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**Maggy** · 31-10-2005, 13:54

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4385050.stm

Quote:

The watchdog program, called The Warden by Blizzard, has been known about among players for some time.

It makes sure that players are not using cheat software which can, for example, automatically play the game and build up a character's qualities.

However, knowledge of it crossed to the mainstream thanks to software engineer Greg Hoglund who disassembled the code of The Warden and watched it in action to get a better idea of what it did.

He found that it performed a quick analysis on other programs running on a PC to see if their characteristics match known cheating programs.

But Mr Hoglund found that The Warden also scans the text in the title bars of any Window for any other program.

Writing in his blog about what he found Mr Hoglund said: "I watched The Warden sniff down the e-mail 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."

Mr Hoglund noted that the text strings in title bars could easily contain credit card details or social security numbers.

Digital rights group The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) branded The Warden "spyware" and said its use constituted "a massive invasion of privacy".

The EFF said that it was not acceptable simply to take Blizzard's word that it did nothing with the information it gathered. It added that the Blizzard could get away with using The Warden because information about it was buried in licence agreements that few people read.

Seems a little worrying.Anyone else bothered?And as my son is buying WOW and will therefore be playing it on MY pc should I be concerned?