by the way I do need to say one thing.

there is a checkbox below everything that says "allow people to find you by email address or username"

email address and gog username are not on the same privacy tier.

if you let people query your database for emails then that could be abused. I really think it's a bad idea to let anybody query your database for email addresses.

Even the hidden ones? That doesn't make much sense in my eyes.

While I certainly appreciate the forum notification (and thankfully actually stumbled on it rather than be presented with another fait accompli), I would like to point out that there is one huge elephant in the room that I am less than thrilled about.

Introduction of these features means that GOG is increasingly interested in collating data on its users in the same way the big names in data-mining do. Coupled with your close collaboration with Facebook, and the changed privacy policy being painted in such a wide brush as to allow pretty much anything you want to do with the gathered data, this does not inspire much confidence in the long-term commitment to user privacy.

Also, the rollout of FB integration and now this change makes me wonder if GOG has not learned of the GDPR having some provision for "already in place" things that would otherwise be prohibited and curtailed. The timing is rather suspicious, to put it mildly.

All in all, I could do without any of that, thank you. People who don't care have Steam, anyway.

Thanks for the heads up, it was much needed seeing how you chose to go about it; this feels like the introduction of the NAS, and all the hiccups and mistakes that came with it in terms of privacy, all over again.

I'd have preferred you shared some details, as the vague terms of "profile summary", "recent activity" and "recently active friends", all lumped together and set to "everyone", doesn't sound like the first-hand experience will be all that pleasant for everyone, especially if they miss this thread which doesn't stand out.

And I can't help but notice that while you've made this unofficial announcement as a sort of privacy awareness one, a lot of your wording indicates that you (GOG) wants to hype people up about this feature.

I will echo what a lot of others have said:
1. Every setting should be set to max privacy; it should always be opt-in, not opt-out.
2. Profiles, activity and active friends should be separate settings.
3. Send out emails, the same way you did when chat was set to "friends only".

And going over the revamped privacy tab, I see that the chat related option has been reworded and now states [emphasis added]: I'm a bit confused, it can be read as if people that have chatted you before still can even if your setting doesn't allow it, as in people not on your friends list when chat is set to "friends only". Is it just a bit of awkward wording there, or have you made any changes?

Big +1s to MajicMan (post #49), toxicTom (post #57), mechmouse (post #58), GR00T (posts #61 & #67), Cavalary (post #73), RWarehall (post #76), gogtrial34987 (posts #103 & #117), Ganni1987 (post #109), Breja (post #142), and johnnygoging (post #153) for expressing my own thoughts.
Well, if you want to be fair, you should speak only for yourself.



Not sure I follow, can you elaborate?



Exactly, I've only have chat set to friends, everything else is for my eyes only, and it should be up to me to change it or not.



So anyone that isn't and acts like you is a crybaby? You sure are quick to judge people you know nothing about.



And there lies the problem. Perhaps people should care more about their data and privacy, read ToS, Privacy Policies and the rest, and venture into their settings page to see what's going and make an informed and conscious choice.



+1.


+1.


+1.

That's a good point.

I, for one, miss my correspondence with Nigerian royalty looking for a quick way to move the treasury out of the country...

They should probably go for Wakanda now. Might get a few replies.

Damn you for ninja-ing my mistake.

I meant Nigerian, not Ethiopian. It's been that long since the prince wrote to me :(

I was being fair to gog. However, this isn't unfair to anyone else, either. If I say "chinese people are short," am i really being unfair to them? Yao Ming is not going to throw a fit, either, but look around and shake his head to signal "yep, you're right." This whole facebook thing: no one cared before, and right now no one still cares, aside from politicians, because the "facebook leak" is all about Donald Trump. No one cared when facebook was running mental experiments on users, and admitted it. No one cared when we said facebook was giving our convos and stuff to the government, and facebook admitted it. Why does anyone suddenly care about this scandal about psychological profiles, when that's the very thing facebook does to make money off of us with targeted advertising? No one really does, the memes are just funny.

So when we're going to get "arch nemesis" and "mortal enemy" tabs next to our useless friend tab no one uses?

So we'll have:

* a profile we can refer to now
* Activity that may or may not be public
* And games we can show that's in our collection.

Hmmm as long as you can control each of them individually, i say more options are good.

I do hope there's also an option to see your own posts on the forums and can scan/sift through them. Finding an old post here in the forums is a pain!

This. Really, this made me realise that a day is coming, and probably sooner rather than later, that I say goodbye to GOG for good. Most people will not understand this, but all of these social features just make me uncomfortable, even when I can opt out of them. I get this feeling like the only adult in a movie screening otherwise full of children, this "what am I even doing here". This is not my beautiful social network. These are not my beautiful friends. How did I get here?! And the more prevalent the social features become the more I question how much "opting out" really matters.

And if that means no more games to play... I guess by that point playing a solitaire board game or a choose your own adventure book will be more fun for me anyway :P

Maybe I'm odd, but, if I was doing this I would start by giving everyone the settings at max privacy; so that those that wish to may share everything and those that don't, those who hardly read this forum anymore (me for instance), don't have to find out the hard way that everyone can see everything because they don't read everything on GOG. Of course, I am odd, and not just maybe. Still, it seems like the polite thing to do , to me.
I guess I have a physic bond with you still GOG, because for some reason today of all days I read your forums, so, lucky me. Privacy Engaged.

I don't mind as long as these new user profiles don't invite stuff like trading cards and obnoxious backgrounds, such as they are on Steam.

Nothing is as good as it used to be...

At a minimum level i see these as useful. But most of it is an invasion of privacy. And the idea that if you don't have scripting disabled for Facebook, they know you visited this page at time/date, and if you are logged in they even have a name to attach to it (and if you aren't logged in, they will still collect data on you). Add that there's 10,000 something sites that link to facebook scripts they will know. And if they scrape your cookies, they will also know what pornhub videos you watched, what you have in your amazon cart, and anything you searched for in any search engine as long as it's in memory.

And they never delete it, and you never opted in to it...

I hope GoG doesn't go to these routes that far. The whole 'I like XYZ game' is fine, but when you are being tracked beyond what you are publicly admitting/showing is a problem.

Some have brought up that LifeLog was shut down at the time that Facebook came Online, and Facebook does more or less the same thing. Coincidence?