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Comment by Flammy | Hacker News Reader

Many reddit posts have outright stated that Red Shell was "spyware" with no indication that 1) they were misusing data 2) no data that is harmful was being collected.

> Consumers do not want to pay money for a product and then also have their data harvested to be used to make even more money off of them.

Agreed. And both the game devs and Red Shell as far as I can see aren't selling this data. The devs are spending money to use Red Shell to try to have better / more cost effective advertising campaigns.

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The fact that the actors involved are not _currrently_ selling the data does not mean that can't change in an instant. Many other company's have pulled the "we're not selling your data" card only to switch later. Consumers do not trust companies to harvest this data anymore because as a class, company's have proven themselves untrustworthy.

They are outraged because the data is being collected at all, not what you are using it for

To be considered spyware, software needs only to collect data covertly. It doesn’t matter whether the data is used appropriately or not.

> And both the game devs and Red Shell as far as I can see aren't selling this data.

Just collecting the data makes it vulnerable to abuse. What if there is a breach?

So somebody will know what timezone I have, what fonts I have installed and what browsers? Linked to my in-game ID?

I am struggling to think of how this affect my life.

If you want better/more cost effective campaigns, do what was done in the past: just fucking ask!

The nature of marketing hasn't changed at all over the years. Show an impression, ask what the user was influenced by. Surreptitiously stealing data off of someone's computer as a means of answering the question is flat out the wrong way to do it.

You don't get to decide what data I need to share with you or your advertising partners, or what constitutes a misuse of my data. That's up to me. I get to make that decision.

If you take my personal data without my consent, I will consider that an intrusion upon my privacy.

targeting me with advertisements is data misuse. Sorry you can't see that.

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