paypal Purchasing games on Steam via PayPal forces you to accept Facebook's Data Policy - somebody else experienced this?

[Palte]

Sorry if this is an already known topic (I couldn't find it on here).

 

Since beginning of this year I noticed that Steam/Valve or rather PayPal forces you to accept the Facebook Data Policy by receiving the receipts in their messenger when purchasing games (pictures further down).

At first I tought this was maybe a mishap on behalf of PayPal or Valve and canceled the transaction to repeat the purchase, this time without the prompt to accept the policy of Facebook.

To clarify, I have no Facebook account because of privacy concerns (big news, huh?).

 

Today I noticed unfortunately, that this behaviour is still present as of writing this post.

Also it seems that I am not the only one getting these prompts when using PayPal as my payment provider as there are already these community threads on Steam and Reddit:

• Steam-Commuity-Thread by Nelly (dated March 7th, 2023) - LINK Steam Thread
• Reddit-Thread by u/HELPMEIMBOODLING (dated February 18th, 2023) - LINK Reddit Thread

Within the Steam-Thread it was recommended to unlink your PayPal-account from any Facebook-account but the users in the Thread and myself were not able to find any linked FB-accounts within our PayPal.

As a workaround it was recommended to try to purchase without storing the payment information to avoid this perticular pop-up, which does not seem to ask for Facebooks permissions.

Another would be to not use the Steam-Client but a ordinary browser to process the payment within steam.
 

I have tried several checkout options myself and have following results with attached screenshots:
(please note that some screenshots may have been edited to hide sensitive information and to consolidate scrollable content from paypal for better format):

1. Checkout using PayPal (not the "My PayPal" selection in Steam), like I would buy first time via PayPal on Steam and choosing to save the payment-information (checkmark before heading to PayPal).
   
   Paypal then asks you to accept Facebooks Data Policy without any visible other option except cancelation of the purchasing process:
   
    
2. Checkout using PayPal, exactly the same as above without restarting steam.
   This time PayPal doesn't seem to ask for any permissions for Facebook.
   I assume this process differs a bit as the Steam-Client already has my PayPal-Login cached locally which also resulted in me only needing to reauthenticate my MFA:
   
   Completely restarting the Steam-Client and repeating the process as described results in first case, again asking to agree to Facebook's Data Policy.
    
3. Checkout using PayPal (not the "My PayPal" selection in Steam), like I would buy first time via PayPal on Steam and choosing NOT to save the payment-information (no checkmark before heading to PayPal).
   
   This time we get a different PayPal-dialog (similar to any single-purchase process where you only consent for a single transaction) where no agreeing to any policy from Facebook is requested:
   

I wasn't able to get in touch with any party (Valve or Facebook) yet but wanted to ask you first if you had any similar experience?

 

Greetings from germany, Cheers! ~Palte

 

 

Edited May 8, 2023 by Palte
early accidental post, added missing content, clarified topic

[lopj245]

Doesn't Pop up for me, weird.

[OhioYJ]

I login every purchase. (Don't have this problem / message either) However I routinely login in to Paypal and cancel all automatic payments.  I also don't have Facebook, and I never link accounts or tell companies I have another service if possible.