protonscr

Personalized data in Steam survey report

steamopen Steam client
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#7161 · opened 2020-06-02 by Lastique · updated 2022-03-07 · 4 comments · github
LLastique 2020-06-02 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1590813437
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Kubuntu 20.04
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

The Steam hardware survey report, which is randomly collected by Steam client, contains the following personalized data:

  • Current user name visible in file permissions in pinned_libs_32 and pinned_libs_64 sections.
  • User's home directory (which contains user name) in various paths in the report.

User name is a personalized information that can be used to identify and track the user. Please, remove or obfuscate it. For example, you could leave numeric uids instead of user name and redact the home directory prefixes in paths.

TTTimo 2020-06-12 github

The runtime information report is not being included in the survey report. It is in the System Information display text because that's a convenient place to put it.

Tthanatos 2020-07-10 github

The runtime information report is not being included in the survey report. It is in the System Information display text because that's a convenient place to put it.

This is confusing as hell, and directly contradicted by the software itself. Right above the information, Steam states,

When you click the 'Next' button, this information will be transmitted to Valve.

At the very least, it seems like the client could be improved to clearly show what information Valve collects, and what information Valve does not collect.

IMO, this is still a bug — regardless of whether the information is or is not collected —, and should still be open, even if perhaps none of the original suggestions apply.

TTTimo 2020-07-10 github

Agree this is confusing and should be communicated more clearly.

DDidierLoiseau 2022-03-07 github

I recently had the survey and I must say that it is very confusing. Even with the comment above it is still unclear to me what is sent exactly. I assume the JSON part is not sent, but everything else is?

I understand it’s convenient to reuse the system information in the survey dialog, but the displayed data should be exactly what is sent later – it must be computed at some point before sending it anyway.

Nothing extracted yet.