Guide | How To NVIDIA Adds Telemetry, Here's How to Disable It

[BoraMurdar]

From Majorgeeks

It's been brought to our attention that nVIDIA now has telemetry included with its drivers. It also continues the bloat with nVIDIA Wireless Controller and ShadowPlay services, something many don't need.

First, let's go over what these are.

• Telemetry is essentially considered spying by many as it is a way to send data back and forth. It's nowhere near that simple, but we'd like to know what it's doing in our video drivers when it's never been needed before.

• nVIDIA Wireless Controller requires you have, you guessed it, a nVIDIA Wireless Controller.

• ShadowPlay is a way to capture and record gameplay.
  
  The easiest way to check for, and disable these is to download Microsoft Autoruns. Autoruns is portable, so no installation is needed. Download it and unzip Autoruns.zip into its own folder and double click Autoruns.exe or Autoruns64.exe.
  
  Type nvidia in the filter box.
  
  You will find Telemetry in the Task Scheduler section and the nVIDIA Wireless Controller, and ShadowPlay services further down under the registry entries.
  
  Uncheck what you don't want, close and reboot. If you get an error, close the program and right click on Autoruns.exe or Autoruns64.exe and "Run as Administrator."
  
  

 

[yigido]

Do they use these telemetry for advertisement purposes? I am nowadays against to block 'all' telemetry options. Which and what data will send to NVidia ?

 

[BoraMurdar]

Do they use these telemetry for advertisement purposes? I am nowadays against to block 'all' telemetry options. Which and what data will send to NVidia ?

When installing the latest driver (368.25), the process immediately send the current driver version and the PCI ID of your graphic card at gfswl.geforce.com using HTTP without encryption.

After transmitting some miscellaneous information like ID and size of your monitor to Adobe and a Google Analytics' tracker Nvidia will send information regarding your hardware such as CPU and SSD model reference to telemetry.nvidia.com.

Now if you agree to install GeForce Experience, which is the default option, a detailed description of your hardware is sent a few minutes later to gfe.nvidia.com/getsugar. This description includes: brand and model of your motherboard, serial number, BIOS version, information regarding USB drives currently plugged, RAM capacity, GPU frequency, etc.

But wait, there is more! GeForce Experience will communicate the software you use (not only games), when you use it, for how long and, if it is a game, a framerate history, current settings and various statistical data.

It will also record where you click on the various utilities provided and how long you stay on each page. Almost 100Ko of information, along with Google trackers, are sent to Nvidia.

A decrypted log intercepted from our test setup is available here.

This is clearly a breach of your privacy. Nvidia's privacy policy does not mention these activities in the French version, only in the English one.

Regarding AMD (Crimson 16.5.3), some basic information are sent during driver installation, just like Nvidia, but we detected nothing more afterwards even when launching various applications or games.

 

[ZeroDay]

Excellent share BoraMurdar Thank you.

 

[yigido]

Seems they are trying to understand the product usage and performance.
But this one,

It will also record where you click on the various utilities provided and how long you stay on each page. Almost 100Ko of information, along with Google trackers, are sent to Nvidia.

is not acceptable.
and not secure

using HTTP without encryption

Thanks @BoraMurdar

 

[Fritz]

Thanks a bunch @BoraMurdar

Actually, that's like our neighbors peaking through our windows day and night 'cause they're "trying to understand us better". Not acceptable at all. Whatever their intent, they should enable the user to make an informed decision and allow to enable or disable it. Amazing a company like Nvidia has to resort to such measures.

 

[tim one]

Thanks for sharing, really interesting, I never thought Nvidia has the telemetry dropped in its driver!

 

[Dani Santos]

Thank you for this information. Disabled them all, so no more nvidia spying. For other people I recommend you also disable windows 10 telemetry and android/google telemetry. Also use a vpn, so you keep your privacy as much as possible

 

[Venustus]

Thanks for the share Bora!
I'm still using an older version of their driver which doesn't have telemetry!
I will wait until they sort out the multitude of issues with these recent releases!!

 

[SHvFl]

You need Geforce experience to get all this. Just download the driver and you are fine.

 

[Omnipotent]

You need Geforce experience to get all this. Just download the driver and you are fine.

Exactly, I've only got the Graphics & PhysX Drivers installed.

 

[DardiM]

Thanks for the share

(As soon as Nvidia released the Geforce experience version with obligation to be connected, I removed it )

 

[Svoll]

Awesome share and I just learned of AutoRuns, its awesome! Thanks @BoraMurdar !

I haven't updated my drivers yet as I am sitting on 386.89, couldn't find any of those listed, but it would be mighty useful once I do have to update my drivers.