SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the move-along-nothing-to-see-here dept.
Lagg writes:
"We're in a climate where it's easy to accuse a company of spying on you by various means with a distinct possibility that you could be right, but sometimes a reality check is needed. A Reddit user recently posted a thread accusing Valve of writing code for VAC that iterates your DNS cache and sends the hashed entries to their server. The proof provided of this was a prettied disassembly (that was not easily reproducible due to how VAC loads symbols) that showed only that VAC was indeed iterating the DNS cache, which any knowledgeable programmer understands is not exactly an uncommon thing to do, as no socket code was to be seen. Today, Gabe Newell responded to these allegations by confirming that no they do not in fact snoop your cache entries.
There are probably a few things to learn from this, including not trusting a screenshot of code that looks complex without actually understanding what it's doing. A lack of any level-headed investigation is a bad idea and it's important to handle these situations before they snowball into a mob (as Redditors are bound to do)."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GeminiDomino on Tuesday February 18 2014, @03:18PM
Perhaps the "fact" is that anti-cheating systems need to "snoop" as part of their primary function, but no, the contents of the DNS cache -- data unrelated to the game being executed -- are being read, without disclosure (until now), and reported back. But no, you can repeat it as much as you like but you're the one redefining "snooping" in an attempt to put a positive spin on your particular brand-tribe.
And I never said anything about "the editors", but even one of them acknowledged the slant after called out [soylentnews.org] by someone else.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"