WoW is spyware? [Archive] - Overclockers Forums

Zim2411

10-11-05, 09:04 PM

It wouldn't surprise me in the least. Companies are getting dicey on how they track hacking and whatnot. I bet somewhere in the EULA players agreed to this though. Otherwise they'd have a chunky ol' lawsuit on their hands.

Well it seems from the article that the system was just put in place. Unless they incorporated it into the original EULA (which someone was bound to have read, and discovered), they must have modified it to include it. (I don't have the game so yeah)

AC Slater

10-11-05, 09:25 PM

Well it seems from the article that the system was just put in place. Unless they incorporated it into the original EULA (which someone was bound to have read, and discovered), they must have modified it to include it. (I don't have the game so yeah)

Each time Blizzard releases a patch for WoW you are required to read/agree with the new EULA.

the adam

10-11-05, 09:59 PM

good thing I don't have any games from blizzard.... and now never will.

9mmCensor

10-11-05, 10:03 PM

I would hold out for independant confirmation.

Mr.Guvernment

10-11-05, 10:18 PM

some one post the new one ? L:)

Mr.Guvernment

10-11-05, 10:20 PM

well i am NEVER getting WoW now

I watched the warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating with on MSN, the URL of several websites that I had open at the time, and the names of all my running programs, including those that were minimized or in the toolbar. These strings can easily contain social security numbers or credit card numbers, for example, if I have Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks open w/ my personal finances at the time.

This make me glad i have a laptop that i do everythign on and my dekstop consists of nothing more then games really - mayeb an IM programs but if they want to monitor my chat go nuts!

wardog50

10-11-05, 10:38 PM

This is BS.

Blizzard earned a bad name in the past by pulling weird stuff but this is just overboard.
Looks like Blizzard is on my no buy list until they can respect my privacy.

Wardog

Oni

10-12-05, 04:51 AM

The guy on LiquidNinjas is certainly one to talk about legal issues. Seeing as he had to reverse engineer a piece of code to find this info out.

Last time I checked, companies get pretty ansy about people reverse engineering their code. So much so that they tell you very explicitly in the EULA to NOT DO IT and that you can get FINED and SENT TO JAIL over it.

But even beyond all that, how credible is this guy? I mean, he's just deducing what could happen with knowledge that he gained by breaking his EULA. He doesn't really know what would happen in these given instances. Take for instance, his idea of creating a window that just said something that may be bannable. I mean, he didn't do that, but he suggested that you should just to see what will happen. He's willing to break his EULA, but not willing at all to have his WoW account banned. Hmmm . . .

And even beyond all that, who's to say that he really did this stuff. Last I heard, reverse engineering programs was a rather complicated and time-consuming task. Furthermore, I could quite easily make up a story about how I managed to find out that penicillin caused painful sterility in males between the ages of 30 and 70. Doesn't make it true, does it?

This is the internet, people. Take everything you read with a grain of salt.

ajrettke

10-12-05, 05:17 AM

Isn't reverse engineering code almost impossible once it's compiled? I have limited knowledge on this...but if it's possible then why haven't people done this with windows?

>HyperlogiK<

10-12-05, 05:39 AM

Furthermore, I could quite easily make up a story about how I managed to find out that penicillin caused painful sterility in males between the ages of 30 and 70. Doesn't make it true, does it?

This is the internet, people. Take everything you read with a grain of salt.

not a fair comparison, hi tech companies have a long history of bending privacy laws and producing dodgy license agreements, so it is highly plausible, wheras I am not aware of many cases where one of the most widely used drugs in history is found to be toxic to most men. also does it matter whether this was discovered by legal or illegal means, it does not alter what the company was and is doing, it sounds like those arguments that seem to go along the lines of 'the nazi's weren't all that bad, because even though they killed 20+ million russians and 6 millions jews, we firebombed dresden and killed a whole load of civillians too'.

klingens

10-12-05, 05:51 AM

The software in question, Warden, is an anti cheat measure. All newer Blizzard games played online (Diablo2, Warcraft3 and World of Warcraft) had it implemented with the latest patches. It's a piece of code which you download from the server everytime you connect. This way, Blizzard can react to new cheats and hacks very fast without having to patch the game. Since to see if you are running any of those hacks, they have to check things like the current running processes, all kinds of loaded DLLs and more. But I can't really see why they would want to scan my Temp folders and such, which people reported it did.

However: apart from allegations I haven't seen anything from the people crying foul. If they want to be taken seriously, they should give out the code of warden or a disassembly of it publicly which shows it does the evil deeds they're claiming. Unless they do, it's all just hot air.
In how far Blizzard violates the data protection acts and anti hacking acts of several european countries, that's a total different story.
But again: where there is no lawsuit, there is no fine (paraphrased from a german proverb)

DrSpanky

10-12-05, 07:21 AM

It wouldn’t surprise me that it exists, when ever you crash it logs all whats running on your system for it to be send to them, heres an example

klingens

10-12-05, 07:35 AM

There's BIG difference between listing all running processes and snooping inside of all of them

Feydd

10-12-05, 09:33 AM

Remember when blizzard got into trouble when some one found out pretty much the same thing was being done with starcraft? Same deal, they never learned their lesson.

Mr.Guvernment

10-12-05, 11:01 AM

There's BIG difference between listing all running processes and snooping inside of all of them

Exactly, their prorgam should be designed to find specific things - not scan your MSN messenger and other items - i have no problems if they want to scan my entire game folder - but nothing outside of that as it is none of their buisness.

Last time I checked, companies get pretty ansy about people reverse engineering their code. So much so that they tell you very explicitly in the EULA to NOT DO IT and that you can get FINED and SENT TO JAIL over it.

Well this is the only way people find this stuff is to crack the code - if not you think these companies will OPENLY say "HEY we can your ENTIRE PC just to find stuff and we collect any info we find and you cant do crap about it HA HA

If you agree to the EULA then fine, they can do as they please, but they should provide, if they have not, full documentation and notice of what their systems does and scans not try to hide it behind some legal babble most people dont udnerstand anyways

And reversing code can be hard - it depends on how / who compiled it.

OC Noob

10-12-05, 11:39 AM

Follow the story and see if this guy is legit before jumping the gun.

It is also possible that this guy is well meaning, but misinterpreted what he found.

If the program scans pertenant files and only reports cheaters then it’s no worse than any other anti-cheat program. Keep in mind that he claims it is NOT sending Blizzard information unless it finds someone cheating and even then its only sending pertinent information, not your buddies email address.

I'll be interested to see if this program is tracking emails and all the other stuff this guy believes it is because no one will approve of that or if its a simple anti-cheat program thats being used for anti-blizzard propaganda.

Alucard

10-12-05, 09:52 PM

Exactly, their prorgam should be designed to find specific things - not scan your MSN messenger and other items - i have no problems if they want to scan my entire game folder - but nothing outside of that as it is none of their buisness.

It seems liek this guy might be blowing it out of proportion. I don't use MSN and haven't in a long time but correct me if I'm wrong, if you're talking to somebody the window has their nickname and their email adress right? I think what he really meant was that it was reading the email adresses out of the window name of people he was talking to. Also it doesn't seem liek they are recording any personal data just comparing it to their naughty list and then banning if any matches are found. Also I doubt that any person ever sees the information that isn't flagged for a match. So I really don't see any harm in it as long as they arn't taking record of my information or selling it.

mage_x

10-12-05, 10:04 PM

twEEkerAreUs

10-13-05, 12:25 AM

That's very interesting, all this time and I thought WOW was a pathetic Virus :clap:

Neuromancer

10-13-05, 12:31 AM

If people were so concerned about privacy they would not run any application that includes automatic updates as every app you have that does so is a open hole into your computer..

HAving said that.. nothing beats a sandbag firewall :)

>HyperlogiK<

10-13-05, 05:22 AM

this is stupid, don't put blizzard on your blacklist because of this. you really think they are trying to look at 4.5 million people's personal info for fun or something? it doesn't even send any info unless youre trying to cheat, anyway.

no, but if somehow a company was able to collect information of the computer habits (and i'm not saying that blizzard are) of say 4.5 million people, it would be worth a great deal of money to any marketing company that you could care to name. If they know what software you are running e.g. Office 97, MS might buy such info to target you with 'upgrade office for less ads'. However, remember that there is NO solid evidence (yet) that they are doing it, or ANYTHING else underhand, even if there is a strong $$$ motivation for any company that could get away with such a thing.

9mmCensor

10-13-05, 06:26 AM

no, but if somehow a company was able to collect information of the computer habits (and i'm not saying that blizzard are) of say 4.5 million people, it would be worth a great deal of money to any marketing company that you could care to name. If they know what software you are running e.g. Office 97, MS might buy such info to target you with 'upgrade office for less ads'. However, remember that there is NO solid evidence (yet) that they are doing it, or ANYTHING else underhand, even if there is a strong $$$ motivation for any company that could get away with such a thing.
make less money doing that than making games. and making spyware jepardizing making games. profit to risk does not look good.

MEMex

10-13-05, 05:47 PM

For those that don t want the personal information taken, have one computer NEVER connected to the outside world period. I know this doesn t work in all cases but still... ex. back-ups of ur most important files / documents.

But back on track, i would rather blizzard scan my computer, i havn t a problem with it. Just as long as it doesn t turn out to be like the original Diablo. I mean 5 months after that game came out all someone had to do was click buttons to cheat! If this happened to wow i would be ****ed! What happened in the original Diablo is probably what enraged them to police their games from people hacking screwing the game up and making it unfair / ****ing legitament people off. :mad:

PixelMover

10-14-05, 07:05 AM

If there are really 4.5 million WoW players out there with around 500,000 online at aytime, Blizzard is making a helluvalot more money from sales of the game (Around $30-40 here) and subscription fees (around $12-15 a month) I believe) than they ever could from selling any data they would gather this way.
And I don't think they'd risk killing off their Golden Goose that way either.

IMHO I think all they do is look for cheats and honestly won't be bothered with anything else, they could just sit back and rake in $10million a month.

Remind me to check their jobs online later :)

Oni

10-14-05, 08:15 AM

make less money doing that than making games. and making spyware jepardizing making games. profit to risk does not look good.

Truer words have not been spoken.

Blizzard knows what side their bread is buttered on. They've got 4.5 million people paying $12 /mo for their game, they're not going to take anything they harvest (that is if they harvest anything at all, which is doubtful) and sell it.

The cash cow goes 'ka-ching'. MMORPGs are cash cows. Blizzard has most probably made more money from this endevor than from any other game they've made to date (including their Silicon & Synapse days).

>HyperlogiK<

10-14-05, 09:29 AM

hmm... it's not unknown for a large company to do something which people would consider as jeopardising their sales of a product. Didn't RealNetworks got in trouble because Realplayer was monitoring content viewed and phoning home. I remember that there was some bad publicity for M$ over the GUID being embedded in Office docs, tagging them so they could be traced to an individual copy of office.