ValveHardware Survey: Hash of MAC-Address. WHY

[RedPill]

Dear Steam, I was just about to participate in the hardware survey. Looked trough the info i was about to send, until the last line when you guys wanted the hash of my freakin MAC-ADDRESS! With all respect, WHY? Like, seriously, give me a legit reason WHY YOU WOULD NEED THIS?

A MAC-ADDRESS is unique to each network interface. Never changes. So you hash it for privacy I assume? But that hash will be just as unique as the address itself? And only if you knew my address in advance you could match it?

I would have loved to participate, but this is really odd. C'mon guys.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originalmente postado por RedPill:

It would just be nice if there was a tiney bit more explaination about what data is collected for what purpose.

You know now that things get hashed to store them without knowing them.

They can be compared to the other hashes (avoiding doubles)
or
if you enter the real data (at login for example) to see if its the real login, but not needing to know the real login.

If it was a problem to know your mac address anyway, that would imply it would leak all day. If it leaks all day, its not secret.
If its kept secret, and the survey would reveal it to steam, its just that they know your mac.
What would that do?

[vorespawn]

Originalmente postado por brian9824:

Most likely as you already said its just a unique identifier so you can't fill out the survey multiple times, again if you don't trust them with the info don't do it.

Most likely they won't explain why especially as valve doesn't have an email they answer. If they were doing anything shady they wouldn't even tell you they collect it after all.

The MAC address shouldn't be included, it is an unnecessary, potentially dangerous bit of data to collect. We already have unique accounts, they don't need our MAC address to identify us.
I don't fill out the survey because of this, inclusion, but I actually read it, many do not. It is like giving your social security number out to some outsourced call center to change your cable package.
Ultimately valve is responsible for the data they collect and if/or/when a violation does occur they could face a class action suit. There is no reason for this data to be collected, I would argue the collection of it itself may be unlawful, the CEO of steam certainly has no idea how the data could be used, but the guy who designed the code might have a side-business selling the data, or someone on his team. Companies like valve have a lot of turn-over and programmers themselves aren't the most well adjusted stable bunch of human beings.

[davidb11]

You did not read this thread, right?
Please read it.
You cannot claim the MAC address is dangerous period.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Originalmente postado por vorespawn:

Originalmente postado por brian9824:

Most likely as you already said its just a unique identifier so you can't fill out the survey multiple times, again if you don't trust them with the info don't do it.

Most likely they won't explain why especially as valve doesn't have an email they answer. If they were doing anything shady they wouldn't even tell you they collect it after all.

The MAC address shouldn't be included, it is an unnecessary, potentially dangerous bit of data to collect. We already have unique accounts, they don't need our MAC address to identify us.
I don't fill out the survey because of this, inclusion, but I actually read it, many do not. It is like giving your social security number out to some outsourced call center to change your cable package.
Ultimately valve is responsible for the data they collect and if/or/when a violation does occur they could face a class action suit. There is no reason for this data to be collected, I would argue the collection of it itself may be unlawful, the CEO of steam certainly has no idea how the data could be used, but the guy who designed the code might have a side-business selling the data, or someone on his team. Companies like valve have a lot of turn-over and programmers themselves aren't the most well adjusted stable bunch of human beings.

They hash the mac address.
And if one day someone manages to get the real mac address out of that hash, nothing happens. Because its a hardware identifier. Nothing can be done with it apart from identifying hardware.

[KillahInstinct]

Originalmente postado por McFlurry Butts:

Originalmente postado por my new friend:

People should use the search.
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2284960483101575946/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/10/2284960483106055452/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2577697615745449298/

Imagine necroing threads to the front page every time you want to talk about something.

This is a common misunderstanding with necro-ing. A thread can only be necro-ed if the new post is not related to said topic (imagine someone posting about his new shoes in one of those threads) or if the old topic is not relevant anymore (for example, posting about how negative side effects of something that was already fixed).

Searching and sticking to one thread in the same topic is definitely encouraged and makes for things to be less repetitive and more organized.

[[N]ebsun]

Originalmente postado por vorespawn:

The MAC address shouldn't be included, it is an unnecessary, potentially dangerous bit of data to collect. We already have unique accounts, they don't need our MAC address to identify us.
I don't fill out the survey because of this, inclusion, but I actually read it, many do not. It is like giving your social security number out to some outsourced call center to change your cable package.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_data
A MAC address is not considered PII (personally identifiable information) data - it alone cannot be used to identify you. In this thread, it was explained why they need it and also that they do not even colled the MAC address itself, but an irreversible hash of it.

It was explained also that they do not use it to identify us, and since your steamid is not collected it is not even linked to your account.

Here is one of my MAC addresses, 9C-29-76-C3-F3-9C it is even used and transmitted publicly if I were to use EUI64 IPV6 addressing.

Can you explain how it is "potentially dangerous" to collect the hash of MAC addresses ?

(Steam also already stores your IP address, linked to your account when you login, so I don't know how you would trust that any more than your MAC address ?)

[pvpscrub]

What he's trying to say is that it shouldn't be something captured and sent in the hardware survey. They can just do the hash, check if its already been submitted, and then dump the var it was stored in.

Seems like they saw the twitter files incident and want in on that cut. Much too intrusive for me.

[Doctor Zalgo]

Originalmente postado por pvpscrub:

What he's trying to say is that it shouldn't be something captured and sent in the hardware survey. They can just do the hash, check if its already been submitted, and then dump the var it was stored in.

Seems like they saw the twitter files incident and want in on that cut. Much too intrusive for me.

If you think them knowing the hash of your mac address is bad, you'll lose your ♥♥♥♥ when you realise they have your credit card information.

[Seraphita]

"This thread was quite old before the recent post..."? (Sorry mods, just guessing what will logically happen to this thread.) But yeah, I don't think steam does much of anything with what data they collect. Not sure what steam would even do with that.

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.