So, you might be wondering what's up with the catchy clickbait title and what should you be cautious about in a game as "innocent" as Garry's mod? No, this isn't about the monumental amount of pedophilia in the gmod community or the general toxicity. This "guide" is about the actual genuine dangers that you put your computer at risk when playing this game why you should be a bit more cautious about what servers you play on if it isn't already on all servers.

If you aren't already aware, which I doubt 99% of the gmod community is then I regret to inform you that many servers incorporate "spyware" that is downloaded onto your computer into their servers. It's not just spyware either, but also possibly "naughty" photos hidden amongst your addons in the addon packs servers tend to create or other general malicious items that you might not want on your computer. I'll go over some of the items I know to be true and have experienced myself in the game, but know that I certainly don't know the full extent of how far these things go and i'm certain that there are many more malicious items that many servers download onto your computer.

So, first off let's start with what I see as the biggest security risk that has personally affected me in my past of playing Gmod and have seen evidence of it existing personally. Spyware in simple terms is basically something that allows the host of the "virus" to take photos, videos, download files, and etc from your computer without your knowledge and bring it onto their computer. This might be shocking to learn, but many servers and popular ones especially tend to have these viruses downloaded onto your computers.

I honestly can't tell you the extent of the severity or the data these viruses can grab off your computer, but I do know with absolute certainty that they can grab screenshots of your desktop and game. I know this as once upon a time an owner of a very popular server sent me screengrabs of my desktop and of me in game. This wasn't with malicious intent, but rather this owner used this as a way of detecting cheaters in his servers and my screen was screenshotted simply to see if I to was using cheats like the other play was and I was provided screenshots of this other player with aimbot on their game and ESP. Voice record scripts are just as common as screen grabbing scripts, in which the server admins can run a command to force you to activate your microphone without your knowledge and record this. I have no doubt that most of the very popular and top Gmod servers that use these things have no malicious intent involved with them and instead purely do what that owner did and use it as a way of checking if someone has cheats enabled. This doesn't justify their actions though, as downloading a virus onto someones computer in order to literally spy on their actions despite if they are cheating is completely immoral and frankly I imagine illegal.

It begs the question though that if these spywares can take screenshots of your computer then why could they also not take files off of your computer as well? Granted, i'm not cybersecurity expert and won't even pretend to have a lick of knowledge in the field but I personally don't see any reason someone couldn't do such a thing if these servers aren't already doing it. Garry's mod is full of many security flaws as it's based on such an old engine that can't be up to date with all the new techniques people employ to download viruses onto your computer. I wish I could tell you how to avoid this, but I honestly don't think you can.

This one is a bit less heavy, but does provide some frightening possibilities at the same time. Servers are easily able to hide files amongst their downloads for mods onto your computer. The only example i've come across is usually lude pictures onto someones computer hidden amongst an addon, or more precisely an addon pack the server used to encrypt their private addons and prevent theft which many servers do.

A specific example of the many times i've come across this and my first time hearing of this is when I used to watch Garry's mod videos when I was younger. Specifically the very cringey trolling videos, which make my want to crawl up in a ball when I think about how I genuinely enjoyed them. Going past that though, my first knowledge of this issue came to light when I watched a trolling video on one of the My Little Pony RP servers, in this video it was brought to their attention by what I remember to be a moderator of the server that hidden amongst one of the addons was hardcore my little pony porn photos. Sure enough, when they went to investigate there was indeed "clopper" photos in there. I didn't necessarily believe this at the time, and surely wasn't going to risk having that kind of weird ♥♥♥♥ downloaded onto my computer so I just went about my day. Many years down the line and gaining much more experience in modding in this game I have come across a multitude of times where photos completely unrelated to the mods in server packs was downloaded onto my computer without my knowledge. I won't get into the specifics, but a lot of it was either porn or just general random photos that were innocent enough but shouldn't have been there.

I can't say whether or not this has more implications beyond purely photos, and instead more sinister acts like actual dangerous files but I would genuinely hope that photos are the extent of it. I haven't gone through files of servers in a long time, but I see no reason that this isn't still an occurring issue despite how minor it may seem on the surface.

This is one that I personally didn't know about until some helpful people in the comments below brought it into my attention. Garry's mod since 2019 has hosted a program called "Game Analytics" on it, which basically is something which tracks a few basic things. I'll get Garry himself explain this one though, as he did comment on the concerns people had when it first got added.
While Garry did say that they don't sell the data, and i'm not personally saying that I don't believe him the company that makes this software is a bit shady themselves. One thing to remember is that although Garry may not be selling the data, this isn't to say he isn't giving the data to the company that makes this spyware and selling it themselves. You can do some of your own research into exactly what the company it is if you are more interested, but it's your general data selling mega corp. https://gmod.facepunch.com/blog/april-2019-update Here is the update post if you were further interested in the privacy policy and etc.

I want to leave this "guide" off by saying that in no way should this or will it stop you from playing Garry's mod but it should provoke some thought. I'm sure most of the larger servers on Garry's mod don't do malicious acts beyond milking children of all their money and being greedy but I also wouldn't count on it. Garry's mod is a game full of security issues, greed, and is generally the biggest cess pool of disgusting behavior in a video game i've ever seen and probably ever will see. I do recommend you find another game to play, but as most people who read this guide will continue playing I hope this servers as more of a warning or caution. There are more issues i've encountered, but these are more server side things when servers get hijacked and hackers are able to put malicious files into these servers stealing player data or just causing general havok.

Check out my other PSA style guide if this interested you!
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1967445688