who the hell did think that putting each and every privacy setting to "public" by default, and even reverting previously set to "private only" settings back to "public", was a GOOD idea ?

you wanna toy with your social features and such, to join the dimwitted bandwagon of social network ? fine, but dont touch/sabotage/nullify people's existing settings.

i know you are eager to join (late) the data harvesting and personal data reselling bandwagon as well, sure, it's ok, youw ant a share of the pie and want to monetize your own customers as milkin-hard as possible, while annoying them as well and forcing them to meld together like in a giant online gang bang ! i know you really seem to NEED that and crave for that, GOG...

but really, if you are bothered by my privacy and tranquility THAT BADLY MUCH and want to expose me all around like a zoo animal or whatever to your other users, what about me starting to post pics of my butt and dick all around ? anti-privacy festival here yeeeeeeeeh ! no ? really ?

This place started as an online store for digital distribution of video games. I came here as a CUSTOMER to PURCHASE games and go back to my routine offline (routine that includes "playing those games"), i didnt come here to get exposed as a zoo beast, i didnt come here to "make friends", meld myself in the social sea of gangbanging online human interactions of my bollocks, i didnt come here to find friends or love or people or whatever... (no offense meant to you all, guies, though)

So give me the choice to remain out of your current social-sugarish madness of socialnetwork-retardry thank you ! that's not what i went looking for here, that's not what i signed for, that's not what i PAID for. Or do you intend to sell some subscription based "PREMIUM" service for xx bucks a month just to have people be left alone and in peace outside of your nonsensical whims ? Like "ok, we expose you, your activity, your gaming taste, and possibly your personal informtions, publicly no matter you want it or not... BUT for an additional modest monthly fee, we agree on leaving you alone out of it !"

IS it what you have in mind ?

Gee, you are making all the stupid whimsical mistakes FB did a decade ago... you are a bit late on the supidity-train, you know ? the joke grew old and cold by far

and also, how exactly will they manage to make those "user profiles" and "user activities" worthwhile, or at least consistent with some meat on its bone ?

i mean: they will need something to fill up these profiles and activities with data... so they will need some data collecting solution. Oneis simple: gog galaxy, that will basically monitor, spy on your each and every move (already does) but also quickly will run in the town center square with a loud speaker to shout out about it.
it's basically as if someone was spying you through your outside window, then would go on the center of the town/village to shout out each of your everymove "TODAY mister someone put a black and white striped underwear ! He had cereal for breakfast, he masturbated twice before lunch, he got up late because he is a lazy bunch as those monthly statistics are prooving it, he played 3 hours of a game this afternoon while he had some study essai to deliver..." and such.

So they have Galaxy to do the necessary data collecting and data gathering for their new SOSHIAL features.

but what about the insufferable obsolete folks who dare to NOT use galaxy ? how do we track their every move and gaming activity ?
maybe by having games from now on only launching if a piece of software is running in the background in your computer (and this piece of software is allowed some networking rights to send telemetry). And if the software piece of shit aint running ? game wont launch ? right ?

Oh wait ! that is called DRM and that is the steam client in a nutshell...

i clearly see where they are headed

go on, keep pretending privacy is an obsolete thing of the past and i'm not entitled to mine, go on fucking with my privacy some more.. and all you'll get will be pictures of my dick and butt !

The amount of "uniqueness" / "identifiability" caused by the country being displayed is several orders of magnitude lower than that caused by revealing your friends list. It also isn't done for "everyone", but only for those users who post on the forums, while the plans for the profile feature will be to turn it on for literally everyone.

That's not to say that the country being displayed by default isn't a problem under the GDPR (particularly if it's also going to appear on everyone's profile, making it a much larger data-leak than it currently is), but of course the context of the current conversation is about the new planned features, where the discussion simply started with classic-gamer questioning the lack of "privacy-by-default" and mechmouse clarifying that this is bad under the GDPR, and most of the thread since then consisting of people explaining GDPR requirements to those who're not yet aware of them.

And given just how imminent the GDPR is, it really doesn't make any sense at all for gog to be introducing new features that flaunt its requirements like this - entirely separate from the fact that old features should also be changed to adhere to them.

Meanwhile, I personally have of course opted out (and even emptied my friends list), and so am very grateful to gog for the early warning. And in the grand scheme of things, there's much worse privacy violations by other parties to worry about. Gog is definitely not all horrible or evil because of their plans here; just slightly misguided. But a key part for GDPR-readiness is raising awareness, and that's worth it in any venue.

Like I just said, I think we should have the option to not set any country. And I have seen on more than one occasion people express a similiar sentiment. We're not raging about that issue here just like we're not complaining about the rep system here. We've long since learned that GOG won't touch these things. It's a thread about the new feature and we're trying to convince GOG to change how they implement that because maybe that can still be influenced. Though I don't really hold out much hope.

Any chance that behaviour could/will be extended to the wishlist? That's currently visible to non-logged in visitors as well when the privacy setting for it is set to "everyone".

Your friend list is revealed to friends only ny default. And by your definition of "by default", I can say that just like your country is displayed only if you post on the forums, your friend list is displayed only if you add any friends.

Also, you're forgetting that while not posting is the only way of not having your country displayed, you can opt-out of every social feature and are not forced to refrain from any activities to do so.

I think it's blatantly clear that country display is a much more serious issue (at least in comparison to the one being complained about right now, because I still think it's a non-issue), yet it's never been brought up until I mentioned it in this thread.

all the old previous settings i had set to "no one/ me only" had been reverted to "everyone", afaic.... so understand my surprise and my upsetting in this one

*can't delete message, really?*

5 recently active friends are revealed to everyone on your profile. Monitor the profile every hour, and within a couple of days you'll have close enough to the entire friends list as to make no difference.

See the de-anonymization discussion from yesterday as to just how serious revealing network-information like this is. There's 17 million people who'd list my country; there's only 1 who'd list my unique combination of friends.

And as Breja said, just because you haven't seen people complain about the country display before, doesn't mean those complaints haven't been uttered quite regularly.

Am I the only one sickened by that?

I just changed everything to everyone.

Screw it.

In fact, feel free to ask me about anything that isn't mentioned on there. :P

well... did you ever consider asking our own opinion or feeling on that matter FIRST ?
i mean, before declaring we all are forced to be friends all together and befriend everyone here ?

because i dont like being patronized like i were your 5yo child and that someone decide who i am supposed to like, befriend and such, instead of me deciding it myself !

Also, you (rethorical "you" in fact, as in global nowadays stupid trending "you") have a rather binary vision of "friend" but i guess it's the whole poison of social network. Sadly, i had to flag as "friend" a small handful of people here for various reasons (such as, for example, being able to keep talking with me despite strict pricavy settings becoming necessary because of some corporate whimsical decisions of GOG or someone else), but those people are NOT my "friends". I have friends, irl, mind you, and i know what kind of feelings and stuff i would put in the word "friend"... Online occasional buddies are NOT friends on that regard, but today on internet it's either "BFF we sleep together in same bed since kindergarden" level of friend or "complete stranger i block". Which is toxic and poisonous, regarding semantic.
So, no, GOG blues are NOT my friends, gog random users (as exceptionnal human beings as they may be in private life) are NOT my friends either... And i'm not the new magical friend of everyone here like some prize puppet doll or whatever (remember the new "getting harassed by countless new friend requests because of galaxy's new feature and FB interfacing with gog's api ?" ? because i got several (like in "too many") friends requests of people i didnt know a dime at all, to the point of harassment. Great vision of your new "improved user experience"

Well, frankly, i give the others my share of "improved user experience" then, you can keep it !

some people dont mind being "random user", some people in fact WANT to be kept as "random user, some people just want to be a customer (but a customer with the regular customer rights entitled by laws of his country and/or EU)
I went here to be a customer... the day i'll feel like "socializing" my hermit self, i would prefer it to happen upon MY OWN TERMS, and not being dictated"who" and "how" i should befriend, talk, be nice, socialize

TL;DR: We are your CUSTOMERS... give us the CHOICE of being "more" than that if WE WANT it, and stop treating us like your CHILDREN/CATTLE/FLOCK/BRANDED SLAVES and decide for us what we want, what we thinka nd what we like.. thank you.
You are an online store, so mind your own BUSINESS, will you ? if you want to create couples, become a matrimonial agency or some dating online service instead !

i guess you can count me in too on this one...
were not changed by me either ! unless you are somehow accusing me of being either a liar, a schizophreniac or a sleepwalker !
then it had been reset in some previous website update without me noticing
(and instead of getting notifications or emails about games that had no change but internal installer structure... having notification about "website recent tech update may had resetted back your settings" could be nice, either on the website or by email)

because it's already the 3rd or 4th time i have to set them back to "me only" from "everyone, yeeeeeeeh naked hippie festival" in the last 3 years (coincidentally: since GOG decided to go crazy with the all social online features about "we are all friends" like fgalaxy, new website design to match it, and other new features... as i said "coincidentally", of course)