World of Warcraft Is Spyware!

[Malisk]

Didn't Blizzard get in trouble a few years back for acquiring information about people's computers without their permission?

586657403[/snapback]

Yes, if you entered an incorrect CD key one time too much, they collected your mail address from the registry and such things. It was in Starcraft that time, and they had to remove it. I thought they had learned their lesson since then.

Edited October 11, 2005 by Jugalator

[mikeboy]

that is what ounkbuster does, but it dosnt record anything

[Lexcyn]

Exactly. Why would Blizzard want to collect millions of pieces of data, and then have to sift through them to find out your credit card number.

That's an insane amount of data.

It compares hash values with known hacks ... that's all. I don't know why everyone is freaked out about this. It's not as though they're going to find out your password for your MSN or Gmail account - or even your credit card number - but oh wait, they already have your credit card number. :p

[oddcrap]

Umm ... this was released in the 1.5 patch, it's NOT new to the 1.8 patch.

586657459[/snapback]

True. But this portion was updated... alot. To transfer everything forward to blizzard. Where in the EULA terms does it indicate them logging details of everything you are doing on your PC at any given time?

[episode]

Yes, if you entered an incorrect CD key one time too much, they collected your mail address from the registry and such things. It was in Starcraft that time, and they had to remove it. I thought they had learned their lesson since then.

586657477[/snapback]

They didn't have it included in the EULA, thats why they stopped it. Now that its in the EULA, basically, if you don't like it, stop playing the game.

[Fuzzbling]

Why are people so parranoid about this? Do you all really think Blizzard wants your info, or is selling it to some third party spyware company? That would be like sitting on a rocket, point first and pushin the button, saying I hope this dosn't hurt! If your so concerned about this, contact Blizzard and ask them about it politely, I'm sure they are more than willing to discuss it with you all.

Starting a topic here that has the possiblility of causing panic in people and players of the game with out knowing the full facts, contacting the parties involved, and talking to Blizzard about the situcation is not very smart. Just my two cents on this, and I'm done. I'm off to play some more WoW.

[episode]

I honestly don't understand why people have this near fanatical belief that Blizzard are the best games producers on the planet, World of Warcraft, or more accurately, Everquest Reskinned is "just another mmorpg" like all othe rmmorpgs, following in the wake of the massive success of the late Ultima Online and the rapidly dying Star Wars Galaxies.

586657484[/snapback]

Where did anyone mention in this thread the quality of the game or how good Blizzard is at making games? Nowhere. Stay on topic.

[Lexcyn]

I honestly don't understand why people have this near fanatical belief that Blizzard are the best games producers on the planet, World of Warcraft, or more accurately, Everquest Reskinned is "just another mmorpg" like all othe rmmorpgs, following in the wake of the massive success of the late Ultima Online and the rapidly dying Star Wars Galaxies.

586657484[/snapback]

Blizzard is far from the best game producer. They are hated by a lot of people, and rightly so. But just because people all of a sudden say there is 'super dangerous omg spyware' in their program, doesn't make it true. Yes, there is an active agent that scans your open processes for known hacks. No, they will not steal your credit card number, passwords, social security number from you.

[oddcrap]

I honestly don't understand why people have this near fanatical belief that Blizzard are the best games producers on the planet, World of Warcraft, or more accurately, Everquest Reskinned is "just another mmorpg" like all othe rmmorpgs, following in the wake of the massive success of the late Ultima Online and the rapidly dying Star Wars Galaxies.

[Vice]

If you don't like this you better not play any game using Punk Buster or any Valve game with VAC2 they all scan the your active memory for hacks against pre-defined hashes

Live with it.

[Ironman273]

The bottom line is if enough people don't like it and don't play the game, they will change it. Until then, either accept it and play or don't. They made the game, they make the rules.

[Tim Dorr Veteran]

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.

586657374[/snapback]

Yes, that's exactly what Blizzard is going for. They want all your credit card numbers (that they already have!!) and your social security numbers for nefarious purposes. Did they author fail to mention that this information isn't transmitted back to Blizzard unless you're doing something wrong anyways?

wow is gone from my pc

Wow, way to make a snap decision based on one article's opinion of this anti-cheating technique. If you're not cheating, who cares?

This is no worse than Punkbuster.

Actually, PB is worse as it can take screenshots and upload them to server admins.

that is what ounkbuster does, but it dosnt record anything

Yes, it does, otherwise how can you prove that you were wrongfully banned? And how do the PB guys know what to look for if it's never posted to any websites? They need logged information to be able to build up a database of stuff to block.

Basically, there's nothing wrong with this and this is nothing games like Battlefield or Counter-Strike already do. The author just appears to be stiring up FUD against WoW.

[dw2003]

Once these strings are obtained, they are passed through a hashing function and compared against a list of 'banning hashes' - if you match something in their list, I suspect you will get banned.

Dosen't this mean that the information collected is not sent to Blizzard but hashed against a local database... therefore credit card numbers would not get sent to Blizz - and even if the hashes were sent to blizz they couldn't be read

[Premgenius]

Posted to NewsDesk earlier, awaiting moderation :D

[GotoLamia]

This is a stupid argument IMO everyone is just looking for every program to have some kind of instance of what they call "SPYWARE" just so they can be the fist to post it, the way i see it if we had no hackers and/or cheaters we would not need stuff like that to begin with, but seing as how we do, and there is not exatly alot we can do about it, we have to, we know counter measures are like this, and i agree with them, i pay every month to play the game, and i dont want to put in my time in a game that allows for that kind of action to be taken, A. it help to keep basic hacking down, and B. shows me blizzard does not want their game to go to $h1t. as long as the program does not acculay take any personal info from my computer im fine with it.

Chill out, be Groovy,

--GotoLamia==

[Computer Guru]

what, you never heard of multitasking b4?

[aristotle-dude]

Why would you be doing online shopping/banking while playing a game?

[Nexus]

Blizzard has already stated many times that they are not collecting personal info nor handing it out to anyone.

586657421[/snapback]

Just because Blizzard states does mean its true, they've been in trouble before for such things. Unless someone is watching them to make sure they are complying with there statements how can we be sure its true.

[aristotle-dude]

what, you never heard of multitasking b4?

586658147[/snapback]

Yeah, I've heard of multitasking but I would think that playing a game would require your undivided attention not to mention running a lot faster without a bunch of background processes sucking up CPU and memory bandwidth.

[Shadrack]

@ aristotle-dude: WoW actually doesn't require much system resource. When I played the game at the beginning of this year (don't anymore because i found it boring as all hell), when I was on long flights between towns I would often open my web browser and do other things while I waited.

I find it really sad that blizzard can't determine a player is cheating or not without going out side their system and snooping. If a player is cheating then they shouldn't even have to look at the players computer, just if what is taking place on their server makes sense. But I don't claim to fully understand the complexities of massive multiplayer systems so I digress.

-shadrack

[Richardo]

Now this is public information, all that a cheater has to do is forget about using strings to name window titles.

Leave the title blank and instead use a bitmap that can't be read (easily) by a bot that's scanning for window caption strings.

[FiREFLi]

Exactly. Why would Blizzard want to collect millions of pieces of data, and then have to sift through them to find out your credit card number.

586657483[/snapback]

You heard of regular expressions? :p

[iller]

Let's see here.

VAC2, Punkbuster and now blizzard with this little nifty thing.

But wait we have more, starforce for an example (not quite right).

And the biggest snitch of them all... Microsoft Windows.

If you are so paranoid about your information don't use the Internet.

[Gowcra]

Digg told me about this at the begining, and i dont online game, so i was like, thnk god, but now im wondering how many users are effected by this.

[Lurchybaby]

Exactly. Why would Blizzard want to collect millions of pieces of data, and then have to sift through them to find out your credit card number.

That's an insane amount of data.

It compares hash values with known hacks ... that's all. I don't know why everyone is freaked out about this. It's not as though they're going to find out your password for your MSN or Gmail account - or even your credit card number - but oh wait, they already have your credit card number. :p

586657483[/snapback]

Lexcyn wins the thread!!!

/they ALREADY HAVE your CC number *grin*