Does KSP really have spyware in it?

[Jurassic kerbal]

I hate the thought that the amazing game KSP is spyware but is it real true? If so that’s kind of scary and creepy tell me what your thoughts are about this?

Edited June 22, 2020 by Jurassic kerbal
Incorrect punctuation

[Aniruddh]

It's not anymore. I personally wouldn't call it 'spyware' but something like that was in the ksp EULA back in around v 1.4. It's no longer around though, so you don't have to worry about it (atleast that's what I heard).

[Jurassic kerbal]

I hope not but I am curious if it will tell me what you think?

[Guest]

Much less than most other stuff you're running. This forum probably collects more data about you than the game.

[RyanRising]

14 hours ago, Aniruddh said:

It's not anymore. I personally wouldn't call it 'spyware' but something like that was in the ksp EULA back in around v 1.4. It's no longer around though, so you don't have to worry about it (atleast that's what I heard).

It wasn't just the EULA, there actually was spyware bundled in it back then (RedShell). It was removed after substantial community backlash, but if my reading of that post is correct then the EULA still would allow this sort of thing to be re-implemented.

Isn't Take-Two such a wonderful company?

Edited June 23, 2020 by RyanRising

[Guest]

Come on. RedShell was sending back standard telemetry. That's much less data than you send back browsing the Internet, even in private mode. And there's no suggestion that it was being used for anything nefarious.

Spyware is a serious issue but labeling this kind of thing as spyware trivialises the real thing.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Guest

[Superfluous J]

I think this entire subject is inflammatory.

Hey you asked.

[RyanRising]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

Come on. RedShell was sending back standard telemetry. That's much less data than you send back browsing the Internet, even in private mode. And there's no suggestion that it was being used for anything nefarious.

Spyware is a serious issue but labeling this kind of thing as spyware trivialises the real thing.

Maybe you’re right that it shouldn’t be called spyware, but whatever it’s called it had no business being there. KSP is an offline singleplayer game, not browsing the web, so it’s perfectly reasonable not to expect it to send back personally identifiable information. Which RedShell did.

But to answer OP’s question properly, it got removed, so you’re good as of now.

Edited June 23, 2020 by RyanRising
Added on-topic stuff

[swjr-swis]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

Come on. RedShell was sending back standard telemetry.

Whether or not the built-in functionality was being used is irrelevant, it was about the potential, and the way it was added silently and only even acknowledged after people raised a stink about it. Redshell could do a lot more than what they 'sold' it for, plus the forced EULA reserved the rights to extend things well beyond that.

You get a call to bring in your glasses for a free upgrade/adjustment. You find out when you get them back that it now includes telemetry electronics that monitor/register everything you look at, what you do, and all your bodily parameters while you're wearing them. You're told when asking that they will really only monitor a few things, for anonymous purposes that will improve your experience in using the glasses (how?). The EULA you had to sign to even get the glasses back says they have the freedom to monitor everything, share it with anyone they like, into infinity, and you basically can't do anything about it. Oh and btw, we can change this EULA however we want in the future. But we're good guys, so we're cool.

You would still shrug and go ahead with it? I mean, they did promise not to do anything nefarious, and right now, it doesn't seem to be sending anything objectionable. Silly tinfoil hat types and their conspiracy theories... right?

 

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

You would still shrug and go ahead with it? I mean, they did promise not to do anything nefarious, and right now, it doesn't seem to be sending anything objectionable. Silly tinfoil hat types and their conspiracy theories... right?

Are you familiar with the slippery slope fallacy?

[swjr-swis]

14 hours ago, Jurassic kerbal said:

I hate the thought that the amazing game KSP is spyware but is it real true?

As you can see, the term 'spyware' is a bit loaded and there are varying opinions on this subject. I would say that the statement 'KSP is spyware' is wrong on a pragmatic level. It's a game, but some of the code it runs does call home and send data about your usage and your computer, with the option to do more.

The Redshell component was indeed removed. So if that one specifically triggered your question, you can be happy about that. End of discussion.

Unity telemetry was not removed, however. In fact, in KSP versions after 1.4 its monitoring capabilities were considerably extended, and stopping it from working by manual actions was made much more difficult. Whereas in the older versions it was easy enough to simply delete the telemetry DLLs to stop it from running, in later versions this would completely prevent the game from even starting. You are offered the option to 'opt out', but this is implemented in a way that still requires the Unity telemetry code to load and call home every time anyway ("To check if you chose to opt out! How else could we possibly know if we're allowed to look or not?").

Both Unity and KSP's current IP owner have stated to only use telemetry in good faith. Both their EULA reserve extensive rights to do considerably more. The latest EULA you're 'bound' to if you play KSP explicitly reserves the right to change their rules as they please, and your rights are limited to stopping playing the game if you disagree. You can use hosts files, DNS, or firewall workarounds to block the telemetry ports and IP numbers, but nothing says they can't add to or change them in future updates (and they already have at least once). There's a few forum posts around that offer a list of ports and IPs to block.

So, 'spyware'? No. Good faith? Make up your own mind about it. If you want to be principled about these things, you may have to live with some inconveniences, including potentially not using stuff at all. for now, that's the status quo.

 

5 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Are you familiar with the slippery slope fallacy?

Which is only a 'fallacy' as long as it's not already happened before.

[The Aziz]

You only asked this because someone in the other thread said that a third party (actually, this being part of unity, would be second party) piece of code was implemented for a really short time to 1.4

[Guest]

50 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

Which is only a 'fallacy' as long as it's not already happened before.

You were comparing minor, routine telemetry with no personally identifying information with a technological panopticon. It's like your bank hiked your mortgage's marginal rate from 0.25% to 0.35%, and you're asking "but would you be OK with it if they hiked it from 0.25% to 250%." Of course I wouldn't be OK with it, it's a silly analogy.

[swjr-swis]

41 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

minor, routine telemetry

Minor is a very vague qualifier, subjective to every person's own assigned value to privacy, and only valid if you choose to judge this as its own little thing. Funny analogy you used. Of course we won't worry about a 0.1% price change for one single product. Who would ever be silly enough to complain about that.

How about when they don't do it just to your mortgage (KSP), but also your account fees (GTA), overdraft fees (etc), transaction fees (etc), insurance (etc*)? How about if it's not just your bank (TT), but your utilities(EA) too, and your grocery store (Ubi), and your computer store (Steam)? And if they're all doing it already, why would it be objectionable to everyone else doing it too? (*: I don't know all the games they own, there's a lot though).

Now, since we've already established it would be silly to object to 0.1% price hikes, surely tomorrow you won't object to us adding an additional 0.1% price hike (which btw, our EULA tells you is completely within our rights to do so). No, that's not 0.2% <laughs>... it's two minor unobjectionable completely unrelated 0.1% hikes. See how you misinterpreted that? So silly.

Money is not a good comparison though, cause we all make so much of it that cents on a dollar are truly insignificant, and with inflation being a systematic requirement of economy, 0.1% is actually scary low.

Privacy is about data. Information. And in case you didn't notice, data is big money these days. Even the insignificant kind. Because it is aggregated.

So let's compare to pixels instead, a form of data. A single pixel is nothing, right? What harmful information could ever be gleaned from one pixel. Surely we can all agree on that. Worrying about one tiny pixel, pff. So how about ten people gathering 'single pixels'? That has to be ten times nothing, so still nothing, if I recall my math correctly. How about 10000 of them? How about 1920 by 1080 people, gathering one single pixel each? How about that many, 25 times a second? We're still not worried, yes? The math still has to be valid regardless of the scale or frequency.

I'm sure each person can individually -and quite demonstrably true- argue that their 'minor' piece of data cannot possibly show anything even remotely objectionable. So clearly anyone objecting to the minor, routine practice of pixel gathering by this one specific person has to be overreacting.

As for 'routine': it's only routine because we have tacitly permitted it to become so. As consumers, we'd rather have our product or convenience than stick to our principles, to the point of ridiculing those who would advocate for privacy. It's of course all anonymized and aggregated (!) and several other words we throw around to make it all sound less invasive, but meanwhile it has spread to almost every facet of our lives, one 'minor routine' step at a time, to the point that the main 'defense' used against people lobbying for more privacy is that it's 'already everywhere anyway'. Yes indeed it is, and I wonder how it came to be that way. No irony in pointing out the fallacy of explaining the 'slippery slope' of allowing even 'minor' monitoring of course. What could we ever be worried about. Silly people and their hypothetical overreaching scenarios.

Anyway, I responded to the OP, I really really don't wish to get into this whole discussion again (he said, after a wall of text).

[swjr-swis]

6 hours ago, Jurassic kerbal said:

I hope not but I am curious if it will tell me what you think?

If you're genuinely interested in the subject, you can search the forum. It has been discussed extensively. Starting multiple threads about this just seems like poking the bear.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, swjr-swis said:

Anyway, I responded to the OP, I really really don't wish to get into this whole discussion again (he said, after a wall of text).

Fair enough. I figure this is one of those things where we'll just have to note our disagreement and move on.

[Gargamel]

Overlapping threads have been merged.

[Kerbart]

On 6/22/2020 at 4:04 PM, Jurassic kerbal said:

I hate the thought that the amazing game KSP is spyware but is it real true? If so that’s kind of scary and creepy tell me what your thoughts are about this?

No, it's not.

Spyware raises certain expectations on what the software (allegedly) was doing, and KSP was doing none of that.

It is true that it was bundled with certain telemetry software, but calling KSP "spyware" for that reason would be akin to calling someone who received a speeding ticket a "recidivist career felon." So, no.

[KrisKelvin]

This is worrying

 

https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/ksp.html

[Stone Blue]

Thats ooolddd news, and was heavily discussed omng several threads on the subject, here in the forms.
I think it was Redshell that was causing the concern... even tho KSP/Unity were using phone-home for (relatively) minor data collection about the game... IIRC, the Redshell component has been removed? vOv idk... Adn there *is* that opt-out popup you get when you start the game.

Edited July 24, 2020 by Stone Blue

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, KrisKelvin said:

This is worrying

 

https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/ksp.html

 

43 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

Thats ooolddd news, and was heavily discussed

AKA Worrying.

wor·ry

verb

pull at or fiddle with repeatedly.
"he began to worry at the knot in the cord"

 

Edited July 24, 2020 by Superfluous J

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, KrisKelvin said:

This is worrying

Only if you're gullible enough to believe that kind of disinformation.

[severedsolo]

Christ I didn't even realise neocities was still a thing.... and that page is oh so professional, amazing the lengths people will go to based on the rumour mill.

Edited July 24, 2020 by severedsolo

[KrisKelvin]

6 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Only if you're gullible enough to believe that kind of disinformation.

Why does that make me gullible? It makes very specific points and I don’t see what the motivation would be to fabricate them. 
 

Conversely perhaps you’re too much of a fanboy not to believe them?

In any case, I’ll go and look for other threads.

thanks all

[Gargamel]

A number of overlapping threads have been merged.