I'm not so sure that Feral/Aspyr included redshell in their ports. Unity games seem to be much more worrying because they may actually be able to use it on Linux.

Host files are your friend.

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

I recommend the sandboxing program named firejail (which is easy to use - you just type firejail, followed by the command you would have otherwise typed, such as steam). (I also recommend sandboxing / not trusting any proprietary program, even if you don't hear or read of some controversy like this one.) (Sandboxing Steam also sandboxes all programs started via Steam.) (If you're using Debian, you can find firejail in its repositories.)

Edit:
Actually, did I misunderstand what it's tracking, exactly?

Quoting: s8as8aI recommend the sandboxing program named firejail (which is easy to use - you just type firejail, followed by the command you would have otherwise typed, such as steam). (I also recommend sandboxing / not trusting any proprietary program, even if you don't hear or read of some controversy like this one.) (Sandboxing Steam also sandboxes all programs started via Steam.) (If you're using Debian, you can find firejail in its repositories.)

Edit:
Actually, did I misunderstand what it's tracking, exactly?

Thanks for the program , will check it out.
It tracks how successful ad campaigns are.
It collects OS , monitor resolution , browsers installed , IP address etc.
They say that it is sent in hash and it won't uniquely identify you , but I do not trust it especially since it is opt-in by default.

More than that, they even explicitly state it tracks what sites you visit and videos you open. The spooks try to deflect criticism by playing with language: "...we are tracking what machines do..." instead of "...we are tracking what users do..."

This only pushes me even further toward simply following a no proprietary anything rule even for games. Are we going to have to start testing every game we buy through wireshark?

Quoting: GustyGhostThis only pushes me even further toward simply following a no proprietary anything rule even for games. Are we going to have to start testing every game we buy through wireshark?

You're right... But "when" the games will be ALL DRM-free, we'll have to open source ALL of them...
It will be hard and I don't expect all of Linux users to be agree with that, unfortunately.

Quoting: Cyril

Quoting: GustyGhostThis only pushes me even further toward simply following a no proprietary anything rule even for games. Are we going to have to start testing every game we buy through wireshark?

You're right... But "when" the games will be ALL DRM-free, we'll have to open source ALL of them...
It will be hard and I don't expect all of Linux users to be agree with that, unfortunately.

Truth be told I'm not against closed source proprietary software.
I can understand why some companies might want to protect their intellectual property.
But more and more in this age everyone seems to want to have your data , from governments to social media and ad companies.
And when I see this under handed data slurp in games of all things I am starting to understand the people who advocate open source only more and more.

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: Cyril

Quoting: GustyGhostThis only pushes me even further toward simply following a no proprietary anything rule even for games. Are we going to have to start testing every game we buy through wireshark?

You're right... But "when" the games will be ALL DRM-free, we'll have to open source ALL of them...
It will be hard and I don't expect all of Linux users to be agree with that, unfortunately.

Truth be told I'm not against closed source proprietary software.
I can understand why some companies might want to protect their intellectual property.
But more and more in this age everyone seems to want to have your data , from governments to social media and ad companies.
And when I see this under handed data slurp in games of all things I am starting to understand the people who advocate open source only more and more.

There's always a middle ground. We need to openly boycott unethical companies who invade our privacy for profit, but there's no reason to punish the rest of them. It's not "open source" vs. "evil".

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: s8as8aI recommend the sandboxing program named firejail (which is easy to use - you just type firejail, followed by the command you would have otherwise typed, such as steam). (I also recommend sandboxing / not trusting any proprietary program, even if you don't hear or read of some controversy like this one.) (Sandboxing Steam also sandboxes all programs started via Steam.) (If you're using Debian, you can find firejail in its repositories.)

Edit:
Actually, did I misunderstand what it's tracking, exactly?

Thanks for the program , will check it out.
It tracks how successful ad campaigns are.
It collects OS , monitor resolution , browsers installed , IP address etc.
They say that it is sent in hash and it won't uniquely identify you , but I do not trust it especially since it is opt-in by default.

From what I've read, it collects enough data to uniquely "fingerprint" each user and track them across the internet. It supposedly doesn't track personal details, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to figure out based on the "fingerprint" and someone's browsing habits.

If you class it as spyware then I'm sorry to tell you that 99.9% of websites is infected by the "spyware" known as "google analytics".

As far as I can tell red shell does the exact same thing - provide generalized user/usage statistics, not quite sure why you'd think it sinister that they would like to know how much ram/gpu power/screen resolution/etc the people that actually play their game has. It's useful data that will help the tune the game and prioritize bug fixing; 95% of active players are Nvidia users @1920x1080p ? maybe bugs relating to that needs fixing first.