https://wccftech.com/yuzu-telemetry-piracy-ni … endo-user-data/
So make sure you get your proxies\firewall setup at home to allow list the websites you access.
For the software that requires telemetry and won't allow you to run without, don't use it.
For those without the knowledge of the above and still care an outbound block per application might be effective.
You know, I've seen a lot of headlines about this being a blow to emulation, and it is. But perhaps, just perhaps, if you are operating under the fig leaf that emulation is different from piracy, you shouldn't keep extensive logs of all the piracy you've done.
Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS
So, spyware is now called "telemetry", and is supposed to be a "feature"...
Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...
Adware used to be a whole category of malware, but now nominally respectable companies provide very little other than adware.
Software "stores" supply so many programs with built in ads. Some ad-free stuff still has links and UI elements for social media, which to businesses is a branch of marketing (HR might fire anyone, but marketing, for using social media at work. Therefore social media is marketing and ads). Non-adware, some pay-ware, is often still adware for the higher tiered versions. "Want to write something and send it to someone else? Upgrade to Pro!".
Only spammers of the most awful type, the pr0n, the viagra (I wonder if that word isn't even banned on this site? A crude but effective anti-spam measure), used to include 1x1 tracking graphics to see which email addresses worked. Now that invisible tracking pixel in email is standard in CRM systems, such as Salesforce, and so invisible tracking is standard for any business big enough to automate their customer data.
My RSS reader, QuiteRSS, by default has Google Analytics built into it!
The spying if off by default, but the capability is there. Google Analytics is made easy due to supported by the toolkit, QT5, which I am appalled by.... I should think people have raised its presence as a bug in QT5. Whilst it is easy to think Linux is missing the anti-user mooching, it is right there to be used if wanted. I have modified QuiteRSS to look up localhost rather than google-analytics.com, recompiled and re-installed. And my DNS server lies about google-analytics.com too, so the anti-feature was never going to work. But that so is not the point.....
That's very bad for end users indeed... but also good that it is a settlement and not a judgement that did that... a judgement would open a whole fleet of trucks of cans of worms... you'd get RIAA suing microsoft for all the user data where they let media player look up tracks and album art for digital music files, and you'd get MPAA suing all the Smart TV and STB device makers (Roku etc) that have content recognition systems and report back what the users are playing from internal storage etc.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
