r/Steam_Link • u/Prestigious_Wolf897 • 17d ago

Security concerns

Concerning Steamlink.. my son lives primarily with his father but will be with me most of the summer. He has a steam account on the computer that is at my house and now he wants to play at his dad's. They want to use his dad's chromebook which I guess will not download steam but can download the steamlink. They kept discussing around me that he was going to bring the chromebook over to link it. I said absolutely not..I am not having his dad's chromebook linked to my computer. Am I wrong? I think this is very much a privacy issue.?

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u/Aeroswoot 17d ago edited 17d ago

It's only a privacy issue if there's malicious intent, such as a program installed for the express purpose of stealing data or violating privacy. Given that it's your son that just wants to play games, I dont believe there's anything nefarious happening here. Steamlink itself does nothing like this, it just acts as a bridge to use the computing power of the home PC to stream a game to a different device.

If anything, have a conversation about when they should use this feature. If it is your computer, and you plan to be using it while they are gaming, then Steamlink would interrupt your activities. Try to ask them to be mindful of when you have business to attend to, and they would appreciate it if you were also mindful of the times they'd like to play a game with each other.

Out of curiosity, what about this situation makes you think that there's a privacy violation?

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u/JakeyJake3 Link hardware 17d ago

Steam link is intended for that, but can be used for anything remote-desktop related that doesn't require admin rights.

As long as he has his own Windows user login and Steam login local to that Windows user, and that's where steam link is linked, it should be okay, given that OP has anything outside of steam put in their user folder or otherwise locked folders.

Aside from that, Parsec has the ability to share a host connection with friends, and the host PC can set app restrictions to remote users. That's probably a more applicable solution here rather than Steam Link, where the only accessible apps through the remote connection would be steam and any downloaded games, should OP set it up that way.