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high rated
Hey,

I had a peek behind the scenes of the Galaxy client again and noticed an awful lot of requests to an insights-collector.gog.com domain. So I played around with the client for some time to see what kind of insights GOG is collecting. Here's a quick list of the events that were transmitted, loosely in the order that I triggered them:

* When the client is launched
* When you successfully log in
* When you open/focus the client window
* When you unfocus the client window
* When you minimize the client window
* When you view your activity feed
* When you view a game
* When you switch tabs (Overview, My progress, Extras) in the game view
* When you view your friend list
* When you view a friend's profile
* When you view your library
* When you click the install button on a game
* When you look at the currently downloads
* When you open the store
* When a game finished downloading including how long it took
* When you open a store page
* When a game is installed
* When you open the settings
* When you switch settings tabs
* When you change a setting
* When you click the menu option to file a bug report
* When you open the search
* When you click on a search result
* When you filter the library
* When you clear library filters

All of these actions are sent to GOG as soon as they are triggered along with a second-accuracy timestamp and the currently logged in user. In summary there's very little you can do in the Galaxy client without GOG knowing exactly what you did.

Now, is this a reason for concern? Maybe. There is nothing in the transmitted data that couldn't also be collected from using the website. It's also very unlikely that this stream of events would reveal anything personal about you. It's still a bit unsettling, to me at least, that Galaxy users are tracked so closely and without any attempt at anonymization. I have no problem with GOG having the technical ability to look at who I chat with and whose profiles I visit, but to know that they actually feed that data into their analytics... that's just a little bit creepy. There's surely a use to some level of telemetry, but this seems quite far away from the amount required to ensure a good user experience, especially when there are more than enough people who voluntarily give their opinions on what needs improvement.

What I can say for sure is that all the privacy focused marketing from GOG is quite dishonest. Galaxy has not been designed with privacy in mind. The people still downloading their games manually and launching them without any clients in between do have at least one more reason to do so. I'm also going to be requesting another personal data dump from GOG according to GDPR to see if there is anything interesting in it that they're honest about collecting.

To all the regular angry forum people, please keep the comments on topic. This thread is about Telemetry in Galaxy and not how much you hate everything about the client and love manual downloads.
Thanks for all of your hard work collecting this.

It basically confirms (to myself) that I make the right decision to use the offline installers. I guess that the Steam client will be just the same, hence I have never used Steam either
Looks to me that they are assembling stats about how often people use certain assets of the client. If people are interested in what their friends are playing, maybe that's an indicator that they should release more multiplayer games.

And as you mentioned, I'd imagine that all this telemetry is also collected by accessing GOG's site directly.
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Huff: It basically confirms (to myself) that I make the right decision to use the offline installers.
But the client doesn't seem to collect any data about when you start the game. So using offline installers doesn't make a difference, because all the rest of the telemetry is collected when you access the site directly.
Post edited November 27, 2020 by MadalinStroe
low rated
good
telemetry is good as it helps them to make better launcher

what is creepy about this? I dont get it
Post edited November 27, 2020 by Orkhepaj
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Yepoleb: I have no problem with GOG having the technical ability to look at who I chat with and whose profiles I visit, but to know that they actually feed that data into their analytics... that's just a little bit creepy.
Big brother GOGBear is always watching...
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Yepoleb: What I can say for sure is that all the privacy focused marketing from GOG is quite dishonest. Galaxy has not been designed with privacy in mind. The people still downloading their games manually and launching them without any clients in between do have at least one more reason to do so.
I don't think anyone should be expecting privacy when using a client, marketing materials aside, and I'm not only referring to Galaxy here. Collection of data has always been a factor in weighing in if you want to have that extra comfort of auto-updates and managing all your games in one place. As always, I'll remain an offline grumpy old gamer :).
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Yepoleb: Hey,

I had a peek behind the scenes of the Galaxy client again and noticed an awful lot of requests to an insights-collector.gog.com domain. So I played around with the client for some time to see what kind of insights GOG is collecting. Here's a quick list of the events that were transmitted, loosely in the order that I triggered them:
[....]
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Yepoleb: All of these actions are sent to GOG as soon as they are triggered along with a second-accuracy timestamp and the currently logged in user. In summary there's very little you can do in the Galaxy client without GOG knowing exactly what you did.
I'm currently still using the old client, so i have to ask: is there any form of manual opt-in or confirmation from the user, before the data is collected? If not, this is definitely unexpected and creepy.
I play my GOG games using the offline installers in an air-gapped room without internet.

I usually pass out once the oxygen levels go down during longer periods of gaming.

Just remember not to fart!

EDIT: Oh, EU GDPR... so is the Galaxy client supposed to tell you what kind of data they are collecting and for what purpose?
Post edited November 27, 2020 by timppu
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WinterSnowfall: I don't think anyone should be expecting privacy when using a client
Should demand privacy also when using a client? Yes
Should expect it by default nowadays? Alas, no
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timppu: Oh, EU GDPR... so is the Galaxy client supposed to tell you what kind of data they are collecting and for what purpose?
Gog is probably behind updating Galaxy for it as usual, unless someone will report it, I guess lol.
high rated
Thanks for this post. More good reasons to never allow Galaxy to touch my computer. It's spyware, like all the other third-party client apps.
Seems like fairly normal information about client usage without anything too personal. It would actually be understandable for them to check the frequencies of each client function's usage, to do things like knowing which popular funcitons should be updated first (and probably other stuff too).

However, it would be nicer if we could choose to opt out of some of this data collection.

PS: It sounds nice that they've been gathering information about download time. The download speed for me (and apparently some other users in my country) has been oddly slow recently, I hope whatever download data they colected could help them identify and solve problems like this.
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timppu: EDIT: Oh, EU GDPR... so is the Galaxy client supposed to tell you what kind of data they are collecting and for what purpose?
It's in the application agreement:

4.3 GOG GALAXY Application.

If you use GOG GALAXY Application (including GOG GALAXY Store) we will also collect technical logs, information about achievements in games you play and how long you play them; your multiplayer sessions and your activities in the GOG GALAXY Application and on other platforms connected to your GOG account for the general operational purposes of GOG GALAXY Application. If you choose to connect your accounts from other platforms with GOG GALAXY Application , depending on the features that the particular integration currently supports, GOG will access personal and non-personal information such as your user name and user id, avatar, game list, gametime, game achievements, friend list (user name, user id, avatar) and their status, chat and conversation history. We will not store your account credentials. In addition, if you purchase games using GOG GALAXY Store, we will collect information related to your transaction mentioned in point (d) above as well as the relevant product id and product entitlement id. You can read more about this optional account connecting feature in our GOG GALAXY Application Privacy Notice here. The Privacy Notice forms part of this Privacy Policy.
I am pretty sure that most of the stuff mentioned earlier are likely also collected when you use the website, as in which page you consult, where you click, what you search, etc... it's pretty standard stuff most online shop collect.

As long as Galaxy doesn't start logging and collection things that you are doing "outside" of it, as some games or client where sometime caught doing, there is not really anything "shocking" or "outrageous" in the OP's list.
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Gersen: I am pretty sure that most of the stuff mentioned earlier are likely also collected when you use the website, as in which page you consult, where you click, what you search, etc... it's pretty standard stuff most online shop collect.
Not if you use a privacy-focused browser; block javascript from Google Analytics; and use a spy blocker.
low rated
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Gersen: I am pretty sure that most of the stuff mentioned earlier are likely also collected when you use the website, as in which page you consult, where you click, what you search, etc... it's pretty standard stuff most online shop collect.
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Time4Tea: Not if you use a privacy-focused browser; block javascript from Google Analytics; and use a spy blocker.
why? how else would google know what i want to buy ? I want personal ads
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Time4Tea: Thanks for this post. More good reasons to never allow Galaxy to touch my computer. It's spyware, like all the other third-party client apps.
spy? what does it spy? you? why would it spy you?
Post edited November 27, 2020 by Orkhepaj
low rated
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Yepoleb: It's still a bit unsettling, to me at least, that (...) users are tracked so closely and without any attempt at anonymization. (...) to know that they actually feed that data into their analytics... that's just a little bit creepy. There's surely a use to some level of telemetry, but this seems quite far away from the amount required to ensure a good user experience
Umm...really? New to the Internet or just too naive?

I honestly don't understand why you're so "shocked" about all this. ALL clients do this. Every one of them. From $team to Epic to Uplay to Battle.net. That's why they exist: to keep track of EVERYTHING the user does.

And that's why there's so many of us, passionately AGAINST the use of any client to play games. Alas you can still find A LOT of people blindly celebrating and recommending them "because it's cool to have all your games in one place, brah!".
Unless it's Epic-related no one cares about what X company is doing with its client. The ones using them are just going to find some excuse to justify them and belittle other people's complaints about this whole blatant privacy invasion. We have $team to thank for it. Too many people commited to "protect" Valve ready to say anything to defend their precious game collection's keymaster have already twisted the perception to a degree where you will find "nothing wrong with it" in every single related discussion.

So kudos for your hard work...but I'm afraid you're not going to accomplish anything with it.

TL;DR: all clients do this. They're all cancer but no one cares about any "findings" because the ones against them don't need anything more than their principles to keep hating on them and the ones using them are still going to keep using them because...reasons.
low rated
i still dont get it , why is it bad it takes some statistics from your playing?
at least devs can make better games for you

I wish there would be a client which would record my music movies series books games into one place , would be so awesome , just imagine you dont have to use this and that cliend for all these task on every other hardware , just one cliend you log in and done you can read watch game , sounds awesome
Post edited November 27, 2020 by Orkhepaj