Right. Gabe isn't admitting to wrongdoing here, since Valve feels that the particular check was limited enough to be a reasonable countermeasure. According to

Right. Gabe isn't admitting to wrongdoing here, since Valve feels that the particular check was limited enough to be a reasonable countermeasure. According to Gabe, this module was not aimed at scraping anyone's web usage or browsing history (not even for game cheat sites), but just to detect whether a machine was likely to be automatically dialing a hack's DRM server, and then sending hashed copies of those, and only those, entries to Valve to flag as a potential cheat. I can imagine that a lot of the gaming community would consider that reasonable behaviour, if it was effective at cutting down on cheats. Whether Valve is telling the truth, I don't know. I suspect so (Gabe seems smart enough not to try lying to the internet, though, so any deception is likely to be that of omission). Whether this is right or wrong is a matter between you and your shaman/vicar/rabbi/mullah/conscience/etc.