EPTRazer (is not really) spying on customers - Page 6
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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. | ||
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Black Gun
Germany4482 Posts
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Random_Guy09
Canada1010 Posts
On November 04 2012 01:55 Krohm wrote: I'm so glad someone said this. This was literally the first thing I thought of when I read the CEO's letter. Even with massive amounts of macros you're barely going to take up any space. What a joke. Things like these make it really hard to not be paranoid. Well I have a Steelseries Sensei and the mouse only has room for 4 profiles now and 1 spot used for the steelseries engine. Honestly dont really need more space than that. Like every shooter you'll play will probably have the same settings. Every RTS you'll play will probably have different settings than your FPS settings but wont change per RTS you play. No real reason to even have "unlimited space" as the macros are sitting on your computer with the engine and you just put them into a profile which is litterally no space at all. | ||
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Callynn
Netherlands917 Posts
As long as we live in a relatively free democacry (I assume most people who can read TL live relatively free, though not always a democracy), this collection, storage and application of knowledge surrounding our personal interests is not a big issue. If anything, it improves your user experience. Do you honestly think John Doe who works at such a company and gets to see the list of your personal mouse settings gives a damn anyway?  I like the two sides of the OP through the edit, it gives a clear view on what's goin on. I think that although the service spies on you (to improve their future products), the benefits in return outweigh it by far. | ||
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obesechicken13
United States10467 Posts
If your connection drops out for any reason, the Synapse software will make a habbit of locking up on you while it transitions to offline mode. During that time your settings may revert or possibly not be saved. This part bugs me. | ||
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LA_Morello
Brazil143 Posts
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hayata2.0
Canada655 Posts
It's not like people are going to pirate a piece of hardware. | ||
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calderon
95 Posts
Also as stated the CEO's statement is absolute horse shit. So much memory that its gonna make your razer mouse even more ridiculously expensive? ok. | ||
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Willzzz
United Kingdom774 Posts
I just don't see how this matters. | ||
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zhurai
United States5660 Posts
it just looks like they are saving the information on the cloud (which is, putting information on their servers) or you can run wireshark and try to read the packets to see what kind of data they are sending. might be just your settings. maybe not. Also that disclaimer is pretty standard that almost any website you'd see that, but doesn't mean they WILL sell your information, nor would it be 100% the information you're thinking of. also 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. when hdd's are TB+ now? why would that fucking matter? | ||
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GnarlyArbitrage
575 Posts
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iLikeRain
Denmark504 Posts
On November 04 2012 04:06 DigiGnar wrote: Any EULA content that violates international or national law is void in EU. The thing about this "spying" thing though, seems that they only collect non personal data, which with your consent is not illegal.Aren't there laws that protect against bullshit contracts and ToS? Not everyone is a lawyer and can perfectly understand certain lingo, or even understand a lot of it. Edit: From their ToS: “aggregate information” is information that describes the habits, usage patterns, and demographics of Subscribers as a group (which may include computer system and device data) but does not describe or reveal the identity of any particular Subscriber. “individual information” is information about a Subscriber (which may include computer system and device data) that is presented in a form distinguishable from information relating to other Subscribers but not in a form that personally identifies any Subscriber or enables the recipient to communicate directly with any Subscriber unless agreed to by the Subscriber in advance of such communication. “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. Basically it seems like they don't gather any personal information unless you enter it yourself. | ||
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Cainam
United States421 Posts
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
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Shinshady
Canada1237 Posts
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Excludos
Norway8234 Posts
By the sound of it, you now HAVE to install the drivers for the profiles to work? What a huge setback compared to other gaming mouses in the same price league. | ||
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GolemMadness
Canada11044 Posts
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dcemuser
United States3248 Posts
On November 04 2012 01:55 Krohm wrote: I'm so glad someone said this. This was literally the first thing I thought of when I read the CEO's letter. Even with massive amounts of macros you're barely going to take up any space. What a joke. Things like these make it really hard to not be paranoid. It's very easy to not be paranoid when you know there are thousands of nutjobs out there that test every application inside a virtual machine on separate partition on a brand new hard drive in a sterilized room that is vacuum-sealed. Okay, maybe I took that a bit far, but still, if they were taking your credit cards, we would know. On November 04 2012 04:19 Cainam wrote: Is anyone else sick of the incredibly misleading and inflammatory titles in the General section? Dear God, yes. Please start giving out warnings for this. The only threads that get comments are the ones whose titles read like they were ripped from FoxNews.com. | ||
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openbox1
1393 Posts
On November 03 2012 23:46 Kich wrote: Then those people don't deserve the software. It's incredibly easy to prevent that program from starting on startup, literally google the exact thing you want to do and it'll be within the first 3 results. It's not intrusive, you're using the word wrong, and anyone who buys any sort of thing probably should spend what, 10 minutes browsing through the software to see what they can do with it? Why even bother purchasing something with related software if you aren't going to look at it? SteelSeries mice come with a similar thing, I used the software to customize it exactly as I want it then shut it from turning on on start up. This process took me no more than 20 minutes, how long as your Naga been bothering you and you've just never bothered to even look at it? Its intrusive because it keeps on popping up for me to update. I did eventually disable the auto update and notify. Most people would not. How is that using the word wrong? Its also intrusive with the window open at start-up. Again wrong usage why? How do you define intrusive?  The software has to start up for you to use the additional keys as I mentioned. You also have to auto minimize at start-up (not prevent it starting completely). I haven't checked to see if that's possible. The fact is it shouldn't do that by default. Isn't part of a good experience having software that's easy to use? Sure you can find guides online, but how hard do you have to make it to a) record macros, b) assign keys to buttons c) operate less intrusively ? I remember that Razer defines the "back" key as mouse button 4 or something silly like that. I like to have back on numeral 1 on the naga molten. Took me a few minutes to realize mouse button 4=back. Silly design which I don't remember from using the M518 logitech mouse.I'm not saying they can't try to collect user data although why the hell a mouse peripheral driver requires that I would question, but synapse 2.0 is a piece of crap. The whole restart after update is a deal breaker especially since updates seem to come out every few days. I can understand an update if you're changing from version 1.0 to 2.0 but to restart to update new bindings for a game I don't have installed in my computer? Ridiculous and shoddy programming. | ||
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Misanthrope
United States924 Posts
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HawaiianPig
Canada5155 Posts
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