I registered a trial account at PC and noticed that something popped up asking whether I would like to give usage statistics to which I said no. After blitzing on the second day I noticed text in blue saying sending the stats.
Is this the norm? Are chess companies now going to "spy" on their users or I'm being paranoid?
I've been on Playchess for years and have never seen the usage statistics message. I know they track it though -- during various tournaments they have quoted average viewer time on a broadcast, etc. I believe the anti-cheating system basically checks if you are switching between the Playchess program and some other application. I heard that several years ago, so its probably / maybe more sophisticated now.
Quite frankly, for any site you can assume it is tracking your usage. Every time you log in, you leave a record. Ask Holgar or one of the other Playchess operators the next time you notice one online.
Originally posted by enrico20The site might logically separate game statistics from other ways you interact with the program. For instance the program might track how many times you opened the help menu, which chess set you use, or upload a diagnostics file if it detects it is about to crash.
It was a trial account (I did not get the full account) so i cannot log on and send a message. What is puzzling is that when a message popped up "Do I want to send usage statistics" I said no the first day and then I saw the message in blue when I was playing on day 2.