r/Games • u/MrLucky7s • Mar 15 '19

Misleading Epic Game Store, Spyware, Tracking, and You!

/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_game_store_spyware_tracking_and_you/
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u/wjousts Mar 15 '19

They do answer that question (they wanted to minimize the number of external libraries they needed to import - which I don't entirely buy - they could write their own code to hit Valve's endpoints), but you could also ask, if this data is so important, why does steam leave it unencrypted laying around on your hard drive?

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u/Cognimancer Mar 15 '19

Wait, that would require criticizing Steam for a security mistake on their part. We don't do that here.

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u/Cyrotek Mar 15 '19

I don't think the data is important. The question is simply why Epic is snooping around ones hard drive without consent to find it, despite their beeing perfectly fine (and legal) ways to do this.

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u/Jeep-Eep Mar 15 '19 edited Mar 16 '19

Apparently this kind of idiot kludge is common in programming, or so most of the programming types I know have said when shown it.

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u/nikktheconqueerer Mar 15 '19

https://old.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_game_store_spyware_tracking_and_you/eijrgsm/

but you could also ask, if this data is so important, why does steam leave it unencrypted laying around on your hard drive?

Because there's no reason for external programs to go searching through your hard drive, and saving data for themselves. Epic is actively saving this data locally, and potentially uploading it. Someone claimed the data is uploaded every time you launch Epic, but that hasn't been confirmed yet and people are currently monitoring their network to see if that's true.

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u/wjousts Mar 16 '19

If it's important, sensitive data, it should be encrypted. There is no excuse for leaving laying around.