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Found via slashdot. Essentially a guy compiled a barebones empty program with Microsoft's C++ compiler. just an empty main() function. Yet the compiled binary contained calls for "telemetry_main_invoke_trigger and telemetry_main_return_trigger". This is undocumented, naturally.
Microsoft -confirmed- afterwards that telemetry calls are added, and for "Users who have a copy of VS2015 Update 2 and wish to turn off the telemetry functionality currently being compiled into their code should add notelemetry.obj to their linker command line." Microsoft claims they will be removing this in a future build (The including of telemetry to begin with.) but thecynic realist in me is convinced that this is just so they can hide it better.
1. Remember that the telemetry inclusion was completely UNDOCUMENTED.
2. Removing it requires knowledge of the undocumented "notelemetry.obj" file.
3. Microsoft kept it hidden until someone proved it existed and brought it up.
As one slashdotter commented, this is akin to a compiler inserting a backdoor.
The potential that telemetry is inside the games you purchased, if they were compiled by Visual Studio C++ by the developers I guess is very real. After all, this -was- undocumented until today, so I doubt devs would have been able to add "notelemetry.obj" to their sources.
And why the hell do you need to ADD code to REMOVE functionality.
More and more I find myself thinking if I DO try to write games on the computer, I'll be doing it on Linux only.
Microsoft -confirmed- afterwards that telemetry calls are added, and for "Users who have a copy of VS2015 Update 2 and wish to turn off the telemetry functionality currently being compiled into their code should add notelemetry.obj to their linker command line." Microsoft claims they will be removing this in a future build (The including of telemetry to begin with.) but the
1. Remember that the telemetry inclusion was completely UNDOCUMENTED.
2. Removing it requires knowledge of the undocumented "notelemetry.obj" file.
3. Microsoft kept it hidden until someone proved it existed and brought it up.
As one slashdotter commented, this is akin to a compiler inserting a backdoor.
The potential that telemetry is inside the games you purchased, if they were compiled by Visual Studio C++ by the developers I guess is very real. After all, this -was- undocumented until today, so I doubt devs would have been able to add "notelemetry.obj" to their sources.
And why the hell do you need to ADD code to REMOVE functionality.
More and more I find myself thinking if I DO try to write games on the computer, I'll be doing it on Linux only.
