Nexus Mods API released

[Yggdrasil7557]

In response to post #67632416. #67634251, #67635721, #67635836, #67636566 are all replies on the same post.

GuruJuju wrote: "Applications should send a valid user agent string identifying the application/library they are using and system information. This allows us to collect statistics and aides with debugging potential problems." What does that mean?

Kerber100 wrote: Nexus will be able to tell us what is most popular mod manager, its version, operation system distribution among users and such info.

GuruJuju wrote: yea and the apps we use and the websites we visit?

Kerber100 wrote: This kind of info is not collected. It's just your mod manager and OS name and version. Your web browser sends similar info like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.96 Safari/537.36

Here, check your user-agent.

GuruJuju wrote: I will investigate further

as Kerber has stated, the api does not request everything about your computer, and even with its diagnostics it still requests less information than many programs you probably already use do. chrome and chromium based browsers (opera, cent, ghost, sleipnir, and others) all request data from you that is typically more data than the nexus api will collect. If you have a smart phone or a smart TV or a smart speaker or any device that has bluetooth, chances are you are being data mined. Smart phones use your location and speed and similar to determine road conditions, smart speakers and smart home devices use what you say to determine what ads you should get next time you open their webpage. smart tvs will report your viewing preferences to be able to promote different products in your ads.

You are being mined now, while you view this message by Amazon, who owns Curse LLC, who provide the ad service for Nexus Mods, which is why there was a popup message from curse the first time you accessed this site since mentioning cookies Edited February 11, 2019 by Yggdrasil7557

[GuruJuju]

In response to post #67632416. #67634251, #67635721, #67635836, #67636566, #67637641 are all replies on the same post.

GuruJuju wrote: "Applications should send a valid user agent string identifying the application/library they are using and system information. This allows us to collect statistics and aides with debugging potential problems." What does that mean?

Kerber100 wrote: Nexus will be able to tell us what is most popular mod manager, its version, operation system distribution among users and such info.

GuruJuju wrote: yea and the apps we use and the websites we visit?

Kerber100 wrote: This kind of info is not collected. It's just your mod manager and OS name and version. Your web browser sends similar info like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.96 Safari/537.36

Here, check your user-agent.

GuruJuju wrote: I will investigate further

Yggdrasil7557 wrote: as Kerber has stated, the api does not request everything about your computer, and even with its diagnostics it still requests less information than many programs you probably already use do. chrome and chromium based browsers (opera, cent, ghost, sleipnir, and others) all request data from you that is typically more data than the nexus api will collect. If you have a smart phone or a smart TV or a smart speaker or any device that has bluetooth, chances are you are being data mined. Smart phones use your location and speed and similar to determine road conditions, smart speakers and smart home devices use what you say to determine what ads you should get next time you open their webpage. smart tvs will report your viewing preferences to be able to promote different products in your ads.

You are being mined now, while you view this message by Amazon, who owns Curse LLC, who provide the ad service for Nexus Mods, which is why there was a popup message from curse the first time you accessed this site since mentioning cookies

So that justifies it...

[AL12]

In response to post #67632416. #67634251, #67635721, #67635836, #67636566, #67637641, #67638186 are all replies on the same post.

GuruJuju wrote: "Applications should send a valid user agent string identifying the application/library they are using and system information. This allows us to collect statistics and aides with debugging potential problems." What does that mean?

Kerber100 wrote: Nexus will be able to tell us what is most popular mod manager, its version, operation system distribution among users and such info.

GuruJuju wrote: yea and the apps we use and the websites we visit?

Kerber100 wrote: This kind of info is not collected. It's just your mod manager and OS name and version. Your web browser sends similar info like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.96 Safari/537.36

Here, check your user-agent.

GuruJuju wrote: I will investigate further

Yggdrasil7557 wrote: as Kerber has stated, the api does not request everything about your computer, and even with its diagnostics it still requests less information than many programs you probably already use do. chrome and chromium based browsers (opera, cent, ghost, sleipnir, and others) all request data from you that is typically more data than the nexus api will collect. If you have a smart phone or a smart TV or a smart speaker or any device that has bluetooth, chances are you are being data mined. Smart phones use your location and speed and similar to determine road conditions, smart speakers and smart home devices use what you say to determine what ads you should get next time you open their webpage. smart tvs will report your viewing preferences to be able to promote different products in your ads.

You are being mined now, while you view this message by Amazon, who owns Curse LLC, who provide the ad service for Nexus Mods, which is why there was a popup message from curse the first time you accessed this site since mentioning cookies

GuruJuju wrote: So that justifies it...

Really Nexus will not know anything you are not sending yourself. And all you are sending is the header Kerber showed you before, and that really is basic information that is actually useful to debug problems.

[GuruJuju]

In response to post #67632416. #67634251, #67635721, #67635836, #67636566, #67637641, #67638186, #67638486 are all replies on the same post.

GuruJuju wrote: "Applications should send a valid user agent string identifying the application/library they are using and system information. This allows us to collect statistics and aides with debugging potential problems." What does that mean?

Kerber100 wrote: Nexus will be able to tell us what is most popular mod manager, its version, operation system distribution among users and such info.

GuruJuju wrote: yea and the apps we use and the websites we visit?

Kerber100 wrote: This kind of info is not collected. It's just your mod manager and OS name and version. Your web browser sends similar info like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.96 Safari/537.36

Here, check your user-agent.

GuruJuju wrote: I will investigate further

Yggdrasil7557 wrote: as Kerber has stated, the api does not request everything about your computer, and even with its diagnostics it still requests less information than many programs you probably already use do. chrome and chromium based browsers (opera, cent, ghost, sleipnir, and others) all request data from you that is typically more data than the nexus api will collect. If you have a smart phone or a smart TV or a smart speaker or any device that has bluetooth, chances are you are being data mined. Smart phones use your location and speed and similar to determine road conditions, smart speakers and smart home devices use what you say to determine what ads you should get next time you open their webpage. smart tvs will report your viewing preferences to be able to promote different products in your ads.

You are being mined now, while you view this message by Amazon, who owns Curse LLC, who provide the ad service for Nexus Mods, which is why there was a popup message from curse the first time you accessed this site since mentioning cookies

GuruJuju wrote: So that justifies it...

al12rs wrote: Really Nexus will not know anything you are not sending yourself. And all you are sending is the header Kerber showed you before, and that really is basic information that is actually useful to debug problems.

Ok, I understand.

[DaedalusMachina007]

In response to post #67632416. #67634251, #67635721, #67635836, #67636566, #67637641, #67638186, #67638486, #67639486 are all replies on the same post.

GuruJuju wrote: "Applications should send a valid user agent string identifying the application/library they are using and system information. This allows us to collect statistics and aides with debugging potential problems." What does that mean?

Kerber100 wrote: Nexus will be able to tell us what is most popular mod manager, its version, operation system distribution among users and such info.

GuruJuju wrote: yea and the apps we use and the websites we visit?

Kerber100 wrote: This kind of info is not collected. It's just your mod manager and OS name and version. Your web browser sends similar info like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.96 Safari/537.36

Here, check your user-agent.

GuruJuju wrote: I will investigate further

Yggdrasil7557 wrote: as Kerber has stated, the api does not request everything about your computer, and even with its diagnostics it still requests less information than many programs you probably already use do. chrome and chromium based browsers (opera, cent, ghost, sleipnir, and others) all request data from you that is typically more data than the nexus api will collect. If you have a smart phone or a smart TV or a smart speaker or any device that has bluetooth, chances are you are being data mined. Smart phones use your location and speed and similar to determine road conditions, smart speakers and smart home devices use what you say to determine what ads you should get next time you open their webpage. smart tvs will report your viewing preferences to be able to promote different products in your ads.

You are being mined now, while you view this message by Amazon, who owns Curse LLC, who provide the ad service for Nexus Mods, which is why there was a popup message from curse the first time you accessed this site since mentioning cookies

GuruJuju wrote: So that justifies it...

al12rs wrote: Really Nexus will not know anything you are not sending yourself. And all you are sending is the header Kerber showed you before, and that really is basic information that is actually useful to debug problems.

GuruJuju wrote: Ok, I understand.

I'd like to chime in here. While I'm privacy-conscious, I'm also aware of how to respectfully and politely ask questions about privacy rather than accuse the Nexus Staff of any nefarious deeds.

If you're super-concerned about privacy, you will probably be accessing this website via a VPN and using a throwaway/temporary account to post that you change up every month or more often depending on your level of paranoia.

You'll also want to purchase an unlocked Android phone, create a custom mod for it (or use an existing one that you compiled from source code yourself) with an open-source location service (no google apps) and alternative storefronts like F-Droid instead of Google Play. Also be sure if you get a Samsung phone (which you should) to use the alternative open-source firmware that removes all the hidden root commands to remotely enable your microphone/camera and other creepy bits that are present in the default firmware that comes with every Samsung phone. That's why modern phones have non-removeable batteries as removing the battery is the only way to disable this functionality for normal non-techy users.

And I hope you're using a Linux-based OS on your computer. Be sure you use Gentoo and compile EVERYTHING manually from source code with verified hashes and certificate pinning to make sure you're getting only the legit source code from the legit sources! Give it a good week or so of compiling depending on your CPU speed. ^_^

The ultimate in privacy is to run everything off of a USB key from a thinshell client computer at a library or something. The legality of this varies depending on your country (please don't be a jerk, ask the library staff first) but there are entire linux-based operating systems designed around being as minimal and private as possible.

And if you're still reading all this then maybe you understand that in the modern era if you want 100% privacy (or even above-normal privacy) then you'll have to give up several conveniences inherant to modern life. Good luck with that.

I've analyzed the data from Nexus Mod Manager and Vortex via WireShark and other network-debugging tools on my home network. Nothing abnormal that I've seen.

You should be more worried about any games that use that Denuvo-malware that they call 'DRM'. What a joke. That trash phones home to Russian-based activation servers and Denuvo themselves are overseen by Russian-based state actors masquerading as security researchers.

Keep your private online personas and your public IRL persona separated as much as possible. That's what I do. VPN is also great to use. Other than that if you own a mobile phone at all you're giving up some privacy for convenience since you will be location-located at any time for any reason or no reason (primarily 911/emergency and law enforcement felony-capture reasons). That's the tradeoff of being able to call anyone from anywhere at any time. That's the tradeoff of using the government-owned and government-maintained and government-funded infrastructure of the Global Positioning System.

But yeah, throw up the alarm over what Nexus does. Lol. Do what ya want ^_^ Edited February 11, 2019 by DaedalusMachina007

[magicgun]

i was not expecting to see anything done to take responsibility for NMM anymore. good one.

 

(edit, yes this is sarcasm)

Edited March 16, 2019 by magicgun

[Silarn]

In response to post #67632451. #67632701, #67633716, #67637026 are all replies on the same post.

al12rs wrote: Congrats for the release!

As people on the Mod Organizer 2 discord know, we are already testing dev builds with the new API, so you can rest assured MO2 will get an update in time to support the change. (It has been in the works already for a while)

About MO1, there hasn't been any discussion yet about updating it. Since the update does take quite a considerable amount of time an effort, it could be that there is no one with enough free time to dedicate to it.

Moksha8088 wrote: Wondering if the tried, true, and trustworthy Nexus Mod Manager found on GitHub will also be updated with this feature?

al12rs wrote: There are sill people that are fond of NMM, despite the fact that that it's no longer supported. I do believe someone of the long term fans might update it, even though I personally don't agree on that trustworthiness statement.
Like with MO1 it all depends on whether there is someone there willing to put in the time and effort.
Nexus staff will, understandably, not update NMM.

ff7legend wrote: Yours truly is sticking with NMM for the simple fact that any attempt to migrate a 1,000+ Active Mods installation from NMM to Vortex is sure to FAIL on an EPIC SCALE. I'm not about to play literal Russian roulette with my modded Skyrim SE installation. Hopefully NMM will be updated to support the new API at some point since I cannot migrate my entire modded install from NMM to Vortex.

BardicKnowledge is, I believe, the main maintainer of NMM and he's well aware of the changes and has been informed along with the rest of us. I assume he will be updating it at some point.

[BrinaSair]

In response to post #67632606. #67634316, #67634966, #67636786, #67637301 are all replies on the same post.

MrJohn wrote: What is the reasoning for the user-rate limiting?

DoctorKaizeld wrote: what user rate limiting?

al12rs wrote: The new API features an account based limit of 2500 daily requests, after which you get an extra 100 each hour.
If you are with no requests left, all nexus requests are blocked (this includes downloading manually).
Downloading a file is 2-3 requests, checking a mod for file updates is 1-2 requests. Logging In uses requests as well.

Limiting API calls is standard procedure to avoid overloading servers with requests, slowing them down. Otherwise the API functionality might get compromised for everyone because someone is abusing it.
This particular implementation is pretty simplistic, but should serve it's purpose well.
Nexus staff mentioned that they are monitoring usage and will adjust the limits in case they deem it necessary.

DoctorKaizeld wrote: Ooooh that

damanding wrote: Among other things it slows down file scraping from people downloading all mods in mass to illegally host on their own sites.

I admit this is concerning to me. I check for mod updates through MO2 about once a week. My understanding was that this is just a ping to see if the current version is the same as the version on my computer. But from what you are saying the API will treat this the same as attempting to download the entire mod for every mod managed by MO2, whether it needs an update or not and whether the mod is currently being used or not.

Per MO2 I currently have ~3400 mods for Skyrim SE and almost 1900 for Fallout 4. The vast majority are not being used, but MO2 lists them regardless. MO2 has only one means of checking for updates - a clickable link labelled "Check all for update". It is not possible to select a sub-set or selection of mods to check - all of the mods listed in MO2 are checked. So I cannot, for example, check only half one day and half another day. Now, I already have separate installations of MO2 for Skyrim SE and Fallout 4, so I should not have any issues with Fallout 4 if the user limit is 2500. I also usually check the two of them for updates on different days, so again there is no real issue with Fallout 4.

But for Skyrim this means that I will be locked out of nexus before the check for updates is even finished, let alone before I can start going to the nexus pages to see about downloading said updates. I don't mind being limited in how many files or how many MB I can download per day or even per hour - that is entirely reasonable. But counting checks of the current version as downloads - even when the versions match - just seems incredibly unreasonable.

Edited February 12, 2019 by BrinaSair

[GuruJuju]

In response to post #67632416. #67634251, #67635721, #67635836, #67636566, #67637641, #67638186, #67638486, #67639486, #67641126 are all replies on the same post.

GuruJuju wrote: "Applications should send a valid user agent string identifying the application/library they are using and system information. This allows us to collect statistics and aides with debugging potential problems." What does that mean?

Kerber100 wrote: Nexus will be able to tell us what is most popular mod manager, its version, operation system distribution among users and such info.

GuruJuju wrote: yea and the apps we use and the websites we visit?

Kerber100 wrote: This kind of info is not collected. It's just your mod manager and OS name and version. Your web browser sends similar info like this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/72.0.3626.96 Safari/537.36

Here, check your user-agent.

GuruJuju wrote: I will investigate further

Yggdrasil7557 wrote: as Kerber has stated, the api does not request everything about your computer, and even with its diagnostics it still requests less information than many programs you probably already use do. chrome and chromium based browsers (opera, cent, ghost, sleipnir, and others) all request data from you that is typically more data than the nexus api will collect. If you have a smart phone or a smart TV or a smart speaker or any device that has bluetooth, chances are you are being data mined. Smart phones use your location and speed and similar to determine road conditions, smart speakers and smart home devices use what you say to determine what ads you should get next time you open their webpage. smart tvs will report your viewing preferences to be able to promote different products in your ads.

You are being mined now, while you view this message by Amazon, who owns Curse LLC, who provide the ad service for Nexus Mods, which is why there was a popup message from curse the first time you accessed this site since mentioning cookies

GuruJuju wrote: So that justifies it...

al12rs wrote: Really Nexus will not know anything you are not sending yourself. And all you are sending is the header Kerber showed you before, and that really is basic information that is actually useful to debug problems.

GuruJuju wrote: Ok, I understand.

DaedalusMachina007 wrote: I'd like to chime in here. While I'm privacy-conscious, I'm also aware of how to respectfully and politely ask questions about privacy rather than accuse the Nexus Staff of any nefarious deeds.

If you're super-concerned about privacy, you will probably be accessing this website via a VPN and using a throwaway/temporary account to post that you change up every month or more often depending on your level of paranoia.

You'll also want to purchase an unlocked Android phone, create a custom mod for it (or use an existing one that you compiled from source code yourself) with an open-source location service (no google apps) and alternative storefronts like F-Droid instead of Google Play. Also be sure if you get a Samsung phone (which you should) to use the alternative open-source firmware that removes all the hidden root commands to remotely enable your microphone/camera and other creepy bits that are present in the default firmware that comes with every Samsung phone. That's why modern phones have non-removeable batteries as removing the battery is the only way to disable this functionality for normal non-techy users.

And I hope you're using a Linux-based OS on your computer. Be sure you use Gentoo and compile EVERYTHING manually from source code with verified hashes and certificate pinning to make sure you're getting only the legit source code from the legit sources! Give it a good week or so of compiling depending on your CPU speed. ^_^

The ultimate in privacy is to run everything off of a USB key from a thinshell client computer at a library or something. The legality of this varies depending on your country (please don't be a jerk, ask the library staff first) but there are entire linux-based operating systems designed around being as minimal and private as possible.

And if you're still reading all this then maybe you understand that in the modern era if you want 100% privacy (or even above-normal privacy) then you'll have to give up several conveniences inherant to modern life. Good luck with that.

I've analyzed the data from Nexus Mod Manager and Vortex via WireShark and other network-debugging tools on my home network. Nothing abnormal that I've seen.

You should be more worried about any games that use that Denuvo-malware that they call 'DRM'. What a joke. That trash phones home to Russian-based activation servers and Denuvo themselves are overseen by Russian-based state actors masquerading as security researchers.

Keep your private online personas and your public IRL persona separated as much as possible. That's what I do. VPN is also great to use. Other than that if you own a mobile phone at all you're giving up some privacy for convenience since you will be location-located at any time for any reason or no reason (primarily 911/emergency and law enforcement felony-capture reasons). That's the tradeoff of being able to call anyone from anywhere at any time. That's the tradeoff of using the government-owned and government-maintained and government-funded infrastructure of the Global Positioning System.

But yeah, throw up the alarm over what Nexus does. Lol. Do what ya want ^_^

@DaedalusMachina007 Watch your mouth! I never accused anybody of anything!

[Deleted7103646User]

Some nice stuff, but i sure hope the FOMM fork stays Fallout only and not use this to integrate more games into it.

I like my software as clean as possible, and i don't play other modded games.

 

I don't think they will do that anyway though, but the release of API's like this always make me feel a bit uncomfortable as to what's going to happen with some mod managers.

 

Ofcourse i'm not the only person in the world, so if they do i just have to keep using an older version.

 

Or make my own local manager with C#

Edited February 12, 2019 by Guest