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The extent to which Razer collects information is not much different than your average terms of service for most software you use. Like teamliquid, they collect anonymous aggregate and individual data. Unlike teamliquid, they reserve the right to collect personally identifiable information. This personally identifiable information must be volunteered by the user. This includes, your name, email address etc. This information is not shared with any third parties except in a few instances where it is necessary to provide a service or comply with the law. In all circumstances, the user voluntarily provides this information. The relevant sections of the ToS are as follows: + Show Spoiler +“personally identifiable information” may consist of a Subscriber’s name, email address, physical address or other data about the Subscriber that enables the Subscriber to be personally identified.
By using Razer Synapse 2.0 (“Synapse”), the Subscriber agrees that Razer may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information. Razer may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Razer shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.
Razer may use customer contact information provided by Subscribers to send information about Razer, including news about product updates, contests, events, and other promotional materials, but only if the Subscriber agrees to receive such communications. Except in the cases described below, Razer will not share personally identifiable information with any third party unless the Subscriber agrees to such disclosure in advance.
While provision of personally identifiable information remains entirely voluntary, Razer reserves the right to make access to certain value-added services or features conditional upon the supply of personally identifiable information. In such situations, the Subscriber will be given the option to decline use of the particular value added service or feature if he does not wish to furnish personally identifiable information.
In some situations, personally identifiable information the Subscriber inputs in connection with Synapse may be made searchable or otherwise available to other Subscribers (such as in certain public functions). Razer has no obligation to keep the privacy of personally identifiable information that is made available by a Subscriber to other Subscribers.
Collection of personally identifiable information may be out-sourced to associates under agreement with Razer. These associates may adhere to their own set of privacy policies.
Personally identifiable information will be processed and stored by Razer in databases hosted in secure locations. Razer has taken reasonable steps to protect the information Subscribers share with it, including, but not limited to, setup of processes, equipment and software to avoid unauthorized access or disclosure of this information.
Razer may allow third parties performing services under contract with Razer to access stored information but such access shall only be to the extent necessary to provide those services. In those instances, the third party will be bound by the terms of this Privacy Policy.
Razer may release personally identifiable information to comply with court orders or laws that require us to disclose such information, without the need of consent from the Subscriber. |
On November 03 2012 22:00 ZwuckeL wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2012 21:56 schimmetje wrote:On November 03 2012 21:42 ZwuckeL wrote:On November 03 2012 21:38 MasterReY wrote:
Why do you call it "spying" if its clearly stated in the TOS?
Its an agreement, that the customer makes with razer. Not "spying".
Also my razer mouses are all configurable without an account anywhere.
I didnt have a Naga, but i have to say it sounds weird that you dont have any options without an account.
Can someone with a Naga comment on that? New pruducts by razer require the new software and require you to have an account registered. and let's be honest, 99% dont read the TOS, which razer is counting on How is this spying? Company 1: Collecting all your data, properly selling it to other companys. Company 2: Collecting all your data, properly selling it to other companys, but telling you they do. Where's the difference between spying, and spying but telling you?
Because you have to consent to it or they wont.
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On November 03 2012 22:00 AnomalySC2 wrote:Blizzard does this too, don't be so surprised. You could even have some fun with it  .
Blizzard is not collection personal information or telling you they may use the gathered information in any way.
Collection personal information could pretty much be anything you do on your computer. The websites you browse to, Messages you write on Skype, Facebook. Letters you write in Word.
Razer doesn't implicitly say what personal information in detail they gaher but it COULD be anything of the above.
Anyone who knowingly accepts these TOS is a complete moron.
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On November 03 2012 22:00 ZwuckeL wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2012 21:56 schimmetje wrote:On November 03 2012 21:42 ZwuckeL wrote:On November 03 2012 21:38 MasterReY wrote:
Why do you call it "spying" if its clearly stated in the TOS?
Its an agreement, that the customer makes with razer. Not "spying".
Also my razer mouses are all configurable without an account anywhere.
I didnt have a Naga, but i have to say it sounds weird that you dont have any options without an account.
Can someone with a Naga comment on that? New pruducts by razer require the new software and require you to have an account registered. and let's be honest, 99% dont read the TOS, which razer is counting on How is this spying? Company 1: Collecting all your data, properly selling it to other companys. Company 2: Collecting all your data, properly selling it to other companys, but telling you they do. Where's the difference between spying, and spying but telling you?
Have you ever read a TOS of an online service anywhere?
With respect to any content you elect to post on any area of the site, including blogs, forum comments and any and all other posts, you grant TeamLiquid a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right and license to use and display such content worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology, without compensation or attribution to you.
We use non-identifying and aggregate information to better design our website and to share with advertisers. For example, we may tell an advertiser that X number of individuals visited a certain area on our website, or that Y number of 18 year olds play Protoss and Z number of SK Telecom Fans filled out our registration form, but we would not disclose anything that could be used to identify those individuals.
Oh noes 
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It is my understanding that every software company makes you their slave and traps your soul with their TOS. It is the ultimate get out of jail free card until we legislate some sort of accountability similar to what ACA does to insurance companies. Getting bogged down in the specifics of this case is short sighted imo.
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I will just leave this thread alone, leaving me speechless. I hope a few ppl who care have been warned. I wouldn't have thought so many ppl just couln't care less about this.
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I'm not spending any money on anything with this kind of TOS. Never again.
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I suspect the guy that wrote the quoted post in the OP is doing something wrong. I'm using the same software that he's using and I'm not experiencing ANY performance issues when my mouse software switches to "Offline Mode" - It's not "constantly" downloading anything, nor is it minimizing anything when it finds an update. In the time I've had the mouse it's informed me of updates twice, the download took less than 10 seconds, the install took another 10 seconds, nothing was minimized or broken. When the update was applying the mouse turned off and back on which took approximately 5 seconds.
The snippet from the Razer user agreement is pretty standard legalese, Steam has it, Origin has it, PSN/XBL have it, most services that we as a community depend on have it.
That said, I'm also not planning on buying any more Razer products. I like their mice, but everything else has been really low quality.
On November 03 2012 22:13 ZwuckeL wrote:
I will just leave this thread alone, leaving me speechless. I hope a few ppl who care have been warned. I wouldn't have thought so many ppl just couln't care less about this.
There isn't anything to care about. It's a guy having performance issues that may be on his end, a down authentication server, and some standard legalese.
On November 03 2012 22:14 Reborn8u wrote:
I'm not spending any money on anything with this kind of TOS. Never again.
If you stick to that you won't be spending any money on anything on the internet ever again. 
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On November 03 2012 22:09 zeru wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2012 22:06 ZwuckeL wrote:On November 03 2012 22:00 AnomalySC2 wrote:Blizzard does this too, don't be so surprised. You could even have some fun with it . Blizzard is not collection personal information or telling you they may use the gathered information in any way.Collection personal information could pretty much be anything you do on your computer. The websites you browse to, Messages you write on Skype, Facebook. Letters you write in Word. Razer doesn't implicitly say what personal information in detail they gaher but it COULD be anything of the above. Anyone who knowingly accepts these TOS is a complete moron. Yes, they do. and you have accepted many TOS's exactly like that one. how do you feel about that?
Exactly. They most certainly can and absolutely do.
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Its good to know I should never install a mouse with razer software and instead get plug and play mouses. That said, I'm suddenly a lot happier with my 5euro mouse from Trust haha. A mouse just isn't important enough for me to sign such a rediculous agreement.
Thanks OP 5/5.
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That learns you/him to use a proper company like logitech instead.
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Collecting any kind of customer data for your own or another company is heavy business nowadays... People just are too careless with their personal data and often toss it around like it's nothing! If most people would be more sensitive to privacy and stuff companies would get their asses whipped for making so much profit from just "data", which is comparable with selling out your customers.
I'm pretty dissappointed in Razer for doing this, especially when those methods are primarily used with software for security reasons/protection against piracy, but I really don't see the urgency with hardware.
Internet gets more and more fucked, sadly... Hopefully this ain't gonna be like TV
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Honestly, some of you guys are pathetic. "Lots of companies do something similar, so I don't mind". When Microsoft first programmed Windows to "phone home" there was outrage. A lot of people were very upset by that news. A little over ten years later (though to be fair I'm sure most of you were well under ten years old when that happened) none of you seem bothered that a physical piece of machinery that you bought simply won't function as advertised unless you consent to constantly upload your personal information to a remote host.
First of all, that's basically extortion. They already have your money and you're presented with that screen, asking you if you really care so much that you'll forsake the product you wanted and go all the way back to the store to get your money back (if that's even possible).
Second of all, it's completely unnecessary and purely a business tactic used by a company that wants you to roll over and say "well everyone else does it". The more you allow companies to get away with pushing boundaries like this, the more companies will do it, and the farther the boundary will get pushed.
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I'm pretty sure this is just a keylogger, if so just don't type your magnum opus on a razer keyboard and you should be good.
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I'm honestly shocked you people are arguing about something that is in even Steam's ToS and not the fact that we have reached the point where there is always online internet hardware.
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On November 03 2012 22:41 lolmlg wrote:
Honestly, some of you guys are pathetic. "Lots of companies do something similar, so I don't mind". When Microsoft first programmed Windows to "phone home" there was outrage. A lot of people were very upset by that news. A little over ten years later (though to be fair I'm sure most of you were well under ten years old when that happened) none of you seem bothered that a physical piece of machinery that you bought simply won't function as advertised unless you consent to constantly upload your personal information to a remote host.
First of all, that's basically extortion. They already have your money and you're presented with that screen, asking you if you really care so much that you'll forsake the product you wanted and go all the way back to the store to get your money back (if that's even possible).
Second of all, it's completely unnecessary and purely a business tactic used by a company that wants you to roll over and say "well everyone else does it". The more you allow companies to get away with pushing boundaries like this, the more companies will do it, and the farther the boundary will get pushed.
Pretty much this. It's an unnecessary transfer of data that has a potential (however miniscule) of falling into the wrong hands. There's no benefit to be derived by the consumers from hardware companies harvesting this type of data.
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I don't get the "Everybody steals from me. Well I guess I'll just let them" mentality of some people.
Let's be honest. Putting weird shit in the ToS is a sneaky move since it's bloody long and unintelligiblly technical even if I tried to read it. Site like Bandcamp which are trying to promote a "transparent image" will explicitly make you aware of their ToS because they don't want to hide it (the said parts of their ToS).
Companies should have to highlight these things, like how Google Play does.
Of course I know it's not that great either.
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Posted by Min Liang Tan (CEO) facebook:
We invented onboard memory for gaming mice many years ago and called it Synapse to allow gamers to bring their profiles with them on the go. However, we realized that we ran into another issue where we had to keep increasing the amount of memory onboard to provide for more storage and this resulted in higher and higher prices for gamers.
We then invented Synapse 2.0 where we could provide almost limitless amount of storage for profiles, macros, etc in the cloud as opposed to being limited by physical memory.
We wanted to avoid raising prices to gamers for higher memory space onboard (think about it like having to buy bigger and bigger hard drives as opposed to having all your storage on the cloud) and provide a much better service for our users.
Synapse 2.0 is NOT DRM. Our products work perfectly well out of the box without Synapse 2.0. Synapse 2.0 provides ADDITIONAL functionality of almost limitless memory in the cloud as opposed to taking away functionality (which is what DRM is).
We recognize that gamers will want to be able to use their gear without an online connection, and that's why Synapse 2.0 has an OFFLINE mode. Basically you have to register, create an account, save your initial settings and if you so prefer, you can stay in offline mode all the time without going online.
I realize that we have had issues with the activation server, and we're making sure we get that sorted out.
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Thanks. I was going to buy a Razer mouse, but now i know better. I'll just buy logitech I do like Razer products, but this...
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EPT
