World of Warcraft monitors users internet history

[Hazar]

 

[Uriel]

Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Busted! Blizzard you bastards.
Seriously, they got enough dough with a tenth of the Earth enslaved to Wow and SC, but then they go as far as spyware?

 

[Aenama]

so....?

 

[Qonfused]

Owned.

 

[Hazar]

so....?

so do you want blizzard to know your entire internet trail?

 

[Jintor]

Ask them about it.

I'm sure they'll tell the truth.

(Find sarcasm if you look for it.)

 

[Aenama]

so do you want blizzard to know your entire internet trail?

What will they do? Tell my Dad?

 

[Gunner]

What will they do? Tell my Dad?

Use it to shove more ads down your throat.

 

[destrukt]

Stop using Internet Explorer?

.. because ff and opera couldn't have their history checked, right ? :|

 

[Boogymanx]

Have you posted this on the official forums yet?

 

[Aenama]

Use it to shove more ads down your throat.

BLizz don't do that kinda stuff,They arent some 4 Person add company.

 

[destrukt]

As bored of Blizzard as I have been for a few years, it seems this isn't really so much as them 'spying' on you.

History.IE5 is used by IE 6 and 7 also.

I see iTunes on my computer (running Vista) has that handle open too.

I'm pretty sure any program that is using IE for HTTP/S instead of another dll or Winsock them selfs will have those files opened.

I wrote a small C# app that used the Webclient (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webclient.aspx) class to download files and it also had the History.IE5 and Content.IE5 handles opened.

So... this means nothing. Other than they were lazy and didn't want to write their own implementation of HTTP.

----

I wouldn't even call it lazy. I'd call it smart to reuse the IE HTTP services for retrieving data. While code that implements simple HTTP stuff is pretty easy to do, using IE services gives the application the benefit of caching, which can make a big difference to their servers when dealing with the number of users Blizzard has.

----

This is entirely unconclusive and inacurate. For all we know WoW could be saving cache files from the news ticker in the launcher or a plethora of other reasons. Did anyone think they might be using the temp folder for what it's supposed to be used for?

 

[hungryduck]

figures.....gotta keep tab on their millions of addicts somehow.

 

[WhiteZero]

Wait, you have GW and WoW up at the same time? Cuz GW is using all your CPU... so you just Alt-Tabbed out of it to bring up WoW?
So... your running the WoW login then? I think maybe the little update window on the side needs to access a webpage.

At least think through what your looking at before accusing anything. Good job, Greg.

If WoW was really monitoring your non-WoW related internet history, dont you think that one of the other several million computer geeks out there would have caught it?

 

[Jintor]

They said that about Hitler in '39, too.

Anyway.

You should really ask Blizzard about wtf it's doing there. They'll tell you what it's doing, you can check on whether it really is doing that, and then everything will be totally hunky-dory.

 

[Lucid]

Yeah, I'm sure it would've generated alot of buzz if it was really a big deal.

 

[zleppelin]

Hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Busted! Blizzard you bastards.
Seriously, they got enough dough with a tenth of the Earth enslaved to Wow and SC, but then they go as far as spyware?

According to Wikipedia:

"On November 9, 2006, Blizzard announced that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft has reached a new milestone, with 7.5 million players worldwide"


7.5 million / 6.5 billion = 7.5/6500 =
0.11538461538461538461538461538462% of the World's population.

You were off my about a factor of 86.

 

[Slacker]

I always had the weirdest feeling whenever I tabbed out of WoW to look at po-I mean HalfLife2.net, that they were tracking history. Weird.

 

[WhiteZero]

Yeah, if you guys really wanted to know if they were monitoring your internet traffic, you could at least do something a bit smarter, like reading packet logs to really see what's being sent back to Bliz.

 

[poo poo head]

keylogger?

 

[Pauly]

say for example you end up clicking a link that takes you to a well known hacking site. even though your not a hacker you end up clicking the link for some reason. you dont do anything on the site. you close it. Blizzard now see's this.. knowing blizzard they would prolly be like omg wtf bbq banned

 

[Glirk Dient]

So what if they are tracking our internet usage? As long as they aren't selling it like EA is then that is alright. Who knows...perhaps they will add an in game broswer or better alt-tab features for internet browsing.

 

[PvtRyan]

The launcher for one thing uses IE, and I bet they use some implementation of IE in the login screen too where they post updates on server status.

Nothing but hot air then. Oh, I forgot, hating Blizzard is cool these days.

 

[Hazar]

for the record: that wasn't my computer, I don't play wow. The picture was on digg yesterday

 

[staticprimer]

The launcher for one thing uses IE, and I bet they use some implementation of IE in the login screen too where they post updates on server status.

Nothing but hot air then. Oh, I forgot, hating Blizzard is cool these days.

No, hating any very large business is cool.

This whole thing is nothing but the rantings of the paranoid.

 

[Baal]

Yea I say that's probably the launcher loading up.

If anyone wants to test it, try loading WoW without the launcher.

I'm gonna do it right now.

ok nm....still shows. It could be something to do with the news thing that is at the log in screen, though.

 

[Ravioli]

skynet