https://www.gog.com/forum/general/what_stores_profiles_tell

I have my library and wishlist on public - hell I have a wiki page too. I would even set my profile public if it wouldn't leak information on friends who have set their accounts to "hidden".

If I had all set to private an observant party could have deducted the following this week:

Game count dropped by one: I have the Penumbra collection. One game was removed at library entry and added as bonus to another.
Game count went up by one when Spellcasting was released.

Wa..wa..w..was dat Comey that just walked past?

I suppose that by "members of GOG" you mean "any customer on GOG", using the word customer very loosely because you don't have to even spend a single cent to be in this group.
In fact, seeing as there's no entry bar to create an account you could say that " the information is not public. Only anyone on the internet who bothers with setting up an account on GOG can view the information."

That's quite a weird definition for "not public" , mind you. That's what happens when you start discovering the creepy ways people will treat your data if it means they have a chance to abuse it for money. Don't forget, if there's any slight chance that money can be made off you by morally questionable means, you can be sure someone is working their ass to make it a reality.

Commenting out a few lines of code doesn't take a business week. Commenting on the forums "Hey guys, we're a bit overwhelmed by the backlash, we'll see what we can do" doesn't take a business week. The only thing that takes a business week and makes sense in this context is a "We are trying to ride this one out". Which does not mean that this tactic necessarily succeeds, but they are trying.
Some people commented that they're sure that GOG will fix this state of affairs, and are likely on the case right now. I remain skeptical about that.

You seem to be confusing personal with sensitive data. Also, I don't think anyone can accurately guess which data can be "mined" from what other data without in-depth knowledge of all the data available. Most data collections works because relations can be constructed if and when enough data is accumulated and collated with meta data. As such, I find it foolhardy to just dismiss certain data points as irrelevant for everyone, just because you or I personally cannot come up with a way that specific data can be used against someone on the fly.

Oooh look at gog STILL still ignoring the issue. That's cute.

On those busy days, i just have a glance at the topic to check if gog has had the decency yet to add a blue line to it. Instead of just covering it under a blanket of zuckerberg-caliber cynicism and contempt.

And the answer is : haha.

There have been cases of people being denied entry in the US of A based on their Amazon book purchases or wishlist*. Or harmless chat messages on Facebook**.


* In 2003 a woman from Stuttgart was denied entry a locked up for a few hours. It later turned out she had books criticising the Bush administration on her wishlist.
** There was a case of a 19yo student wanting to visit relatives in the US for a few months who offered them babysitting their little one while she was there. The border agent accused her of wanting to illegally work as an au pair and sent her back home right after she arrived. Went through the German newpapers a while ago.

I see that you already have received several very good answers to your post but I will - in some cases again, because several of your statements have been answered before you posted them - try to answer your questions.

First of all let me repeat what I have already said/written several times: nobody here wants to take public profiles, achievments or anything else away from you. You may keep them and be happy about them!

The tone in the forums might have been somewhat agitated and sometimes even a little bit aggressive but I am not aware that I have tried to insult somebody personally except maybe gog.com as a company in a futile try to make them come out of hiding and give us any answer apart from 'We have nothing to communicate at this point'. If you feel that I have insulted you personally then I am sorry and apologize but must add that I don't know how I did do that not having had any communication with you in the past.

Since you have posted here, I guess you have a credit card you use to buy games, therefore a bank account and obviously an internet connection, and most probably a mobile phone too. Where am I going now? Well if you have these you have contracts with a credit card company, a bank, an internet provider and a mobile phone company. These companies have often made changes to their contracts during the last years and they all send out letters (or at least e-mails) to their customers before they do so. The customer then has some time to either silently agree by doing nothing, opt out of the changes or terminate the complete contract between both parties.

gog did nothing like this before they made public the data of thousands of customers. Ok, maybe they made an announcement in the forums but only a tiny group of customers is reading in the forums on a regular base. Also the initial privacy settings where less than private and too public in my opinion. I have changed these settings, but still too much data was available for some time and the current privacy settings do not yet allow for complete privacy.

In general I guess that I am at least as annoyed with the situation as you are - and obviously many others too. But the difference is that some of you are annoyed because they believe that something they wanted and now have been granted shall be taken away from them. For those of us who do not want to have their data published the situation is different. Something has been done to them, their privacy has been violated, their data has been published by gog without their consent, and now we want an OPTION to simply opt ouf of it, not make changes to the way other customers may display their data in the public.

That's the whole point about this endless story and I may have posted more in the past few days than ever before but this time gog simply has gone to far and their continued silence and inability to at least answer us is not helping at all. If they had the balls to give us a statement like "go to hell, if you don't like the situation just go away, we don't need your money anymore, this is the new gog.com and we do not care for your privacy but want to continue with a complete new generation of customers who embrace public profiles, galaxy and the way we are now" then fine, that would have told us about their intentions and at this point we still might have made complaints because of the data leak in the original privacy settings and the continued display of the number of games, achievements and hours played, but at least the situation would have been made very clear by gog.

That's it for today, take it or leave it, I am out for today, the weather is fine, it's Sunday and who cares about gog.com, a failing company without privacy, unable to communicate with it's customers.

I honestly do not know what answers you mean when you only answer the usual two or three, and that many times you have been very disrespectful with other users who did not think like you.

Gog has not opted for customers who want achievements or profiles because these are optional, that is, no one is forced to use those options however successful they may be. In gog it is not mandatory to use galaxy, the games are drm free, so say that gog has changed to offer profiles or achievements when they are optional is a lie. That's what you and a few users are trying to sell to others. Many of us who have voted on the wish list like achievements or profiles but we want to be able to decide the level of privacy.

In the aspect of privacy, I totally agree with you, and I will support any measure in that regard. The bad thing is reading out of gog.com many users do not seem to care but for me it is a fundamental aspect.

I also hope that this small group of users (11 users) that you have been so disrespectful with many other users in the past when you asked for options that you do not like and that did not affect you because they are optional, be more respectful with the rest of users. from now on as the others are with you.

For my part here I close my participation, I am tired of so many stupid things. I hope good improve the privacy tomorrow and everything returns to normal, many users are tired.

Oh, cool, I haven't had the opportunity to repost this yet again for a few pages:

"It's not that I have anything to hide. I just have nothing I want you to see". That's how real privacy works. Just because something isn't important, incriminating of sensitive, doesn't mean it's ok to have it be made public without your express permission.

One small detail you either fail to appreciate or choose to ignore is that profiles are not optional. Even after locking down my privacy settings, I still have a profile page I don't want or need, therefore, I assume profiles (as currently implemented) are mandatory.

Are you trolling or just mentally challenged?

I'm trying hard but you repeating the same bullshit over and over... makes it a challenge to stay "respectful".

I have my chat set to public because people need to contact me to redeem prizes in my giveaways. Your simple solution would break this.

Hi,
Sorry if that's a silly question, but where can this list be found?

Speaking of which, I hereby wanna make clear that you don't need to spend your money on the giveaway prize (1st week) that you kindly offered me. Select someone else from the initial pool or just don't, that's your call. I just don't want to support a consumer-unfriendly business with my money or, in this case, yours.

Well, the problem here is that GOG profiles aren't optional. Everyone has one, and it displays some information more than Username, join date and avatar. It makes available information that people may or may not want to share by default, and still makes some of that information available regardless of choice. That's not optional. And yes, you can click on my name and see my profile and that I play a lot of the Witcher 3 and Hollow Knight. I'm voluntarily sharing all that. But if I wanted all my info to be private. You'd still see over 1200 hours gaming and around 600 games owned. And that's not cool. And for some reason, you don't seem to get that.