It's standard EULA wording, "Trusted Partners" can means a lot of things, for example if you are a big company / medium company and hire consultants to work on some projects, then the company providing you said consultants is a "trusted partner", if your services are hosted in Azuze or Amazon cloud, then Microsoft or Amazon are also trusted partners and, in case they need to do some support, they might have access to some of your sensitive data, (Usually you have some very strict NDAs in place), etc...

Missed this earlier, but I did happen to write about it in the other thread. It's a standard wording, true, but some companies are also specifically mentioned in the privacy policy, including Facebook. And with the recent developments of GOG's front page, it's pretty obvious, in addition to the privacy policy document, that Facebook is part of their Trusted Partners. As sad and hilarious as that is given US hearings and one scandal after the other.

Of course we can't know 100%, nor what kind of data will flow in both directions, but given the document and context, I think it's a more than reasonable conclusion to make, and I am frankly more worried about that than I was about number of games and hours (0 in my case) listed on the profile.

To be able to log in with Facebook you need to have Facebook account.
If you have Facebook account, damage is already done.

Facebook collects data on everyone it brushes against, not just users. The fact that their login scripts generate ID hashes that include timestamps, individual token information, and probably hardware and location information at the very least is disturbing, especially when no one can verify that that information isn't collected simply by having the Facebook button load on their screen (it doesn't on mine as I have it blocked with my ad blocker). Facebook collects information on everyone "to protect and identify their users" etc but that's just hogwash.

True, that's why everyone and their pet having "like" buttons on their pages allows fb to track people (all people, not just their users) all across the internet.
I recommend uBlock Origin to everyone (I also use uMatrix, but then half of the internet is broken by default because most sites think it's a good idea to link jQuery from gstatic letting Google track all visitors by IP and browser fingerprinting...), but there are other alternatives too (like Ghostery).

Please be careful when recommending Ghostery. I don't think it is a good idea to mention it without mentioning that it used (or uses?) to share you information unless you opt-out from the data mining.

As a fellow user of uBlock Origin and uMatrix, I would say that uBlock Origin is the absolute minimum that everyone should use.

I have asked myself that same question several times. Here is what conclusion I came to.

These decisions were not made by people like us. They came from GOG's hierarchy of directors. So compare things:
Users are like games and are here for the games. Directors may not be gamers, they are here for the money. Games are just a commodity.
Some users care for the principles on which GOG was founded on. Directors they they are holding GOG back from earning more money and got rid of as many of they as they could.
Some users care about having control and ownership of their games. Directors care about expanding their userbase and earning more money.
Users use the installers often and want to safeguard their collection. Directors don't install games and don't care for they. They are suits.
Some users are aware of the technical inconveniences caused by GOG changes and decisions. Directors don't need to be computer literate and may ignore input from GOG staff. And it does not affect they.
Some users care for their privacy. Directors don't have their privacy on the line. And they may not be up to some nefarious doing, but who knows if the next director of GOG will do with the data they already have? It is not their problem, is it?

So there you have it. It is not that GOG's users and GOG's directors are in direct opposition, it is that they see things differently. While it is so easy to see the GOG directors as incompetent cartoon villains, they simply have different priorities: making GOG grow, paying their staff and getting a name for themselves so that they can move into some bigger company with an ever greater pay check.

DLC? GOG Galaxy? Galaxy in the installers? GOG profiles? That all adds up in their spreadsheet. We can call understand that default in gets a greater number of desired results than default out. So what about the old-timers who already gave us their money? You are still here. GOG gets 3 new users for each old user that walks away, ergo profit!

Fixing the forum, a better non-Windows experience, better game updates, more good games being accepted... how does that improve the bottom line of GOG? Does that even render in the chart?

The bottom line is: those guys were hired to do a job and they are doing it. I'd say they are doing it better than we would do it because we would have different priorities that would not maximize profit. It may be that they are not dumb, but simply chasing other goals.

1st: yes those TOS are now standard and commonly seen among most of the datamining major online services companies
and they always claim it's only for the sake of technical working
but, you can believe me or not, those TOS are intentionally damn vague and wide, enough to permit litteraly everything, including what you think/claim/hope they wouldnt dowith it
because, if it were only for the sake of tech working, they could completely word their TOS very differently for it to still work !

also you claim "api login access" to "sharing database" is a big stretch... yeah, sure... but i already saw such a stretch with one of the other major GAFAM company and a small company of my country when i was working for it (small company being "national phone/landline/ISP operator)
you just wouldnt believe all the bypassing, the special treatments, the numerous completely out of normal procedures and the remote access the big company was granted by the operator just for it to stay within good grace of the big company. would any competitor had heard about those conditions they were granted, i think said competitors would have all fled or requested exactly the same (which would have been very detrimental to the operator)
so NO, it is not a BIG stretch. When you invite an OGRE at your table ,you shall not expect him to eat light and dont request several plates and dishes at your table for him to eat

also yes, the recent hearing WAS a joke, i mean, what was repproached to Zuckerberg was only whatever people sheepishly consented legally already, and then those people played surprised and outraged. on tht i agree with you. the whole fight would require both struggling agianst such submissive TOS to ever be written and then proposed to people who cant/dont wanrt to read AND to educate people about such kind of TOS so they dont accept them blindly. Needless to say, it's a fight that is bound to be lost in advance !
The fact a company like GOG, based in EU, ever DARE to pull their 5-10 decades old clumsy trick of others GAFAM company during the same week of the hearing clearly shows they know it's worthless, they know people are bound to do what they always do regardles of consequences, and they can go away against whatever law in that matter using some typical loopholes.
Which, for me, shows exactly what GOG's intents obviously are.

and yes people will still continue their dull routine regarding their own digital footprint, there is no hope dissuading them from doing that: they are addict to the false feeling of socializing with random strangers based upon weak critrias. and ye syoua re right: as long as it is OPTIONAL and we are given a CHOICE

and optional + choice was all we here wanted/asked for

and the argument we were served by the oversocializing advocates ? that if we small minority were given optionality and choice in that matter, it would STRIP THEM away from their precious social feature !
how stupid is that argument please ? i'm short of words !

because, see ? GOG finally added a privacy setting button about "disabling profile completly", and guess what, i clicked it as soon as i was informed of it. and guess what more: none of the other people who were happy with the feature and were using it were suddenly stripped away from it ! People still have their profile and i have my privacy. We are doing each other strictly no loss here but the majority, for the sole sake of it being the majority, preferred us to not have any choice or option for whatever reason than us being not many.
choice was not that hard to provide

now there will always be the default settings question ! it is questionable and it is done wrong, imho. but some will argu it is done so to help the feature getting worthy for them and for gog. Ok, but i can only tolerate it in a world when the privacy settings one user sentiently and willingly choose do not get reset every here and there whenever they want to add more social features or whatever. Because that's exactly what FB used to clumsily (or intentionaly or both) do like what, 5 years ago or more, when they were adding new features after features: every user settings were reset back. To the point it was common knowledge among doxxers and other scammers that whenever a new FB feature was launched, they had a good time window of several days to rush and roam upon most unmonitored and uncorrected settings. And GOG do just that (my settings had been changed from what i already changed into, lile, 3 weeks ago, with the whole wave of random strangers friend requests that flooded us)

so i will have to resort to some failproof/failswitch method to anticipate the moments when GOG will again change my settings back to default, and default being "all open publicly good social festival hey" (also known as "trousers and pants down and butt wide opened")
and... sadly you are awfully right and accurate

but one thing though... it doesnt mean WE have to surrender or give up OUR priorities just because others do have different ones

now if someone think he has to willingly give up to his own interest just because a few bigger sharks are conflicting with it, we have a problem, right ?

especially after i heard people here pushing a completely different song among ourselves like "the biggest number nullify any smaller group's rights and interests for the sake of majority's good" :)

hopefully the flock of many small do have a couple of ways to force big ones with different interests to ever take into consideration our owns: pissing off our repreentatives to push in laws that will protect the interest of many

Hadn't heard about uMatrix before, but I do use uBlock Origin, Ghostery and noScript, amongst others. Combined it should give a decent protection, and noScript especially is excellent for seeing just how deeply entrenched these big data miners are in websites all over the web -- including GOG of course.

Am not a lawyer myself, but I work with legal documents routinely in my job. When companies use wording to the effect of creating a huge loophole, that is put in for a reason, and it sure as hell isn't there to protect end users, but the company. In this case, it may have well been printed in capital letters that data transfers between GOG and Facebook.

Even if GOG somehow found a moral compass in a dark drawer somewhere and tried to prevent data sharing with Facebook, just by using that Facebook login feature on the frontpage, Facebook will get heaps of information about unsuspecting users, not just those who are dense enough to log in with Facebook. The US hearings were a joke, but this whole revelation has caused some informative articles, which has shed some light on all this.

As for Facebook more generally, it's too tempting to quote what Zuckerberg said back in the day, about people sharing private information with him/them, from an article posted here somewhere.

-They just give it to me.
-Dumbasses.

Very strongly NO. The "Login with facebook" button is delivered as a plain HTML link with a bit of CSS from the GOG servers. At this point no scripts, cookies or anything else is coming from the fb servers. It's just a link shaped like a button that is blue and says "Facebook" on it.
Only when you actually click the button, a popup with actual facebook content is opened - and only then facebook can "see you".

GOG actually did this the right way.

PS: uMatrix is a third-party script blocker that interacts with uBlock. You don't need it if you have NoScript, I just find uMatrix more convenient for everyday use. NoScript is a bit more granular.

To minimize that kind of tracking maybe complement uBlock with Decentraleyes.

If you use Firefox, they have their own way of 'containing' Facebook. It seems to do the job. I also use uBlock and NoScript

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/facebook-container/

toxicTom, eiii and ZenWan, thank you guys. using it now. :)

I was thinking that, in order to have GOG do us right, we needed a larger number of educated gamers. I see that you took the more general view of the problem, but I think that the solution is the same one: a voice must be heard saying "we will not put up with this. We want something better."

I do not wish to follow the larger political route here in this discussion, but regarding GOG, what could be done? The wish list does not seem to work. Would the GOG Wiki do it?