to the point you're probably going to encounter peril. That's sort of just making excuses for lax behavior. Let me point out too though that what you said on at least one point is not a matter of opinion but rather fact. They don't simply store IP+ comp specs. They try to target as much data about that machine as they can while apprearing reasonable, saying only scanning/copying files from the game directory and sub directories but in regards to actual computers they try to take the seriel numbers/operating numbers as well. Technically, even if they only submit info back to DB games in regards to who does and doesnt get banned (which is what someone said, I'm not sure if it's true and sounds like this is a deviation from the norm), it could arrise that BE could either justify or enact a global ban on all their accociated games for any poor fellow that bought a second hand component or got a hand me down from a family member just because someons smart Tv that was hooked to their gaming rig or a video card was ID'd to an accused cheater or person they simply had a beef with. (Note all the crap that guy who lost his account over his RL name went through with Steam). How likely is it? I have no idea, honestly I'm more concenrned about them simply storing al this indefinetly. Truthfully, even our alphabet soup tag agencies get hacked sometimes. I doubt Sony has lax security, but even... north korean (snicker! north koreanhaha) managed to get them.
This basically comes down to "just because this program can do something like scan your PC you shouldn't add it to your PC". Hey here's a thing, you got a virus scan? That thing can do similar invasive stuff and sends more data around. What if those are hacked? You can't warn against BE just because of what it can do, you would have to be warning against everything online. Just picking out BE right now is not constructive or helpful in any way. All you can hope is that BE tries to prevent being hacked, just like Daybreak tries to prevent getting hacked and all their customer payment accounts getting stolen, or banks prevent getting hacked, or the government, or the hospitals, or the local pizzeria you once ordered online on, and... Well you get it the list goes on. Picking on BE is useless, it serves no purpose whatsoever.
anything online and some things in real life are always risky. every time you submit something online there is a risk ether you will pickup a virus/keylogger or data you submit will be intercepted regardless of how well it is encrypted. every time you pay for something with a credit card or debit card there's a risk that your data has been captured by a skimming device, every time you withdraw funds from an ATM there's a risk that there is a skimming device and a camera installed to capture your data and pin number. lets also remember that the newer ATM cards have swipe and go chips in them so people don't even need to put a skimmer in a card reading device they can wander around in public and remotely steal your data from proximity to you if you don't get a card sleeve for your card to prevent it. every time you receive mail via post there is the risk someone will steal your information by stealing your mail or rummaging through your bin if you aren't careful enough to shred and burn any documents you no longer need that have personal info on them. hackers are going nuts trying to get honest people not to trust battleye and some of those honest people are gullible enough to believe them. if there was anything bad about battleye some who had the ability and was curious would have reverse engineered battleye and provided credible proof of wrongdoing by battleye. the only guy that has claimed to have done so himself was accused on his own reddit thread of selling ARMA hacks on the very first comment.
My hard drive is full of sex videos with my ex girlfriends. Shame on them. I should charge them 10€ monthly just for scanning those.
I haven't enjoyed playing Planetside this much since beta. It's a breath of fresh air. Since BE was introduced, it really does feel different and this was long overdue. If you're worried about your privacy, then don't play. In fact, you should unplug yourself from the internet. No one is forcing you to accept it. Almost all online FPS games have anti cheat measures that does exactly what BE does to one extent or another. The fact that it took so damn long to get BE into this game says a lot, but it's here and I like it. BE has, intrinsically, made this game much better. And if you want to blame someone, cast your anger at dirtball cheaters, for not for them, this conversation wouldn't even exist.
Make new Folder under the Name: "Ultra Rare Pepe Hacks"and put a JPG in it with a Trollface just to be sure.
Who cares? Do they want pictures of me and my wife on holiday? They do not need to scan my folders, if they ask me I can send them myself.
The "may share the information with its partners and/or affiliates" part is there so that they can share the info with DGC. Account name, hax they used, maybe more info about hax and all that stuff falls in that category. Otherwise they could only detect cheats but wouldn't be allowed to tell DGC anything about suspicious accounts which is pointless. If you're that worried about privacy just don't use the internet at all because almost everything collects your info nowadays. I doubt that some random guy working at BE will manually look at your files to try and find your hentai collection, judge you, try to dox you and then shame you IRL about it. Paranooooiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid.
