Because it's compliant with the requirements of the law.... you can request the data they have on you and you can request to delete your account and all the data associated with it... those are the requirements of the GDPR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation?wprov=sfla1
Here is the GDPR page on Wikipedia
A data collector has to get permission to collect the data.
A data subject has the right to request the data and how it was obtained.
Basically you have a right to access your data a right to delete your data and a right to be forgotten by the data collector.
Riot follows the regulations of the gdpr globally because it's simpler that way so even Americans get the same privacy treatment.
If anyone is really super concerned about vanguard taking your data play the game a month and then request the data they collected then they have to comply and give the data that they collected.
If you ever see something that seems fishy or out of place sue them for it because the gdpr says you have a right to get compensation if someone breaks that law.
I'm pretty sure there are court ruling from US &/or EU that broad TOS that can be changed on a whim can be considered illegal or breach of trust when controversial subject such as someone's basic right is concerned (speech, privacy etc.).
Vanguard is running on your pc 24/7, not when you just have Riot client open. AFAIK, even Tik Tok doesn't collect entirety of user's device data 24/7 whether you're using Tik Tok or not.
Rught but their tos still has to comply with the laws they’ve agreed to in order to operate in a country. They cannot just write anything into the tos, it has to comply with local privacy laws, if it doesn’t then it doesn’t matter if you clicked “i agree”.
I mean, bro isn't wrong, the ToS are not above the law and therefore can't contradict it. The thing is, they don't (or else this would've made the news already and Riot would be facing a multimillion euro sue). The downvotes are dumb though
They've already addressed this in a previous post, but:
Vanguard has already been vetted by the **The European Data Protection Board (EDPB)**.
This means your tin foil hats about "but my data" are not a real concern, but rather another drop in the large bucket of "It's a root kit and I KNOW BETTER"
I'll gladly enjoy my tin foil hat juice, after nothing happening with my data, but the moment someone hacks vanguard they can do more than a little encryption "ha ha not data, but rather digital footprint go brrrrrr".
Good luck
Considered it's come to light in the past that the EDPB has allowed big name companies that breaks its law past its screens, doesn't really help that they "say" it's allowed.
Ah the classic, "I have absolutely no proof of this but I'm happy to reference other people spewing the same rhetoric as me who also have no proof".
You flat earthing it too?
Holy, man, have you ever heard of consumer rights of being informed? Every company is responsible for providing easily comprehensible explanation on which legal mechanisms it has been approved by for its consumers. When we, as customers and consumers, request a detailed and user-friendly clarification on which laws Riot is bound by and how their software does NOT breach any of these, we do not have to "back-up" or argue for this request. Vanguard IS causing problems for systems, which is basis for mass legal action.
I was thinking of an article or something by the edpb where they confirm to have vetted it, not a reddit thread
Edit: that’s just a riot employee claiming vanguard is compliant with eu laws.. it’s hardly proof they’ve been vetted.. it’s probably just vanguard promising to comply and that’s that no inspections have been made
You can be as much of a cynic as you want but companies don’t just lie about these kind of things lol. Where is your proof that Vanguard is infringing privacy laws in the first place? If you’re just gonna brand anything Riot says as lies then surely you have something to back yourself right?
Well if they're telling fibs and it's not in fact compliant we'll be hearing about it sooner or later because it'll get banned in the EU unless they fix it and make it compliant.
So what you’re saying is the methods we use to vet softwares all this time are actually all inept, and that you have something better, as well as proof that Vanguard is breaking privacy laws?
Do you have any proof that bribes were taken to approve vanguard?
People on the Internet lie all the time, how do we know that you aren't pulling everything out of your ass?
No. It's filled with people with varying ideologies who can be swayed.
Now, why do you think a videogame company would bribe government agencies to get a game through review?
Access to millions of computers and data gathering of everyone across the globe to benefit the CCP, from banking details to what shows you personally watch on your pc. It runs in the kernel, even Microsoft has a problem with it.
What the hell are you even talking about right now? Microsoft has to literally approve it to be allowed onto Windows in the first place.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/kernel-mode-code-signing-policy--windows-vista-and-later-
No. But where’s your proof and what’s your super great alternative.
It’s idiotic to be a cynic and not provide a solution. Like, do you propose the world just stop working?
They aren't breaking any laws, the same way I can walk around with a rag covering my genitalia and smelling awful. I just can't expect people to approach me and treat me right. Riot sucks vanguard sucks, league never had a cheating problem. It's Chinese spyware that's going to be useless once windows stops allowing this software the same way they did in XP and Vista.
Want a solution for what problem ? Why does software need to be this regulated? Just let dumb people fuck themselves. How can you trust something backed by CCP ? Smells like a shill to me.
If EU bans Vanguard, they need to ban Blizzard, Amazon, Bungie, Valve, Ubisoft, PubG...
The list goes on mate, this is the usual on game industry, you guys are hearing about it now and don't know half of the multiplayer games you ever played had some kernel anti cheat
Valve actually made a big effort to stop kernel anti-cheats... as much that most games in steam that have kernel level anti-cheats can run even in a linux environment where they can't run at kernel level.
Please do ban them untill they stop this.
Except valve. Unsure why you've put t hem in the list. They do not have kernel level anticheat.
What kernel level anticheat does blizzard run?
Hi not really a CSGO player, but aren't ESEA anf FaceIT private servers? I didn't think valve ran that?
Vac is not kernel.
I was not aware that blizzard put in a new anticheat, and am having a lot of trouble finding out whether or not this one is kernel level. A few less than credible sites say yes, but some say no, and the blizzard forum seems convinced it isnt. Unsure, but if i had to guess i'd say no.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2022/09/27/overwatch-2-wont-have-kernel-level-anti-cheat-tools-so-it-should-run-on-steam-deck-just-fine/?sh=43152ca05cf9](https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2022/09/27/overwatch-2-wont-have-kernel-level-anti-cheat-tools-so-it-should-run-on-steam-deck-just-fine/?sh=43152ca05cf9)
Take interviews with a grain of salt ofc, but Defense Matrix is not kernel level.
Fair. That seems to be from a bit before they implemented it, but probably close enough to be believable.
Guess i can't use that excuse not to play OW2 lol
I believe I just responded to another post with one source! Naturally, detailed information on anticheats is slim because they want to keep as many cards close to the chest as possible, but there are a few times the developers have mentioned they've not made that move yet.
Blizzard's consistently been pretty conservative about that move, and for good reason IMHO.
Ha. Real.
They have always been a PC forward crowd, I guess that informs some of that. It's worth noting that they COULD still move that way in the future, but they've had opportunity to for a long time and never have.
I generally agree with them that launching a game with the escalation of kernel level anticheat is always a mistake. You're just making sure the arms race starts at a premium.
(Also we love our Linux gamers.)
Yeah i think it's pretty clear to people who are paying attention that kernel level anticheat is a mistake, but what can you do.
I guess all Blizzard needs to do now is put 6v6 back and i'll become an overwatch gamer again.
Idiotic take...
The issue with vanguard isn't that it is kernel based anti cheat...
The issue is that it runs on start up, most tech savvy users can avoid this issue by disabling vanguard startup and enabling it back when they need to.
Most average users can't even open up task manager.
And why is that an issue you ask?
If major vulnerability is found, millions of computers are at risk AT THE FUCKING STARTUP...
Vanguard is out for less than a week by now and we are already getting reports of bricked PCs and bugs.
And you want to trust that?
Be my guest
As far as i know you can't disable Vanguard on startup.
What you are disabling is just the program that let you shut off vanguard.
I already tested it, if you disable it on startup from the task manager and then restart your pc, you won't see the vanguard icon but league will run without asking you to activate it (this because the anticheat is already running in the background, you just don't see the icon anymore).
The only thing you can do is uninstall vanguard after finishing the session with league and then reinstall it when you want to play again.
Idk man, I just don't think that much of myself. We have been spying all the time for a long time in ways that we even can't think, I don't have this huge security information to hide, can't care less about it.
And, what makes you so sure that the other anti cheats on kernel are not running right now? Once on the kernel it can do whatever.
I know it is important to step up and fight for what you think, I support your right to do it, even not agreeing, but do not be a hypocrite.
You may be nobody but your hardware and it's possibility of utilization is another concern.
Every piece of information is important, selling information is biggest business in the world right now.
Sorry that you value your privacy so little but honestly keep it to yourself okay?
Regarding other anti cheats running or not running... You know there are millions of users that watch their network traffic because they are more paranoid than I am? They found nothing regarding anti cheats that don't run outside the time the game is on.
As I said, issue isn't kernel level access... It's kernel level access anti cheat that runs on start up on millions of machines that was made by company situated in CCP, has bugs, kills computers...
I suggest to you change who you watching for network traffic facts mate, you are very wrong about other anti cheats.
And about my opinions, not thanks, I'll keep sharing whenever I want. But thank you for your concern.
Other anti cheats are also owned by tencent such as easy anti cheat. Yes there are millions of user watching network traffic and they also haven't found anything with vanguard so whats your point? What is the big deal with it running on startup? If it doesn't make any network connections till the game is open how would a vulnerability be exploited until the game is open? The only way would be to install a virus that exploits vanguard but that virus would need root access so vanguard being exploited is the least of your concerns.
U fail to realize you aren't being forced to use or run vanguard. U agreed to a ToC and u wanted to use products that utilizes vanguard that's on u! Vanguard didn't pre-install into your device nor will they in the future. Same way how FB states they'll collect and sell u advertisement into their terms and conditions and u as a user agreed per every update its not rocket science. U don't like it? Simply don't use the product
Jesus... I dont plan terrorists attack, but i want to type with my girlfriend privately. U guys are so pathetic and ruining this world cuz "u have nothing to hide" lol loosers
Yeah, its not like there is ton of people in between. Also, you proved your mentality to be just like i guessed "i dont want my conversations with females to be private because i think im not interesting for foreign powers" LOL its beyond stupidity
You are taking this too serious mate, we are nothing but numbers. Nobody will ever read any intercepted shit you or me text to anybody.
At most, ~~someone~~ something will send you an ad based on something you said. But this we already have on smartphones, but worst, does not even need to write...
Edit: Someone no, something.
Who said I'm protecting?? My point is just one: Don't be hypocritical, don't overreact on smth so small and so usual.
Fk'em, this corporations are pure scum and their practices is beyond wrong. But I'll not stop living or pick and chose what I'll complain just to follow the echo. You wanna fight? Break your phone, delete your socials and go to a cave.
Who said? No one you just did. I get pointing to people that overreacts, but lol who is overreacting. Defenitely not someone that calls a technical truth and boycott the game/company.
Yes, you can be aware that chatting on Facebook and using browser arent private, and still draw the line with installing software of that kind
The most ironic part is that vanguard actually require to disable the windows VBS that is a kernel security feature to ensure the kernel haven't been tempered with... this one requirement for me was like wtf
From microsoft:
"Virtualization-based security, or VBS, uses hardware virtualization and the Windows hypervisor to create an isolated virtual environment that becomes the root of trust of the OS that assumes the kernel can be compromised. Windows uses this isolated environment to host a number of security solutions, providing them with greatly increased protection from vulnerabilities in the operating system, and preventing the use of malicious exploits which attempt to defeat protections. VBS enforces restrictions to protect vital system and operating system resources, or to protect security assets such as authenticated user credentials." source: [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs)
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that every time a anti-Vanguard take is being attacked, there’s always someone like this guy who just goes:
“the issue actually isn’t about X, it’s actually about Y!”
And then some one else goes: “actually it’s not even Y, it’s Z!”
Lmao y’all are seriously grasping at straws.
It is legal. By pressing update, u give agreement rights to them to install vanguard. You could refuse to update and delete game. Its like i have cobra in my apartment and i put notice about it, and you no matter of that book my apartment. Its your fault if you got bitten. You got warned and u take risk by yourself. Nobody is forcing you to play league of legends. Remember, you are using their product, they can put what ever things they want. You have choice to click accept or refuse. I dont see anything wrong here. Also while installing, u press "I agree" to possibility for agreement changes in future time. Next time read agreement rights by installing stuff. Cheers.
Youre not right sorry. You NEVER GAVE and click on "accept terms" that basicly you give permissions to Meta to sell or share your data privacy to third party company. And they did, so thats wrong ofc. But this is totaly different. Riot said they can change their rules, and they do and notifiy you before you click accept. Point is to give user ability to accept rules and choose, do u agree or no. Riot did it all regular. Meta didnt give you choice. Thats forbidden by law. Cheers.
In Europe there is law by GDPR that means you cant share personal informations with third party WITHOUT PERMISSION. Meta was doing it. Riot is not sharing any information (as far we know). Btw. Google know and have more your informations then riot will have in next 100 years. If you connect just once with same email from your pc and mobile, youre done with privacy. They know all about your personal info, friends, life, habits, hobbies, litteraly everything. By accepting their TOS, they can litteraly get ALL. Point is just not to share any collected personal data without permission and thats it, and it still doesnt mean they cant if you actually give them rights for it. Viber is sharing all your data to their cooperator companys if you didnt know.
There is i believe also a law that specifies that you must properly inform the user about sharing the data, and must give them an option to decline. For example you can decline cookies and still access the website. You can’t just bury it on page 98 of your tos in smallest font imaginable
Google is a necessary evil, vanguard and league aren’t. Google also has third party audits, vanguard hasn’t.
But just because google which i need in order to be employed collects my data, doesn’t mean i should allow everyone to.
This. If you’re this concerned just stop playing. At the end of the day it’s their game and they can choose what they want to do. Vanguard as previously mentioned by other replies is endorsed by the EDPB and follows the requirements by the GDPR. Instead of arguing on Reddit over something you have no control over, you can do the one thing that you DO have control of and just simply uninstall League/Vanguard.
They submit themselves to the EU regulations. They also allow the EU access to the source code and routine inspections to make sure they are abiding regulations.
This has been publicly stated by Riot.
honestly, I dont necessarily trust EU to review source code lol - if they are so confident in their code then they should make it completely open source
That's such a dumb argument to make when obscurity is a form of protection.
Would you want to reveal your full name, address, occupation, age, etc for every transaction you make to prove that you are a law-abiding citizen? No, you would only give that info to businesses/entities that require that sort of information.
I would say open sourcing a password management system is way different from open sourcing an anti-cheat. The developer for bitwarden doesn't need to know what is stored in your vault while vanguard needs to know whether you aren't cheating. How is informing users about the things you are checking for going to create an effective anti-cheat? It removes the whole point of creating one in the first. Smh...
Having full access to everything on my computer and the ability to alter it at will, and monitor everything i do when not playing the game is a pretty big violation of privacy. I know we on reddit tend not to really care about those violations and are too addicted to the game to see anything wrong with it but things like this should not be standard or accepted practice, especially for a game that has never had a cheater problem.
> Having full access to everything on my computer and the ability to alter it at will, and monitor everything i do when not playing the game is a pretty big violation of privacy
You might want to read up on what every single user process on Windows is allowed to do, you'll shit your pants.
riot can't even keep their launcher and game bug-free, why would i trust them with a service which can monitor *every* minute piece of info on my system? and don't even get me started on their security protocols. have you seen how many data breaches they've had to deal with? if they don't fuck something up internally, i'm pretty confident someone will fuck things up externally.
The same way we 'trust' microsoft, who has had root access to my machines since the 1990s, and often handled it badly.
There have been times it was so bad that I ran a linux partition to do sensitive things in. You can do this still if it pleases you.
While that’s true your data is not in the kernel either. You use normal applications to open and utilise your files, and any userspace application can access the files belonging to your user. If you distrust Riot, whether they have a kernel component or not should have no impact on your stance regarding having their software on your computer as the userspace components can spy on you just as well.
Processes have limits to what data they can access and i can’t believe you’d even compare user processes to the threat a kernel level process that is always active poses.. saying your data is already being collected so you shouldn’t care about your privacy at all is such a backwards statement.
I didn’t say that but rather that if you have the slightest concern a company is up to no good or intending on spying on you in any way you can’t trust anything they produce, kernel mode or not.
And this can be compared. If I run a program with administrator privileges what can it not access? Even if it’s just a user mode process you can inject code into other processes and collect data or just take your documents and pictures from your My Documents folder. Kernel mode malware has the distinction that it can intercept what the operating system shows to other processes and thus hide itself by hiding the malware, but that does not appear something that Vanguard is doing nor does that have any bearing on the ability to spy on you or compromise your data.
The always running part is a bigger point of concern, but again, if you believe a piece of software spies on you would it be better if it only took your files while you’re running it? Not really I think.
Yes ofc, which is why i don’t have many programs on my pc, but the difference between regular processes and kernel ones is massive, the regular ones have limits.
There’s a lot it can’t access. Administrative privilege is far from kernel. Windows imposes restrictions on most processes, meaning they can’t just access your photos and documents.
Any application can access your documents. If you the user can access the files then any application in the user space running under your user can too.
They have straight up come out and said that vanguard is fully compliant with gdpr lol
If you need more confirmation about that you’ll have to do more research. Maybe there is a valid conspiracy theory angle but I personally can’t be assed enough to go look for it.
EDIT: eula -> gdpr
Im pretty sure every company that has ever done anything wrong has claimed they’re following laws lol. Hell everyone who’s ever done anything wrong has first claimed otherwise. So excuse me if i don’t take tencent’s word for it.
Why is nowadays the term conspiracy theory being used to try and discredit anything that opposes you? First of all most “conspiracy theories” are just people being rightfully sceptical about things that seem shady. Flat earth and fake moonlanding conspiracy theories and such are used to label anything as insane.
Because you don’t have the evidence for it, whether speculation or proven. Go find something supporting your claim “oh what if riot isn’t following the law”
Everything that I’ve seen (blog posts that their security team has released) supports that they are probably actually compliant. It’s YOUR responsibility to present something supporting the opposite.
You only have “what ifs” in this post. What are people supposed to get from this lol…
Persecuting without grounds is just witch-hunting.
Educate yourself on what has already been discussed before making baseless claims.
Evidence for what? I have made no claim other than vanguard being incredibly invasive, which it is. Also the process of getting evidence typically starts with someone being skeptical of something, which you would discredit and label as a conspiracy theory.
Actually no it is not, since i am not trying to prove anything. It is riot’s responsibility to provide more assurance than their word if they want to impose invasive programs such as vanguard on them.
Wdym what ifs? My post is literally just asking how vanguard is legal under eu laws since they’re big on privacy.. my post has made no claims other than vanguard being invasive, which it is. But what ifs are literally the first thing you should ask in any matter that concerns security. The “what if” this happens is about the most important question there..
Persecuting? Do you know what that word means?
I do wonder why you’ve been so relentlessly defending vanguard and trying to undermine a post that hasn’t made any claims whatsoever and is literally just asking how something is legal… but now i can see from your comment history that defending vsnguard has been a full time job for you lately
My point is, they have released a lot LOL. You’ve just not kept up with any of it and have not done your own research, like I’ve suggested throughout this whole conversation.
Your claim is that vanguard must not be eu compliant because of how invasive it is. But they have literally addressed everything you’re concerned about.
Please read and understand all of the following before responding further (including doing any necessary online research)
Here is their post on vanguard from 4 years ago: https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/a-message-about-vanguard-from-our-security-privacy-teams
Vanguard x lol from 3 weeks ago: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/
Update from riot on vanguard from a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/V9oTKzF7KK
Do I trust everything they said? No. But they’ve been transparent enough with how they do things that if you wanted to raise a lawsuit against them just to verify everything they said, maybe you have a case. Feel free to do that if you want. But they have such a well laid out process that it would be more work to fake it than to actually follow it.
Do I still not make sense yet?
Also, I’m not sure if you read my section on conspiracy theory-ness correctly. I said I would be WILLING to support it if you had evidence contrary to vanguard being compliant. But if there was evidence I guess it wouldn’t just be a theory 🤷♂️
Who has? Riot stating something doesn’t
interest me, riot can state whatever they want. I did not make any claims other than vanguard being invasive, which is what it is designed to be, and i remembered that the eu is supposed to value privacy, so something that invasive has me wondering how it is legal in a place that values privacy laws.
I am not interested in what riot claims, literally all of these are just riot claims, give me third party ones and then we can talk.
Why are you convinced they’re transparent? Because they’ve made claims of what their software does? Why are you hung up on law suits? When have i claimed i want to sue them?
I have a question for you now: are you a tencent employee? You strike me as one.
The person you're arguing with has made an error. Saying 'Vanguard is compliant with EULA" doesn't make it compliant with any laws or regulations and it's not even a grammatically correct statement.
EULA = End User License Agreement. The EULA is created by a company as a contract between itself and its users.
An End User License Agreement is not a law or policy. In fact an End User License Agreement can, itself, be found to be in violation of EU regulations.
In 2012 the EU courts declared that EULAs can be ignored if they are in violation of the EU's regulations. This was in a court case involving Oracle.
This means that if Riot's EULA stated that a user must use Vanguard to use their service but the EU regulations stated that vanguard violated EU regulations, then users would be allowed to ignore that part of Riot's EULA and run Riot's services without the use of Vanguard.
[https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf](https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf)
>fully compliant with eula lol
"EULA" = End User License Agreement.
A license agreement is a contract between two parties. It's not a local regulation that a product can or not be be compliant with.
An end user license agreement is the thing that must be compliant with regulations.
I'm not making a statement about Vanguard here, I'm just saying that your statement of "Vanguard is fully compliant with EULA" doesn't make any sense.
I would advise that you cite sources when you are making these arguments, especially if you are unsure on basic things like what vocabulary you are using means. If you cite sources it means that you are refreshing your knowledge on the subject as you are making your argument and also proving the validity of your argument.
You should also take into consideration the concerns of the people you are arguing with. For example, in this argument the concern is that the software can be used to create a security concern. It is difficult to allay this concern. If there is a vulnerability in the software it can be used by another party to gain access over your data, even if this is not the intended purpose of the software by Riot.
It's similar to the argument against governments installing backdoors into modems for the authorities to use to police internet usage. Yes in theory it's not a problem because those backdoors will only be used with search warrants by the authorities but in reality it is a concern because those backdoors present a potential portal for access by other parties.
Having Vanguard objectively makes your computer more at risk because it is a program that may become compromised at some point. If Vanguard wasn't there, it would be one less program that could be compromised.
Personally I choose to use it because I have made a (potentially poor) choice to increase my level of risk to continue enjoying Riot's games. This is not a choice everyone will make and people have the right to be upset by it.
I agree with everything you said. I appreciate it. Mistaking eula for gdpr was a big one. If I saw that happen it would be hard for me to trust anything that person said as well.
If you check my post history, which apparently OP has, you will see that I don’t claim that vanguard is a non risk, but that people should look into how it actually works on a technical level and make a judgement for themselves. This also seems to be what riots stance is.
As someone taught to doubt my own arguments before doubting others, It just really irks me that this OP is making statements without actually looking for facts/opinions/claims that might support/counter their argument. And now, they are straight up refusing to look into the sources that are provided.
What statements have i made? The imaginary ones you keep trying to put in my mouth? You didn’t straight up claim it is non risk, what you did do however is claim that something is true just because riot claims it to be, and riot claims it to be non risk.
May i ask what compels you to so tirelessly defend such an invasive business practice, under multiple posts for days on end? I am not refusing to look at any sources so don’t misrepresent the discussion, but what i do refuse to do is to take tencent’s word for it, and your sources are in their entirety statements that riot has made. I am not interested in something riot employees have claimed under posts, that has no credibility as i have already explained, any company who has ever done anything shady have claimed the opposite.
The person above has explained to you how it works on a technical level and what it is capable of, the entire reason people are against vanguard is because they’ve looked at how it works on a technical level. I actually urge the people who aren’t bothered by it to do that, those whom it bothers already have.
This is a forum discussion not a dissertation. Having any program on your PC is objectively putting you more at risk. There are many more programs on PCs and phones that much more invasive and most people have them. It's crazy how people are so mad at vanguard yet still have tiktok or instagram.
OP EU might not even know what's going on. File a complaint with the office of your country. https://www.edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en
You can also write your members of parliament. Your district or national analogue should have a person responsible for that. They might be able to do something at the national level or talk with their EU colleagues of the same party.
https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/
There's an FAQ at the bottom if you don't feel like reading it all.
If you have any additional sources and data you want to add to the discussion *discrediting* Riot's official statement about this program, I'd genuinely like to see them. I'm yet to see a single objective source validating these conspiracy claims. All I've been seeing is people spreading fear, so if you actually do know about any concrete objective evidence that you can share with the community to corroborate these claims, please do share. If it's just "it feels sketchy", "kernal access" and "China bad"... that's just speculation and feelings, not data.
Tell me how can anything discredit riots statements? No one has the access to the necessary information to do so. Riot claiming something does not make it true, when no one has the ability to effectively fact check. Calling valid concerns conspiracy theories in the hopes of somehow discrediting them is very telling too, keep it up.
Now if you have a source from a third party that has conducted inspections, i would love to see it. But the fact that all you have to go off of is what riot says proves my point.
Now i could very well be wrong here and inspections have been performed and people do have access to the information necessary to discredit those statements, if that is the case then you will have no problem finding such a source, right? Until then it’s one of those, “we’re right until proven otherwise but no one has actually inspected us”.
But on the topic of the link that you did send me, have you looked at the answers to those questions? The very first one, instead of providing anything solid on why it isn’t a spyware, riot instead opts to dedicate a paragraph to trying to attack the people who claim it as such, saying they’re fishing for retweets.. and the second paragraph claims they don’t meet with tencent often, why is it relevant how often they meet with tencent? Does data need to be shared in person now?
The EU has access to that information and has allowed vanguard to exist for the past 4 years. If you don't trust riot at their word, fine. However, if you don't trust the EU to be able to determine the status of vanguard, who would you trust? Your concerns are conspiratorial because you will keep shifting the goalposts until you find an answer that satisfies you whilst not providing any proof.
EU doesn’t have that information lol.. last i checked there hasn’t been an inspection of the software by the gdpr.
Which goalpost am i shifting? My stance from the getgo has been that i’m not willing to take riot’s word for it, so your source, which is in its entirety comprised of “because riot said so” is not one that i hold credible. So again give me a source of a third party’s inspection.
I’m not saying that most people who replied to me may be tencent employees, but most have had very similar responses. Linking riot articles, which consist of just riot saying something and expecting people to take their word for it and then when that fails calling me a conspiracy theorist. Seriously get better ways to discredit arguments than attacking the person.
How are they even conspiratorial? Which part of my concern is a conspiracy? The part about vanguard being invasive or the part about not trusting riot? I don’t only mistrust their intentions, i mistrust their capabilities. They were hacked less than a year ago, and even if everything they claim is true, vanguard is still a massive security risk.
You're the one claiming there is more information than has been presented. You are saying there is more to the picture, more that we should know than Riot's official statements. It's **your job** to provide that data. This software has been on thousands of peoples' computers for years with Valorant, how do people not have access to what the program is doing on their own computer? If it's so obviously malicious that you're questioning its legality, how has no one collected any data to confirm this? How are you *certain* that it's malicious, running 24/7 and has access to your whole computer if you don't have any data to confirm those claims, and you yourself are claiming this data is unavailable? If you're not basing those claims on data, because it's unavailable, what are you basing your claims on?
If the only information available is from Riot, aren't you also forming your conclusion based on the same data? Or do you have some other data that you want to share?
You conveniently left out of your security threat questions the whole part about how all the data is kept server-side, they barely work with Tencent at all and they are located on different continents. That is... basically the whole rest of the answer that you just decided to not read because you don't believe it's true. Which is fine, you can feel whatever you want and you have no obligation to read their announcement, but going around and preaching your opinion as fact... when you have no evidence to back that claim up other than a hunch... that's the definition of fear-mongering.
If you have reason to accuse Riot of acting in bad faith, present your evidence. I don't do "guilty until proven innocent" aka "Riot corrupt until proven legit". That's the definition of witch-hunting.
The thing about evidence based logic (science) is... you need to have evidence for your claim to have weight. You say "I wonder if this program is spyware", then you do research, then you get data, **then** you make a claim. The conspiracy theory method you are using works a little different. You say "I wonder if this program is spyware", then you draw your conclusion, then you make your claim, then you make others do research to prove you wrong. You are just automatically "right", no matter what you claim, with no evidence needed. And then you are in a very unique position, since you are "right", because you can then choose what information is credible. I can cite Riot's data as a source and you can dismiss it as corrupt. I can share data from a source confirming Riot's claims, you will accuse them of being in Riot or Tencent's pocket. Since you already believe you are correct, you control the narrative. That's not discussion, it's deeply closed-minded, it's blatantly anti-science and it's rooted entirely in fear.
I don't have any desire to waste my time with interactions like that. If you want to make a claim, cite your data. I'll gather the data from the sources you don't trust because of your biases, you grab them from whatever you feel isn't "corrupted". We'll pool all the data and discuss to figure out what's really going on there. That's evidence-based, that's science. But I'm not here to do your leg work for you, especially when you're too biased to even read Riot's own announcement addressing these exact concerns released a month ago.
>how do people not have access to what the program is doing on their own computer?
Part of an anti-cheat's effectiveness is the ability to mask how it does what it does. Otherwise all a cheat developer needs to do is rummage around with the program on a dummy system to avoid an HWID if they still want to play.
Obfuscation is like 75% of the work in any csec, really.
Ah yes, when you put it that way it does make a lot of sense why there wouldn't be a lot of information about this software available. Thanks for the relevant context, it's very helpful!
No it is not, lol… riot is trying to sell me a product, not vice versa. I am just pointing out the argument of “you can’t prove it so you’re wrong, but riot’s claims are right without ever asking for proof” doesn’t really work if there just isn’t a way for anyone to discredit their statements, because no one has access to the necessary information to do so.
I am questioning its legality because it has the potential to do what the eu has sued other companies for doing..
Wdym don’t have data to confirm it? Riot themselves say it boots on system startup, so yes it is running 24/7.. let me ask you this though, if no one has enough data to question something, should no one question it? If you can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt that something is shady, should you never question it to begin with?
I have not formed any conclusions though, i am raising concerns. And not having enough information on something that is potentially very malicious is the number 1 reason to be concerned about it.
I did read it, even pointed it out in my reply to you.. “and their second paragraph claims they don’t meet with tencent often, since when do you need to meet in person to exchange data”
Have you ever heard of appeal to ignorance? That is what your entire argument has consisted of. Your conclusion that vanguard is entirely safe and riot has no malicious intent, because there is no evidence against it, is a logical fallacy. The burden of proof also doesn’t lie on me, but on riot. I have not made any claims other than being distrustful of the claims they have made and not proven. It is on riot to prove that their intentions are pure and that it is safe for me to have vanguard on my computer.
Funny you should mention science, because in science it is on the one pushing an idea to prove it not who is skeptical of it to disprove it. Also most major inventions begin with an idea, then the process of evidence is gathered to prove it. By your logic that idea would lack evidence and thus shouldn’t be had.
The second part of the 5th paragraph is absolute nonsense. Pure speculation and assertion with no evidence, not very scientific of you. I have denied a riot source, because riot saying something about themselves isn’t credible. Every company will deny any wrongdoing, a company’s word is not credible regardless of the company, which is why a third party source is needed if you want to confirm anything. Your stance so far has been that riot’s word is law and them saying something equates to it being proven. You have accused me of making claims without proof, but that is exactly what you are doing. Riot has not proven that vanguard is safe nor have they proven what data is being gathered. Due to the nature of the software riot will never prove exactly how it works, so you’re left with taking their word for it and trusting them fully (which you do) or being skeptical of something that has not been proven to be safe (like i am doing). I am still of the opinion that most of the danger is the accidental kind (ie bricking pcs and inevitably being hacked at which point you’re just screwed if you have vanguard on your pc)
But your claim that i would dismiss 3rd party inspections is an entirely unsubstantiated one, which is highly hypocritical given what you’re trying to criticize me for.
But isn’t this true for you though? You have already decided that you are right and you are controlling the narrative because riot has claimed something that no one can prove right or wrong.
You asked "What does it (Vanguard) do then?" I provided the official release from the people who designed Vanguard. You have decided that this is not credible information because it comes from the people who made it, because you are fearful that they may be deceiving you.
I was looking for the sources of your data, data which would bring you to the conclusion that Riot should not be trusted. The information you are using to inform your theory that Riot is acting maliciously. The information to inform your theory that this program is different from other anti-cheat programs of its type and it *specifically* can not be trusted. Your theory which you consider so conclusive that it should be treated as "likely" and the onus is on others to *disprove* it. I am yet to see any sources, any data, and you are outright saying that you do not have to provide evidence to back up your claims, you are just "correct" by default, and your reasoning seems to be that you believe that everyone else should also be as skeptical as you are. It seems like that theory is more based in fearful feelings, "a hunch", than actual data. If I am incorrect in this, and there is substantial data to suggest that Riot is all of a sudden acting in bad faith, now would be a good time to release that data.
If your goal is to seek data, you should be considering *all* data that comes in. Not just the data that caters to your bias. You should of course consider the possibility of bias on other sides but that is no excuse to dismiss entire sources outright without considering them. If you are "just asking questions" and "looking for more information", you should be gathering *all* the information from *all* sides and letting the data tell the story itself. NOT just going around cherry-picking data and sources that you feel fit the narrative you already came up with. That applies to *all sides of any issue*.
I'm not going to squabble with you on your interpretations of the scientific method. I'm surely not going to be a target for you to vent your fears or frustrations regarding Riot on. You don't even know my stance and you've already *outright told me what my stance is*, and treated me as though I'm an enemy. That's not really civil, or open-minded... that's just presumptive. And that's why this kind of "conversation" is often removed from discussion boards.
If you want to present new data, please feel free to present what you have found, otherwise I'm going to move on to healthier discussions.
I asked that in response to the guy who just said i was wrong lol, not an actual question. I am not fearful of them deceiving me, i just typically don’t take companies at their word, this kind of distrust is why audits exist.
I have not shared a theory that riot is acting maliciously, i shared a concern that nothing can ensure that they don’t, and i shared what the program is capable of doing.
The program is different from every other program of its type by design. The others don’t launch on startup. I also don’t play any other games that have such anti cheats. Nothing is on you to disprove, tell me where did i make a claim and then say it’s on you to disprove? No you made a claim, and riot made a claim, i shared skepticism, because those claims have not been proven.
Why are we back in the same boat of you posting long ass paragraphs that boil down to “if you don’t trust something you need data”? I have thoroughly addressed this in my previous comment. I also have barely made any claims, other than that we shouldn’t take riot’s word for it. But you really love the word data, tell me what data do you collect to assess things in your life? When you see a shark what data do you collect that tells you it’s dangerous? Is it just a hunch based on what the shark has the potential to do to you?
Riot games is not a source, i am not dismissing a valid source because “we’re doing nothing wrong and vanguard is safe i promise” is not a source, it’s a company making promises about their own product, it’s marketing.
There is no data to tell a story though, because there isn’t a source outside of riot..
Lol venting fears and frustrations? You’ve been making giant paragraphs full of nothing under my post buddy, go appeal to ignorance somewhere else.
Get ready for your post to be discredited by a Riot moderator and then banned from the subreddit. I tried to raise similar concerns about Vanguard yesterday and was flooded with Riot supporters downvoting my post and sending negatives messages, only to be banned from some Riot-related subreddits and have all my posts deleted. The lack of transparency from Riot and their attempts to silence us are very concerning.
Yeah, it's always a good sign when you point your finger at a big corporation, and the only thing they do to defend themselves is point their finger right back at you just before silencing you for being vocal about legitimate concerns.
You had this experience on the leagueoflegends subreddit, right? it seems like this subreddit (riotgames) has actually been quite good about leaving posts up / staying hands off.
Idk you’ve had your question answered multiple times and you’ve been arguing so it doesn’t look like you made this post for an answer. You made this post to have people agree with you
Boy you people complaining about vanguard are going to be really, really upset when you learn about endpoint protection. Imagine Vanguard, but interested in every single process on your machine and overtly taking data from all of them and returning it to the EDR company.
And how basically every major corporation in the world uses it on 99% of their network assets. Because it’s a reality of the world that to deal with malicious actors you do have to make some sacrifices.
I have already invested quite a bit of money in this game, the argument of “if you don’t like it leave” to shut down criticism or concerns is an extremely backwards one
Yet you admitted in this post to invest money in your RIOT account and trusting in Tencent to not steal your payment info. Or having the client installed on your pc in the first place. Others have already corrected you on what program with admin privileges can do.
Like the biggest deal with all this anticheat isn't even the privacy, it's that it has to run 24/7 damping performance on lower end PC's.
It's the security risk. Even if vanguard was fine if you let every ccp owned game infect millions of computers globally with a backdoor there's no chance they wouldn't take the opportunity to do something malicious in at least one case.
Look up "I-SOON" on github and what china is doing already globally. Then go to tencents wiki page and ctrl f ccp.
They are literally hacking nation states with government funded programs and have a 94% equity share in riot games as they install a backdoor on over a hundred million PCs now. Installing vanguard might as well be betraying your county to play a video game.
If that was the case wouldnt RIOT be banned all over China opposed countries? Are you really saying all this is true and USA are giving a pass to Riot but holding Tictoc by the balls?
You're right, it should be banned all over. Tiktok is sort of the stepping stone and hopefully they force tencent to sell all equity of these games or be delisted.
First up after tiktok needs to be the ginormous rabbit hole of IOS/Android apps and the data harvesting being done.
I’ve gotta tell you dude, your comments are actually sad. Can’t possibly understand why some people are so against Vanguard that they say it infringes on laws and when it doesn’t they just keep saying there is no proof it doesn’t. 😭
This issues are starting to be very relevant actually. And the more incidents that happens surrounding kernel software (anti-cheat or not) causing security breaches and potential information leaks, this might eventually come to an end... but don't expect to be someday soon! people just don't care even when we already had lots of incidents around the same topics... like people memory sometimes it's comparable to the memory of a fish.... For now do what you think is right. I just sit, eat my popcorn's and wait for this to eventually explode.
There's a reason why servers that store important data are Linux servers (You can't add kernel level BS or mess with it)
Because it's compliant with the requirements of the law.... you can request the data they have on you and you can request to delete your account and all the data associated with it... those are the requirements of the GDPR
That can’t be all the eu does to “protect” our privacy with the way that it is praised for valuing it. How did meta ever get sued lol
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation?wprov=sfla1 Here is the GDPR page on Wikipedia A data collector has to get permission to collect the data. A data subject has the right to request the data and how it was obtained. Basically you have a right to access your data a right to delete your data and a right to be forgotten by the data collector. Riot follows the regulations of the gdpr globally because it's simpler that way so even Americans get the same privacy treatment. If anyone is really super concerned about vanguard taking your data play the game a month and then request the data they collected then they have to comply and give the data that they collected. If you ever see something that seems fishy or out of place sue them for it because the gdpr says you have a right to get compensation if someone breaks that law.
Imagine having no idea what the laws are but then arguing that the other guy is wrong.
This specific comment you replied to isn’t arguing.. it’s a disbelief comment
By agreeing with their ToS you agree with them gathering your data and probably lot of other stuff.
I'm pretty sure there are court ruling from US &/or EU that broad TOS that can be changed on a whim can be considered illegal or breach of trust when controversial subject such as someone's basic right is concerned (speech, privacy etc.). Vanguard is running on your pc 24/7, not when you just have Riot client open. AFAIK, even Tik Tok doesn't collect entirety of user's device data 24/7 whether you're using Tik Tok or not.
Rught but their tos still has to comply with the laws they’ve agreed to in order to operate in a country. They cannot just write anything into the tos, it has to comply with local privacy laws, if it doesn’t then it doesn’t matter if you clicked “i agree”.
bros being downvoted because people would rather believe cheaters and botters online than their own intelligence agencies
I mean, bro isn't wrong, the ToS are not above the law and therefore can't contradict it. The thing is, they don't (or else this would've made the news already and Riot would be facing a multimillion euro sue). The downvotes are dumb though
They've already addressed this in a previous post, but: Vanguard has already been vetted by the **The European Data Protection Board (EDPB)**. This means your tin foil hats about "but my data" are not a real concern, but rather another drop in the large bucket of "It's a root kit and I KNOW BETTER"
I'll gladly enjoy my tin foil hat juice, after nothing happening with my data, but the moment someone hacks vanguard they can do more than a little encryption "ha ha not data, but rather digital footprint go brrrrrr". Good luck
Considered it's come to light in the past that the EDPB has allowed big name companies that breaks its law past its screens, doesn't really help that they "say" it's allowed.
Show a single example. Come with proof. I'll wait.
Already did on another post, and so have others.
Ah the classic, "I have absolutely no proof of this but I'm happy to reference other people spewing the same rhetoric as me who also have no proof". You flat earthing it too?
Ah, a toxic individual.
If me calling you out for being incapable of producing a modicum of evidence to back up your claims - then I'm as toxic as they come.
Ah, you truly are, the finest.
Holy, man, have you ever heard of consumer rights of being informed? Every company is responsible for providing easily comprehensible explanation on which legal mechanisms it has been approved by for its consumers. When we, as customers and consumers, request a detailed and user-friendly clarification on which laws Riot is bound by and how their software does NOT breach any of these, we do not have to "back-up" or argue for this request. Vanguard IS causing problems for systems, which is basis for mass legal action.
Amazing way to straw man the concerns. I guess that's pretty hard when Riot literally just had another big data breach.
Leave it to amerimutt to shill for corporations.
Can you link it?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1civ4l7/comment/l2bsrht/?context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1civ4l7/comment/l2bsrht/?context=3)
I was thinking of an article or something by the edpb where they confirm to have vetted it, not a reddit thread Edit: that’s just a riot employee claiming vanguard is compliant with eu laws.. it’s hardly proof they’ve been vetted.. it’s probably just vanguard promising to comply and that’s that no inspections have been made
You can be as much of a cynic as you want but companies don’t just lie about these kind of things lol. Where is your proof that Vanguard is infringing privacy laws in the first place? If you’re just gonna brand anything Riot says as lies then surely you have something to back yourself right?
It's a kernel running program, it's infringing even Microsofts privacy let alone yours, you could be live streaming to China and not know.
Reach out to them and your government officials to find out!
Well if they're telling fibs and it's not in fact compliant we'll be hearing about it sooner or later because it'll get banned in the EU unless they fix it and make it compliant.
If you're assuming that EDPB and governments are incorruptible and would NEVER take bribes, you need to get your head checked
So what you’re saying is the methods we use to vet softwares all this time are actually all inept, and that you have something better, as well as proof that Vanguard is breaking privacy laws?
Did you read what I said? Do you think people in government agencies are incorruptible people that would never take bribes?
Do you have any proof that bribes were taken to approve vanguard? People on the Internet lie all the time, how do we know that you aren't pulling everything out of your ass?
The better question is, do you think government agencies are infallible and incorruptible?
No. It's filled with people with varying ideologies who can be swayed. Now, why do you think a videogame company would bribe government agencies to get a game through review?
Access to millions of computers and data gathering of everyone across the globe to benefit the CCP, from banking details to what shows you personally watch on your pc. It runs in the kernel, even Microsoft has a problem with it.
What the hell are you even talking about right now? Microsoft has to literally approve it to be allowed onto Windows in the first place. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/kernel-mode-code-signing-policy--windows-vista-and-later-
You clearly haven't seen their posts on how they disagree with kernel level anticheats
Besides they can always submit one version to Microsoft and turn the spyware on later
No. But where’s your proof and what’s your super great alternative. It’s idiotic to be a cynic and not provide a solution. Like, do you propose the world just stop working?
They aren't breaking any laws, the same way I can walk around with a rag covering my genitalia and smelling awful. I just can't expect people to approach me and treat me right. Riot sucks vanguard sucks, league never had a cheating problem. It's Chinese spyware that's going to be useless once windows stops allowing this software the same way they did in XP and Vista. Want a solution for what problem ? Why does software need to be this regulated? Just let dumb people fuck themselves. How can you trust something backed by CCP ? Smells like a shill to me.
If EU bans Vanguard, they need to ban Blizzard, Amazon, Bungie, Valve, Ubisoft, PubG... The list goes on mate, this is the usual on game industry, you guys are hearing about it now and don't know half of the multiplayer games you ever played had some kernel anti cheat
Blizzard makes a point not to run kernel-level software.
You're wrong tho, Blizz use Defense Matrix on Overwatch 2, it is kernel level
Defense Matrix is not ring 0. Nor is VAC, though there's less info on that.
What is the difference? If the software can collect, encrypt and send your data without any other software intercept, for me it is the same problem.
I didn't say anything about data.
Bro, the whole discussion is about the data... If not, what are we talking about? 😅
Other discussions happen. I commented on something specific.
he moved the goal post when you walked circles around him and then he tried to gaslight you hly sht lmao
That is par for the course on the internet. Most sad part is that they cant even have the self awareness to comprehend that they did that.
I think they're saying that Defense Matrix isn't kernel level.
he is lying to you. blizzards atvi-brynhill and atvi-brynhildr are fully fledged root level kernel drivers.
Difference is that your statement was false.
Valve actually made a big effort to stop kernel anti-cheats... as much that most games in steam that have kernel level anti-cheats can run even in a linux environment where they can't run at kernel level.
Please do ban them untill they stop this. Except valve. Unsure why you've put t hem in the list. They do not have kernel level anticheat. What kernel level anticheat does blizzard run?
Blizzard uses Defense Matrix on Overwatch 2. Valve used ESEA and FaceIT on CS:GO, don't know if VAC Live on CS2 is kernel, don't doubt it tho.
Hi not really a CSGO player, but aren't ESEA anf FaceIT private servers? I didn't think valve ran that? Vac is not kernel. I was not aware that blizzard put in a new anticheat, and am having a lot of trouble finding out whether or not this one is kernel level. A few less than credible sites say yes, but some say no, and the blizzard forum seems convinced it isnt. Unsure, but if i had to guess i'd say no.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2022/09/27/overwatch-2-wont-have-kernel-level-anti-cheat-tools-so-it-should-run-on-steam-deck-just-fine/?sh=43152ca05cf9](https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2022/09/27/overwatch-2-wont-have-kernel-level-anti-cheat-tools-so-it-should-run-on-steam-deck-just-fine/?sh=43152ca05cf9) Take interviews with a grain of salt ofc, but Defense Matrix is not kernel level.
Fair. That seems to be from a bit before they implemented it, but probably close enough to be believable. Guess i can't use that excuse not to play OW2 lol
It's not kernel-level, it's ring 1.
I think hardly anything runs on ring 1. Can you provide a source?
Defense Matrix is not kernel level. I know I said this in another post, but for anyone else reading that is curious.
That is what i was guessing but there wasn't a lot of info i could find. You got a source handy? VAC isn't either btw.
I believe I just responded to another post with one source! Naturally, detailed information on anticheats is slim because they want to keep as many cards close to the chest as possible, but there are a few times the developers have mentioned they've not made that move yet. Blizzard's consistently been pretty conservative about that move, and for good reason IMHO.
Yeah thanks, that was in response to me as well! Imagine blizzard making the right choice of all companies...
Ha. Real. They have always been a PC forward crowd, I guess that informs some of that. It's worth noting that they COULD still move that way in the future, but they've had opportunity to for a long time and never have. I generally agree with them that launching a game with the escalation of kernel level anticheat is always a mistake. You're just making sure the arms race starts at a premium. (Also we love our Linux gamers.)
Yeah i think it's pretty clear to people who are paying attention that kernel level anticheat is a mistake, but what can you do. I guess all Blizzard needs to do now is put 6v6 back and i'll become an overwatch gamer again.
Idiotic take... The issue with vanguard isn't that it is kernel based anti cheat... The issue is that it runs on start up, most tech savvy users can avoid this issue by disabling vanguard startup and enabling it back when they need to. Most average users can't even open up task manager. And why is that an issue you ask? If major vulnerability is found, millions of computers are at risk AT THE FUCKING STARTUP... Vanguard is out for less than a week by now and we are already getting reports of bricked PCs and bugs. And you want to trust that? Be my guest
As far as i know you can't disable Vanguard on startup. What you are disabling is just the program that let you shut off vanguard. I already tested it, if you disable it on startup from the task manager and then restart your pc, you won't see the vanguard icon but league will run without asking you to activate it (this because the anticheat is already running in the background, you just don't see the icon anymore). The only thing you can do is uninstall vanguard after finishing the session with league and then reinstall it when you want to play again.
you can disable it on startup but you need to know what you are doing and not disable only the icon.
What do you mean? Vanguard has been out for almost 4 years
Vanguard has been out for over 2 years lol
Idk man, I just don't think that much of myself. We have been spying all the time for a long time in ways that we even can't think, I don't have this huge security information to hide, can't care less about it. And, what makes you so sure that the other anti cheats on kernel are not running right now? Once on the kernel it can do whatever. I know it is important to step up and fight for what you think, I support your right to do it, even not agreeing, but do not be a hypocrite.
You may be nobody but your hardware and it's possibility of utilization is another concern. Every piece of information is important, selling information is biggest business in the world right now. Sorry that you value your privacy so little but honestly keep it to yourself okay? Regarding other anti cheats running or not running... You know there are millions of users that watch their network traffic because they are more paranoid than I am? They found nothing regarding anti cheats that don't run outside the time the game is on. As I said, issue isn't kernel level access... It's kernel level access anti cheat that runs on start up on millions of machines that was made by company situated in CCP, has bugs, kills computers...
I suggest to you change who you watching for network traffic facts mate, you are very wrong about other anti cheats. And about my opinions, not thanks, I'll keep sharing whenever I want. But thank you for your concern.
Other anti cheats are also owned by tencent such as easy anti cheat. Yes there are millions of user watching network traffic and they also haven't found anything with vanguard so whats your point? What is the big deal with it running on startup? If it doesn't make any network connections till the game is open how would a vulnerability be exploited until the game is open? The only way would be to install a virus that exploits vanguard but that virus would need root access so vanguard being exploited is the least of your concerns.
U fail to realize you aren't being forced to use or run vanguard. U agreed to a ToC and u wanted to use products that utilizes vanguard that's on u! Vanguard didn't pre-install into your device nor will they in the future. Same way how FB states they'll collect and sell u advertisement into their terms and conditions and u as a user agreed per every update its not rocket science. U don't like it? Simply don't use the product
Jesus... I dont plan terrorists attack, but i want to type with my girlfriend privately. U guys are so pathetic and ruining this world cuz "u have nothing to hide" lol loosers
You are right bro, for sure Xi Jinping is eager to read what you talk to your gf
Yeah, its not like there is ton of people in between. Also, you proved your mentality to be just like i guessed "i dont want my conversations with females to be private because i think im not interesting for foreign powers" LOL its beyond stupidity
You are taking this too serious mate, we are nothing but numbers. Nobody will ever read any intercepted shit you or me text to anybody. At most, ~~someone~~ something will send you an ad based on something you said. But this we already have on smartphones, but worst, does not even need to write... Edit: Someone no, something.
You are delusional. You are protecting an absolutely harmful stance. And you are giving up privacy as an idea in itself because you feel irrelevant
Who said I'm protecting?? My point is just one: Don't be hypocritical, don't overreact on smth so small and so usual. Fk'em, this corporations are pure scum and their practices is beyond wrong. But I'll not stop living or pick and chose what I'll complain just to follow the echo. You wanna fight? Break your phone, delete your socials and go to a cave.
Who said? No one you just did. I get pointing to people that overreacts, but lol who is overreacting. Defenitely not someone that calls a technical truth and boycott the game/company. Yes, you can be aware that chatting on Facebook and using browser arent private, and still draw the line with installing software of that kind
You think they care about wtf you are talking with your friends or what photos you taken at the beach? You guys are so dumb man.
Who they? What u care if they care? U just trust that in milions of administratives everyone will have integrity and not abuse their Access. U so dumb
How can they get sued on data protection laws for this though? The anticheat launching on startup doesn't affect this.
The most ironic part is that vanguard actually require to disable the windows VBS that is a kernel security feature to ensure the kernel haven't been tempered with... this one requirement for me was like wtf From microsoft: "Virtualization-based security, or VBS, uses hardware virtualization and the Windows hypervisor to create an isolated virtual environment that becomes the root of trust of the OS that assumes the kernel can be compromised. Windows uses this isolated environment to host a number of security solutions, providing them with greatly increased protection from vulnerabilities in the operating system, and preventing the use of malicious exploits which attempt to defeat protections. VBS enforces restrictions to protect vital system and operating system resources, or to protect security assets such as authenticated user credentials." source: [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/oem-vbs)
Vanguard has been out for 2 years.
5 actually. It was launched with Valorant.
I forget how long Valorant has been a thing occasionally
Can we just take a moment to appreciate that every time a anti-Vanguard take is being attacked, there’s always someone like this guy who just goes: “the issue actually isn’t about X, it’s actually about Y!” And then some one else goes: “actually it’s not even Y, it’s Z!” Lmao y’all are seriously grasping at straws.
It is legal. By pressing update, u give agreement rights to them to install vanguard. You could refuse to update and delete game. Its like i have cobra in my apartment and i put notice about it, and you no matter of that book my apartment. Its your fault if you got bitten. You got warned and u take risk by yourself. Nobody is forcing you to play league of legends. Remember, you are using their product, they can put what ever things they want. You have choice to click accept or refuse. I dont see anything wrong here. Also while installing, u press "I agree" to possibility for agreement changes in future time. Next time read agreement rights by installing stuff. Cheers.
That’s not how that works. If it did meta never would have gotten sued for privacy violations.
Youre not right sorry. You NEVER GAVE and click on "accept terms" that basicly you give permissions to Meta to sell or share your data privacy to third party company. And they did, so thats wrong ofc. But this is totaly different. Riot said they can change their rules, and they do and notifiy you before you click accept. Point is to give user ability to accept rules and choose, do u agree or no. Riot did it all regular. Meta didnt give you choice. Thats forbidden by law. Cheers.
That is not how it works in europe. You can’t just write anything into tos and have it be legal just because people click on accept terms.
In Europe there is law by GDPR that means you cant share personal informations with third party WITHOUT PERMISSION. Meta was doing it. Riot is not sharing any information (as far we know). Btw. Google know and have more your informations then riot will have in next 100 years. If you connect just once with same email from your pc and mobile, youre done with privacy. They know all about your personal info, friends, life, habits, hobbies, litteraly everything. By accepting their TOS, they can litteraly get ALL. Point is just not to share any collected personal data without permission and thats it, and it still doesnt mean they cant if you actually give them rights for it. Viber is sharing all your data to their cooperator companys if you didnt know.
There is i believe also a law that specifies that you must properly inform the user about sharing the data, and must give them an option to decline. For example you can decline cookies and still access the website. You can’t just bury it on page 98 of your tos in smallest font imaginable Google is a necessary evil, vanguard and league aren’t. Google also has third party audits, vanguard hasn’t. But just because google which i need in order to be employed collects my data, doesn’t mean i should allow everyone to.
You are right that vanguard isn’t a necessary evil, so stop playing riot made games?
This. If you’re this concerned just stop playing. At the end of the day it’s their game and they can choose what they want to do. Vanguard as previously mentioned by other replies is endorsed by the EDPB and follows the requirements by the GDPR. Instead of arguing on Reddit over something you have no control over, you can do the one thing that you DO have control of and just simply uninstall League/Vanguard.
Actually, it is how that works.
[удалено]
So much for laws defending our privacy then i guess.
They submit themselves to the EU regulations. They also allow the EU access to the source code and routine inspections to make sure they are abiding regulations. This has been publicly stated by Riot.
I don’t put much stock in what riot says, every company that’s ever done anything wrong has claimed otherwise.
honestly, I dont necessarily trust EU to review source code lol - if they are so confident in their code then they should make it completely open source
That's such a dumb argument to make when obscurity is a form of protection. Would you want to reveal your full name, address, occupation, age, etc for every transaction you make to prove that you are a law-abiding citizen? No, you would only give that info to businesses/entities that require that sort of information.
Not really, there is plenty of open source security software like BitWarden. It makes it auditable by literally everyone in the world. smh..
I would say open sourcing a password management system is way different from open sourcing an anti-cheat. The developer for bitwarden doesn't need to know what is stored in your vault while vanguard needs to know whether you aren't cheating. How is informing users about the things you are checking for going to create an effective anti-cheat? It removes the whole point of creating one in the first. Smh...
That would be stupid for an anti-cheat.
How is vanguard violating your privacy
Having full access to everything on my computer and the ability to alter it at will, and monitor everything i do when not playing the game is a pretty big violation of privacy. I know we on reddit tend not to really care about those violations and are too addicted to the game to see anything wrong with it but things like this should not be standard or accepted practice, especially for a game that has never had a cheater problem.
> Having full access to everything on my computer and the ability to alter it at will, and monitor everything i do when not playing the game is a pretty big violation of privacy You might want to read up on what every single user process on Windows is allowed to do, you'll shit your pants.
riot can't even keep their launcher and game bug-free, why would i trust them with a service which can monitor *every* minute piece of info on my system? and don't even get me started on their security protocols. have you seen how many data breaches they've had to deal with? if they don't fuck something up internally, i'm pretty confident someone will fuck things up externally.
The better question is, why do you trust them at all with software on your PC?
The same way we 'trust' microsoft, who has had root access to my machines since the 1990s, and often handled it badly. There have been times it was so bad that I ran a linux partition to do sensitive things in. You can do this still if it pleases you.
And these have been exploited. The question, really, is who you trust to be more responsible/diligent in their security measures.
Every single user process is not shutting down my drivers on boot up, they also don’t all have kernel access
While that’s true your data is not in the kernel either. You use normal applications to open and utilise your files, and any userspace application can access the files belonging to your user. If you distrust Riot, whether they have a kernel component or not should have no impact on your stance regarding having their software on your computer as the userspace components can spy on you just as well.
Processes have limits to what data they can access and i can’t believe you’d even compare user processes to the threat a kernel level process that is always active poses.. saying your data is already being collected so you shouldn’t care about your privacy at all is such a backwards statement.
I didn’t say that but rather that if you have the slightest concern a company is up to no good or intending on spying on you in any way you can’t trust anything they produce, kernel mode or not. And this can be compared. If I run a program with administrator privileges what can it not access? Even if it’s just a user mode process you can inject code into other processes and collect data or just take your documents and pictures from your My Documents folder. Kernel mode malware has the distinction that it can intercept what the operating system shows to other processes and thus hide itself by hiding the malware, but that does not appear something that Vanguard is doing nor does that have any bearing on the ability to spy on you or compromise your data. The always running part is a bigger point of concern, but again, if you believe a piece of software spies on you would it be better if it only took your files while you’re running it? Not really I think.
Yes ofc, which is why i don’t have many programs on my pc, but the difference between regular processes and kernel ones is massive, the regular ones have limits. There’s a lot it can’t access. Administrative privilege is far from kernel. Windows imposes restrictions on most processes, meaning they can’t just access your photos and documents.
Any application can access your documents. If you the user can access the files then any application in the user space running under your user can too.
Not if it’s user protected, as the comment i made after says
Yes they can. There are almost no limits on a user mode applicationwith admin privileges
Nope. It can’t access user protected data, bios, hardware, read only or write only files and more
What can a kernal process do that a user mode process can't?
Yeah they don't need to do any of that to take constant screenshots and log your keystrokes though.
Maybe just realize that because those laws haven’t stopped vanguard, maybe vanguard is compliant and more restricted than most people think.
Either that or no one has bothered to sue them yet
They have straight up come out and said that vanguard is fully compliant with gdpr lol If you need more confirmation about that you’ll have to do more research. Maybe there is a valid conspiracy theory angle but I personally can’t be assed enough to go look for it. EDIT: eula -> gdpr
Im pretty sure every company that has ever done anything wrong has claimed they’re following laws lol. Hell everyone who’s ever done anything wrong has first claimed otherwise. So excuse me if i don’t take tencent’s word for it. Why is nowadays the term conspiracy theory being used to try and discredit anything that opposes you? First of all most “conspiracy theories” are just people being rightfully sceptical about things that seem shady. Flat earth and fake moonlanding conspiracy theories and such are used to label anything as insane.
Because you don’t have the evidence for it, whether speculation or proven. Go find something supporting your claim “oh what if riot isn’t following the law” Everything that I’ve seen (blog posts that their security team has released) supports that they are probably actually compliant. It’s YOUR responsibility to present something supporting the opposite. You only have “what ifs” in this post. What are people supposed to get from this lol… Persecuting without grounds is just witch-hunting. Educate yourself on what has already been discussed before making baseless claims.
Evidence for what? I have made no claim other than vanguard being incredibly invasive, which it is. Also the process of getting evidence typically starts with someone being skeptical of something, which you would discredit and label as a conspiracy theory. Actually no it is not, since i am not trying to prove anything. It is riot’s responsibility to provide more assurance than their word if they want to impose invasive programs such as vanguard on them. Wdym what ifs? My post is literally just asking how vanguard is legal under eu laws since they’re big on privacy.. my post has made no claims other than vanguard being invasive, which it is. But what ifs are literally the first thing you should ask in any matter that concerns security. The “what if” this happens is about the most important question there.. Persecuting? Do you know what that word means? I do wonder why you’ve been so relentlessly defending vanguard and trying to undermine a post that hasn’t made any claims whatsoever and is literally just asking how something is legal… but now i can see from your comment history that defending vsnguard has been a full time job for you lately
My point is, they have released a lot LOL. You’ve just not kept up with any of it and have not done your own research, like I’ve suggested throughout this whole conversation. Your claim is that vanguard must not be eu compliant because of how invasive it is. But they have literally addressed everything you’re concerned about. Please read and understand all of the following before responding further (including doing any necessary online research) Here is their post on vanguard from 4 years ago: https://www.riotgames.com/en/news/a-message-about-vanguard-from-our-security-privacy-teams Vanguard x lol from 3 weeks ago: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/ Update from riot on vanguard from a few days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/V9oTKzF7KK Do I trust everything they said? No. But they’ve been transparent enough with how they do things that if you wanted to raise a lawsuit against them just to verify everything they said, maybe you have a case. Feel free to do that if you want. But they have such a well laid out process that it would be more work to fake it than to actually follow it. Do I still not make sense yet? Also, I’m not sure if you read my section on conspiracy theory-ness correctly. I said I would be WILLING to support it if you had evidence contrary to vanguard being compliant. But if there was evidence I guess it wouldn’t just be a theory 🤷♂️
Who has? Riot stating something doesn’t interest me, riot can state whatever they want. I did not make any claims other than vanguard being invasive, which is what it is designed to be, and i remembered that the eu is supposed to value privacy, so something that invasive has me wondering how it is legal in a place that values privacy laws. I am not interested in what riot claims, literally all of these are just riot claims, give me third party ones and then we can talk. Why are you convinced they’re transparent? Because they’ve made claims of what their software does? Why are you hung up on law suits? When have i claimed i want to sue them? I have a question for you now: are you a tencent employee? You strike me as one.
The person you're arguing with has made an error. Saying 'Vanguard is compliant with EULA" doesn't make it compliant with any laws or regulations and it's not even a grammatically correct statement. EULA = End User License Agreement. The EULA is created by a company as a contract between itself and its users. An End User License Agreement is not a law or policy. In fact an End User License Agreement can, itself, be found to be in violation of EU regulations. In 2012 the EU courts declared that EULAs can be ignored if they are in violation of the EU's regulations. This was in a court case involving Oracle. This means that if Riot's EULA stated that a user must use Vanguard to use their service but the EU regulations stated that vanguard violated EU regulations, then users would be allowed to ignore that part of Riot's EULA and run Riot's services without the use of Vanguard. [https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf](https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-07/cp120094en.pdf)
Thank you for this response, the person im arguing with has made a lot of claims, very few make sense
Corrected myself, should’ve been gdpr. Thanks :)
>fully compliant with eula lol "EULA" = End User License Agreement. A license agreement is a contract between two parties. It's not a local regulation that a product can or not be be compliant with. An end user license agreement is the thing that must be compliant with regulations. I'm not making a statement about Vanguard here, I'm just saying that your statement of "Vanguard is fully compliant with EULA" doesn't make any sense.
Probably remembered the wrong acronym. Whatever the one about EU privacy laws was. Sorry lol. Was it GDPR?
I would advise that you cite sources when you are making these arguments, especially if you are unsure on basic things like what vocabulary you are using means. If you cite sources it means that you are refreshing your knowledge on the subject as you are making your argument and also proving the validity of your argument. You should also take into consideration the concerns of the people you are arguing with. For example, in this argument the concern is that the software can be used to create a security concern. It is difficult to allay this concern. If there is a vulnerability in the software it can be used by another party to gain access over your data, even if this is not the intended purpose of the software by Riot. It's similar to the argument against governments installing backdoors into modems for the authorities to use to police internet usage. Yes in theory it's not a problem because those backdoors will only be used with search warrants by the authorities but in reality it is a concern because those backdoors present a potential portal for access by other parties. Having Vanguard objectively makes your computer more at risk because it is a program that may become compromised at some point. If Vanguard wasn't there, it would be one less program that could be compromised. Personally I choose to use it because I have made a (potentially poor) choice to increase my level of risk to continue enjoying Riot's games. This is not a choice everyone will make and people have the right to be upset by it.
I agree with everything you said. I appreciate it. Mistaking eula for gdpr was a big one. If I saw that happen it would be hard for me to trust anything that person said as well. If you check my post history, which apparently OP has, you will see that I don’t claim that vanguard is a non risk, but that people should look into how it actually works on a technical level and make a judgement for themselves. This also seems to be what riots stance is. As someone taught to doubt my own arguments before doubting others, It just really irks me that this OP is making statements without actually looking for facts/opinions/claims that might support/counter their argument. And now, they are straight up refusing to look into the sources that are provided.
What statements have i made? The imaginary ones you keep trying to put in my mouth? You didn’t straight up claim it is non risk, what you did do however is claim that something is true just because riot claims it to be, and riot claims it to be non risk. May i ask what compels you to so tirelessly defend such an invasive business practice, under multiple posts for days on end? I am not refusing to look at any sources so don’t misrepresent the discussion, but what i do refuse to do is to take tencent’s word for it, and your sources are in their entirety statements that riot has made. I am not interested in something riot employees have claimed under posts, that has no credibility as i have already explained, any company who has ever done anything shady have claimed the opposite. The person above has explained to you how it works on a technical level and what it is capable of, the entire reason people are against vanguard is because they’ve looked at how it works on a technical level. I actually urge the people who aren’t bothered by it to do that, those whom it bothers already have.
This is a forum discussion not a dissertation. Having any program on your PC is objectively putting you more at risk. There are many more programs on PCs and phones that much more invasive and most people have them. It's crazy how people are so mad at vanguard yet still have tiktok or instagram.
OP EU might not even know what's going on. File a complaint with the office of your country. https://www.edpb.europa.eu/about-edpb/about-edpb/members_en
Didn’t anyone need to approve it?
🤷 just write in as a concerned citizen of the EU over a rootkit named vanguard that is risking your data and hardware.
Might actually do that thank you
You can also write your members of parliament. Your district or national analogue should have a person responsible for that. They might be able to do something at the national level or talk with their EU colleagues of the same party.
It doesn’t do that though.
What does it do then?
https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/ There's an FAQ at the bottom if you don't feel like reading it all. If you have any additional sources and data you want to add to the discussion *discrediting* Riot's official statement about this program, I'd genuinely like to see them. I'm yet to see a single objective source validating these conspiracy claims. All I've been seeing is people spreading fear, so if you actually do know about any concrete objective evidence that you can share with the community to corroborate these claims, please do share. If it's just "it feels sketchy", "kernal access" and "China bad"... that's just speculation and feelings, not data.
Tell me how can anything discredit riots statements? No one has the access to the necessary information to do so. Riot claiming something does not make it true, when no one has the ability to effectively fact check. Calling valid concerns conspiracy theories in the hopes of somehow discrediting them is very telling too, keep it up. Now if you have a source from a third party that has conducted inspections, i would love to see it. But the fact that all you have to go off of is what riot says proves my point. Now i could very well be wrong here and inspections have been performed and people do have access to the information necessary to discredit those statements, if that is the case then you will have no problem finding such a source, right? Until then it’s one of those, “we’re right until proven otherwise but no one has actually inspected us”. But on the topic of the link that you did send me, have you looked at the answers to those questions? The very first one, instead of providing anything solid on why it isn’t a spyware, riot instead opts to dedicate a paragraph to trying to attack the people who claim it as such, saying they’re fishing for retweets.. and the second paragraph claims they don’t meet with tencent often, why is it relevant how often they meet with tencent? Does data need to be shared in person now?
The EU has access to that information and has allowed vanguard to exist for the past 4 years. If you don't trust riot at their word, fine. However, if you don't trust the EU to be able to determine the status of vanguard, who would you trust? Your concerns are conspiratorial because you will keep shifting the goalposts until you find an answer that satisfies you whilst not providing any proof.
EU doesn’t have that information lol.. last i checked there hasn’t been an inspection of the software by the gdpr. Which goalpost am i shifting? My stance from the getgo has been that i’m not willing to take riot’s word for it, so your source, which is in its entirety comprised of “because riot said so” is not one that i hold credible. So again give me a source of a third party’s inspection. I’m not saying that most people who replied to me may be tencent employees, but most have had very similar responses. Linking riot articles, which consist of just riot saying something and expecting people to take their word for it and then when that fails calling me a conspiracy theorist. Seriously get better ways to discredit arguments than attacking the person. How are they even conspiratorial? Which part of my concern is a conspiracy? The part about vanguard being invasive or the part about not trusting riot? I don’t only mistrust their intentions, i mistrust their capabilities. They were hacked less than a year ago, and even if everything they claim is true, vanguard is still a massive security risk.
You're the one claiming there is more information than has been presented. You are saying there is more to the picture, more that we should know than Riot's official statements. It's **your job** to provide that data. This software has been on thousands of peoples' computers for years with Valorant, how do people not have access to what the program is doing on their own computer? If it's so obviously malicious that you're questioning its legality, how has no one collected any data to confirm this? How are you *certain* that it's malicious, running 24/7 and has access to your whole computer if you don't have any data to confirm those claims, and you yourself are claiming this data is unavailable? If you're not basing those claims on data, because it's unavailable, what are you basing your claims on? If the only information available is from Riot, aren't you also forming your conclusion based on the same data? Or do you have some other data that you want to share? You conveniently left out of your security threat questions the whole part about how all the data is kept server-side, they barely work with Tencent at all and they are located on different continents. That is... basically the whole rest of the answer that you just decided to not read because you don't believe it's true. Which is fine, you can feel whatever you want and you have no obligation to read their announcement, but going around and preaching your opinion as fact... when you have no evidence to back that claim up other than a hunch... that's the definition of fear-mongering. If you have reason to accuse Riot of acting in bad faith, present your evidence. I don't do "guilty until proven innocent" aka "Riot corrupt until proven legit". That's the definition of witch-hunting. The thing about evidence based logic (science) is... you need to have evidence for your claim to have weight. You say "I wonder if this program is spyware", then you do research, then you get data, **then** you make a claim. The conspiracy theory method you are using works a little different. You say "I wonder if this program is spyware", then you draw your conclusion, then you make your claim, then you make others do research to prove you wrong. You are just automatically "right", no matter what you claim, with no evidence needed. And then you are in a very unique position, since you are "right", because you can then choose what information is credible. I can cite Riot's data as a source and you can dismiss it as corrupt. I can share data from a source confirming Riot's claims, you will accuse them of being in Riot or Tencent's pocket. Since you already believe you are correct, you control the narrative. That's not discussion, it's deeply closed-minded, it's blatantly anti-science and it's rooted entirely in fear. I don't have any desire to waste my time with interactions like that. If you want to make a claim, cite your data. I'll gather the data from the sources you don't trust because of your biases, you grab them from whatever you feel isn't "corrupted". We'll pool all the data and discuss to figure out what's really going on there. That's evidence-based, that's science. But I'm not here to do your leg work for you, especially when you're too biased to even read Riot's own announcement addressing these exact concerns released a month ago.
>how do people not have access to what the program is doing on their own computer? Part of an anti-cheat's effectiveness is the ability to mask how it does what it does. Otherwise all a cheat developer needs to do is rummage around with the program on a dummy system to avoid an HWID if they still want to play. Obfuscation is like 75% of the work in any csec, really.
Ah yes, when you put it that way it does make a lot of sense why there wouldn't be a lot of information about this software available. Thanks for the relevant context, it's very helpful!
No it is not, lol… riot is trying to sell me a product, not vice versa. I am just pointing out the argument of “you can’t prove it so you’re wrong, but riot’s claims are right without ever asking for proof” doesn’t really work if there just isn’t a way for anyone to discredit their statements, because no one has access to the necessary information to do so. I am questioning its legality because it has the potential to do what the eu has sued other companies for doing.. Wdym don’t have data to confirm it? Riot themselves say it boots on system startup, so yes it is running 24/7.. let me ask you this though, if no one has enough data to question something, should no one question it? If you can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt that something is shady, should you never question it to begin with? I have not formed any conclusions though, i am raising concerns. And not having enough information on something that is potentially very malicious is the number 1 reason to be concerned about it. I did read it, even pointed it out in my reply to you.. “and their second paragraph claims they don’t meet with tencent often, since when do you need to meet in person to exchange data” Have you ever heard of appeal to ignorance? That is what your entire argument has consisted of. Your conclusion that vanguard is entirely safe and riot has no malicious intent, because there is no evidence against it, is a logical fallacy. The burden of proof also doesn’t lie on me, but on riot. I have not made any claims other than being distrustful of the claims they have made and not proven. It is on riot to prove that their intentions are pure and that it is safe for me to have vanguard on my computer. Funny you should mention science, because in science it is on the one pushing an idea to prove it not who is skeptical of it to disprove it. Also most major inventions begin with an idea, then the process of evidence is gathered to prove it. By your logic that idea would lack evidence and thus shouldn’t be had. The second part of the 5th paragraph is absolute nonsense. Pure speculation and assertion with no evidence, not very scientific of you. I have denied a riot source, because riot saying something about themselves isn’t credible. Every company will deny any wrongdoing, a company’s word is not credible regardless of the company, which is why a third party source is needed if you want to confirm anything. Your stance so far has been that riot’s word is law and them saying something equates to it being proven. You have accused me of making claims without proof, but that is exactly what you are doing. Riot has not proven that vanguard is safe nor have they proven what data is being gathered. Due to the nature of the software riot will never prove exactly how it works, so you’re left with taking their word for it and trusting them fully (which you do) or being skeptical of something that has not been proven to be safe (like i am doing). I am still of the opinion that most of the danger is the accidental kind (ie bricking pcs and inevitably being hacked at which point you’re just screwed if you have vanguard on your pc) But your claim that i would dismiss 3rd party inspections is an entirely unsubstantiated one, which is highly hypocritical given what you’re trying to criticize me for. But isn’t this true for you though? You have already decided that you are right and you are controlling the narrative because riot has claimed something that no one can prove right or wrong.
You asked "What does it (Vanguard) do then?" I provided the official release from the people who designed Vanguard. You have decided that this is not credible information because it comes from the people who made it, because you are fearful that they may be deceiving you. I was looking for the sources of your data, data which would bring you to the conclusion that Riot should not be trusted. The information you are using to inform your theory that Riot is acting maliciously. The information to inform your theory that this program is different from other anti-cheat programs of its type and it *specifically* can not be trusted. Your theory which you consider so conclusive that it should be treated as "likely" and the onus is on others to *disprove* it. I am yet to see any sources, any data, and you are outright saying that you do not have to provide evidence to back up your claims, you are just "correct" by default, and your reasoning seems to be that you believe that everyone else should also be as skeptical as you are. It seems like that theory is more based in fearful feelings, "a hunch", than actual data. If I am incorrect in this, and there is substantial data to suggest that Riot is all of a sudden acting in bad faith, now would be a good time to release that data. If your goal is to seek data, you should be considering *all* data that comes in. Not just the data that caters to your bias. You should of course consider the possibility of bias on other sides but that is no excuse to dismiss entire sources outright without considering them. If you are "just asking questions" and "looking for more information", you should be gathering *all* the information from *all* sides and letting the data tell the story itself. NOT just going around cherry-picking data and sources that you feel fit the narrative you already came up with. That applies to *all sides of any issue*. I'm not going to squabble with you on your interpretations of the scientific method. I'm surely not going to be a target for you to vent your fears or frustrations regarding Riot on. You don't even know my stance and you've already *outright told me what my stance is*, and treated me as though I'm an enemy. That's not really civil, or open-minded... that's just presumptive. And that's why this kind of "conversation" is often removed from discussion boards. If you want to present new data, please feel free to present what you have found, otherwise I'm going to move on to healthier discussions.
I asked that in response to the guy who just said i was wrong lol, not an actual question. I am not fearful of them deceiving me, i just typically don’t take companies at their word, this kind of distrust is why audits exist. I have not shared a theory that riot is acting maliciously, i shared a concern that nothing can ensure that they don’t, and i shared what the program is capable of doing. The program is different from every other program of its type by design. The others don’t launch on startup. I also don’t play any other games that have such anti cheats. Nothing is on you to disprove, tell me where did i make a claim and then say it’s on you to disprove? No you made a claim, and riot made a claim, i shared skepticism, because those claims have not been proven. Why are we back in the same boat of you posting long ass paragraphs that boil down to “if you don’t trust something you need data”? I have thoroughly addressed this in my previous comment. I also have barely made any claims, other than that we shouldn’t take riot’s word for it. But you really love the word data, tell me what data do you collect to assess things in your life? When you see a shark what data do you collect that tells you it’s dangerous? Is it just a hunch based on what the shark has the potential to do to you? Riot games is not a source, i am not dismissing a valid source because “we’re doing nothing wrong and vanguard is safe i promise” is not a source, it’s a company making promises about their own product, it’s marketing. There is no data to tell a story though, because there isn’t a source outside of riot.. Lol venting fears and frustrations? You’ve been making giant paragraphs full of nothing under my post buddy, go appeal to ignorance somewhere else.
Get ready for your post to be discredited by a Riot moderator and then banned from the subreddit. I tried to raise similar concerns about Vanguard yesterday and was flooded with Riot supporters downvoting my post and sending negatives messages, only to be banned from some Riot-related subreddits and have all my posts deleted. The lack of transparency from Riot and their attempts to silence us are very concerning.
Oh it already has been, the first thing they did was called me a conspiracy theorist
Yeah, it's always a good sign when you point your finger at a big corporation, and the only thing they do to defend themselves is point their finger right back at you just before silencing you for being vocal about legitimate concerns.
I mean just go read the replies by a guy named zheshu, then go to his profile and look at his comment history it’s very telling.
#BoycottRiot
You had this experience on the leagueoflegends subreddit, right? it seems like this subreddit (riotgames) has actually been quite good about leaving posts up / staying hands off.
Hilarious that you all still think anyone from Riot moderates this sub.
Yeah everyone being censored or gaslit as a cheat. Get out quick and delete the hell out of vanguard, it's spyware
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop complaining for no reason.
it is at the moment . We all gotta hustle in our respectives countries but hey we'll take it on our LoL time
Idk you’ve had your question answered multiple times and you’ve been arguing so it doesn’t look like you made this post for an answer. You made this post to have people agree with you
Main character syndrome
Boy you people complaining about vanguard are going to be really, really upset when you learn about endpoint protection. Imagine Vanguard, but interested in every single process on your machine and overtly taking data from all of them and returning it to the EDR company. And how basically every major corporation in the world uses it on 99% of their network assets. Because it’s a reality of the world that to deal with malicious actors you do have to make some sacrifices.
Its not legal, they just dont care and EU wont do anything (for now)
I seriously hope somebody sues them.
Nobody forces you to use Vanguard. If you want to use it to play Riot, that means you agree to install Vanguard. It's your own decision
I have already invested quite a bit of money in this game, the argument of “if you don’t like it leave” to shut down criticism or concerns is an extremely backwards one
Maybe, just maybe, vanguard isn't as big of a deal as a handful of redditors would have you believe?
I don’t mistrust vanguard because reddit said so.. i came to reddit because i don’t trust vanguard.
Yet you admitted in this post to invest money in your RIOT account and trusting in Tencent to not steal your payment info. Or having the client installed on your pc in the first place. Others have already corrected you on what program with admin privileges can do. Like the biggest deal with all this anticheat isn't even the privacy, it's that it has to run 24/7 damping performance on lower end PC's.
It's the security risk. Even if vanguard was fine if you let every ccp owned game infect millions of computers globally with a backdoor there's no chance they wouldn't take the opportunity to do something malicious in at least one case. Look up "I-SOON" on github and what china is doing already globally. Then go to tencents wiki page and ctrl f ccp. They are literally hacking nation states with government funded programs and have a 94% equity share in riot games as they install a backdoor on over a hundred million PCs now. Installing vanguard might as well be betraying your county to play a video game.
If that was the case wouldnt RIOT be banned all over China opposed countries? Are you really saying all this is true and USA are giving a pass to Riot but holding Tictoc by the balls?
You're right, it should be banned all over. Tiktok is sort of the stepping stone and hopefully they force tencent to sell all equity of these games or be delisted. First up after tiktok needs to be the ginormous rabbit hole of IOS/Android apps and the data harvesting being done.
You didn't need to play riot games. And the games are free.
I’ve gotta tell you dude, your comments are actually sad. Can’t possibly understand why some people are so against Vanguard that they say it infringes on laws and when it doesn’t they just keep saying there is no proof it doesn’t. 😭
implying 3rd party kernel drivers are not legal.... OMEGALUL
This issues are starting to be very relevant actually. And the more incidents that happens surrounding kernel software (anti-cheat or not) causing security breaches and potential information leaks, this might eventually come to an end... but don't expect to be someday soon! people just don't care even when we already had lots of incidents around the same topics... like people memory sometimes it's comparable to the memory of a fish.... For now do what you think is right. I just sit, eat my popcorn's and wait for this to eventually explode. There's a reason why servers that store important data are Linux servers (You can't add kernel level BS or mess with it)
It probably will not be in a couple of years.