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Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by slashink on Thursday March 14, 2019 @07:43PM (#19395055)
I’ll post Epic Games response in the thread here also.

———————————

We use a tracking pixel (tracking.js) for our Support-A-Creator program so we can pay creators. We also track page statistics.

The launcher sends a hardware survey (CPU, GPU, and the like) at a regular interval as outlined in our privacy policy(see the “Information We Collect or Receive” section). You can find the code here.

The UDP traffic highlighted in this post is a launcher feature for communication with the Unreal Editor. The source of the underlying system is available on github.

The majority of the launcher UI is implemented using web technology that is being rendered by Chromium (which is open source). The root certificate and cookie access mentioned above is a result of normal web browser start up.

The launcher scans your active processes to prevent updating games that are currently running. This information is not sent to Epic.

We only import your Steam friends with your explicit permission. The launcher makes an encrypted local copy of your localconfig.vdf Steam file. However information from this file is only sent to Epic if you choose to import your Steam friends, and then only hashed ids of your friends are sent and no other information from the file.

Epic is controlled by Tim Sweeney. We have lots of external shareholders, none of whom have access to customer data.

Daniel Vogel VP of Engineering Epic Games Inc.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by foxes on Thursday March 14, 2019 @08:48PM (#19395417)
>The launcher makes an encrypted local copy of your localconfig.vdf Steam file.

This should not be done preemptively.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by sigmar on Thursday March 14, 2019 @09:25PM (#19395632)
Totally agree. It is too difficult for the average consumer to find out what is does with that "local copy." Software shouldn't touch another program's file without user consent.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Thursday March 14, 2019 @11:05PM (#19396085)
It's high time we started enforcing that by default at the OS level.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by Wowfunhappy on Thursday March 14, 2019 @11:54PM (#19396342)
It’s notable that you bring this up in a news story about PC gaming, which is a prime example of why this shouldn’t be enforced. There are huge community efforts around modding games—adding features, updating old titles, improving performance, etc etc. All of this is essential to PC gaming, and all of it becomes impossible if software is sandboxed.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by pfranz on Friday March 15, 2019 @04:20AM (#19397696)
You can look at macOS as an example. Using the command line I start searching through my home directory. I get a pop up saying, "Terminal wants to access your Contacts: yes/no" "Terminal wants to access your Calendar: yes/no." This is the kind of behavior I think most people would like.

An example of the bad side is that Nvidia says they cannot develop drivers for their cards because Apple hasn't allowed them to (Apple develops the drivers). I technically believe they can, but they would have to make the user jump through some very unreasonable steps (reboot into a maintenance mode and disable integrity protection).

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by Wowfunhappy on Friday March 15, 2019 @09:09AM (#19399316)
> I technically believe they can, but they would have to make the user jump through some very unreasonable steps (reboot into a maintenance mode and disable integrity protection).

Just confirming this is accurate. SIP wouldn't need to be disabled completely, just the blocking of unsigned kexts. (Apple allows you to selectively enable and disable pieces of SIP).

I don't think this would be so wholly unreasonable. The types of users installing third party video cards in their Macs are the types of users who should know how to do this. At the cost of their security, you could argue, but of course you still have normal Unix root restrictions to protect you there, as long as you're savvy enough to not grant such permissions to any random software.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by hvidgaard on Friday March 15, 2019 @06:07AM (#19398230)
You as the administrator should have the ability to change what you see fit. But a program should be sandboxed in such a way that it cannot willy-nilly obtain a copy of another programs data. I know ultimately there must be a way for to it to happen, but it should be explicit. In this case the Epic Launcher should, on access to Steam "sandbox", a OS dialog pops up so you can allow or prevent it.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday March 15, 2019 @08:19AM (#19398977)
DOSBox is a sandbox and I mod DOS games all the time as a hobby. I can run modded games in Sandboxie, or in containers in Linux. I fail to see how sandboxing is at all incongruent with modding.

Unless of course by enforce you mean taking control of the sandboxing away from the user, in which case I totally agree that should not be done because I'm against that kind of user-hostile bullshit.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by Wowfunhappy on Friday March 15, 2019 @09:21AM (#19399408)
> Unless of course by enforce you mean taking control of the sandboxing away from the user, in which case I totally agree that should not be done because I'm against that kind of user-hostile bullshit.

Nearly every effort I've seen by OS makers to implement sandboxing by default also makes the sandbox difficult or impossible to disable. iOS, UWP, the list goes on. I agree they shouldn't be connected, but they nearly always are. And it's always done in the name of protecting users.

macOS is the one bright spot here, and even then, the new dialogs in Mojave that can't be disabled fare crippling if you make heavy use of apps that need access to other app's sandboxes[1]. I'm convinced that if Apple moves to ARM, it will likely come with a massive tightening on user restrictions, in the name of security.

[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/339509/edit-tcc-db...

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday March 15, 2019 @09:28AM (#19399475)
Be that as it may, we both agree that OS developers taking control away from the user is orthogonal to application sandboxing.

Sandboxing should be done, treating users like children who need to have control stripped from them for their own good should not.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by Wowfunhappy on Friday March 15, 2019 @10:21AM (#19399921)
If basically every example of by-default application sandboxing also results in a loss of user control, are they really orthogonal?

As soon as you implement the option at an OS level, there are going to be (many!) developers who want it enforced for all users. It's the obvious path to go down.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by stordoff on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:10AM (#19396768)
I'm not sure why this is the case. I don't see why you wouldn't be able to edit things that are in the sandbox (you create it in the first place, after all), whilst making sure things in the sandbox can't access anything outside it. AFAICT, it's basically just running as a different user. User user gets edit access, Epic user only gets access to its own folder.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by Wowfunhappy on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:25AM (#19396837)
The problem is that third-party-Dark-Souls-modding-tool.exe needs access to Dark-Souls.exe’s sandbox.

Note, I use Dark Souls as an example here (as opposed to, say, Skyrim) because Dark Souls mods were very much not developer-sanctioned at the outset. If From Software had needed to explicitly allow mods, you can bet they never would have happened.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by ztjio on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:53AM (#19396928)
So then you give it access. Nobody is saying that you, the user, should not have control over these sandboxes.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by lifthrasiir on Friday March 15, 2019 @02:24AM (#19397050)
I think most current examples of sandboxing also implies app signing and whatever restricts users' own control, hence the confusion. Users are sometimes allowed to lift the restriction but it's mostly an all-or-nothing bet.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by pjmlp on Friday March 15, 2019 @05:06AM (#19397914)
I am already enjoying this on my Windows Store delivered games.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by tacomplain on Friday March 15, 2019 @12:02AM (#19396387)
You can surely think about a model of sandboxing with public and private (even internal for company wide) restrictions.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by ocdtrekkie on Thursday March 14, 2019 @11:25PM (#19396183)
That's what UWP does on Windows. And it was immediately derided by nearly everyone for being too closed down.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Thursday March 14, 2019 @11:28PM (#19396190)
That's because any benefit UWP brought was outweighed by all its drawbacks, at least for me.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by noxxten on Friday March 15, 2019 @12:57PM (#19401587)
UWP was broadly criticized because of how it operated. Every notification I got from UWP was something along the lines of "In order to rename this file, _____ program needs access to LITERALLY EVERY FILE AND PERMISSION AVAILABLE ON YOUR COMPUTER AND/OR HOME NETWORK"

Maybe if these notifications were less vague, they wouldn't be hounded as annoying and useless... Just saying.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by TeMPOraL on Friday March 15, 2019 @05:31AM (#19398035)
Sure, but don't forget about user consent part. Preferably with an option to give that consent just once. Otherwise, you'd destroy a whole dimension of software interoperability and end-user scripting.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by jayd16 on Friday March 15, 2019 @12:37AM (#19396613)
This is kind of a legacy desktop issue these days. The mobile OSs and all the cloud stuff use things like containerization and chroots.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by ramy_d on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:23AM (#19396825)
GP says it does have consent. what's the issue?
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by hug on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:47AM (#19396902)
It copies the info prior to consent, just in case you might consent later.

That behaviour is a little bit gross.

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by wgoodall01 on Friday March 15, 2019 @12:02PM (#19400887)
I mean really, what's the difference? They can access that file at any time they want anyhow---as long as they only send it to their server after user consent, I'm really failing to see a problem here. Making a copy of one file they can already access to another place they can also already access isn't really violating anyone's privacy. It's what they DO with the information that matters.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by sigmar on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:01PM (#19401654)
>It's what they DO with the information that matters.

99% of end users will not be able to reverse engineer the binary and find out that copy is never transmitted. The fact it is 'touching' private files at all without any consent degrades trust.

Furthermore, if I want to delete all traces of Steam from my computer how the hell would I know there is a copy of steam's localconfig in a different program's folder? or what if I backup or share privately/publicly my EpicLauncher directory without realizing all my steam contacts are in there?

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by saintPirelli on Friday March 15, 2019 @03:01AM (#19397255)
But is it malevolent or just a little lazy? I can't decide.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by y4mi on Friday March 15, 2019 @08:16AM (#19398954)
if it were malevolent, they'd just load it into ram and send it to the server without persisting on the drive... (and without asking)
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by snthd on Friday March 15, 2019 @08:13AM (#19398926)
It's probably to keep things working through a change in steam.
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by tokyodude on Friday March 15, 2019 @02:07AM (#19396989)
this is all greet but I shouldn't have to trust app makers. the os shouldn't allow an app to read another app's data without permission. the os also shouldn't allow an app to view what other apps are running

Epic might be doing the right thing today. Will they tomorrow? Is every library they use trustworth forever?

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by ourmandave on Friday March 15, 2019 @08:46AM (#19399144)
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

~ Darth Vader

You can read the changes to the ToS at www.palpatine2020.com/toremotetomakeaneffectdemonstration

Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by chris_mc on Friday March 15, 2019 @01:16PM (#19401845)
I'm starting to think something like flatpak or snap is necessary, but in a more sandboxed way, to enforce on the user level that certain apps won't have access to certain files. I would like to see options to fully sandbox an app (has it's own separate permissions for certain documents) or not sandbox it at all (for things we trust implicitly that need that access).
Re:Epic Games Launcher appears to collect Steam friends and ... by danShumway on Friday March 15, 2019 @03:28PM (#19403295)
flatpak permissions + Wayland are (imo) some of the best things happening on Linux right now. You could always kind of do the same stuff with containers and custom wrappers around each program, but it's really cumbersome.

I want this to be the normal. Right now, it's basically a free for all -- record the screen, send network requests, fingerprint hardware, scan for files, examine other processes. The default, out-of-the-box security settings for most distributions are unacceptable.

I'm really excited to see that sandboxing on native is starting to move in the same direction as the web; I'm hoping that within the next year or two we start to see dramatic improvement here.