i looked through some comments on that article:
A Forum Goon wrote:Yeah, ok, so it can read this info. It doesn't send it out, though...
If it catches cheaters and doesn't send my personal info to Blizzard, then I see nothing wrong with it...
right, ok, it's
Client side. That means that none of this personal info is actually SENT out from your computer. The program checks all of this stuff on your local HDD against it's own repisatory of "bad stuff to look for" and then once it's done it sends out one of 2 packets:
1) "you are an A-OK clean player"
2) "you are a filthy cheater"
it doesn't send out any of the info it finds, it just runs a check and sends the result.
therefore i don't think i'd call it full-blown spyware. I'd probabaly make up a new name for it... "SNIFFware"? coz it's like a sniffer dog, or "FLAGware"? coz it only flags you as guilty or innocent. I'd still say that it's in the same genre as spyware though - as it is an unwanted privacy intrusion. They have no warrent.
It's really a LOT like sniffer dogs since they don't report specifics, they only report Guilty or Innocent. And Blizzard doesn't seem to think they need a warrant or just cause to use them, like like with sniffer dogs.
I hate sniffer dogs. Seriously. I'm going to start a new thread about them.
That all said, i did see someone in another thread say that they have been watching the traffic that Warden sends out when it reports back - and it's a LOT. This perhaps incidates that it's sending out a lot of information - not just a simple yes/no packet. Perhaps it's just using a bloat load of encryption.
*shrug*
A Forum Goon wrote:I'd hate to start looking up some info on where to look for an item and have a pop up advert get me banned. I'll just be more careful about where I visit when I'm using WoW.
A Forum Goon wrote:Put "WoW!Inmate" in your MSN messenger name (e.g "TTLoonie - I love WoW!Inmate") - then send a simple "Hi" to your friends on MSN... which, of course, would open a chat window on their computers with the title: "TTLoonie - I love WoW!Inmate - Conversation"... causing friends who have WoW running to be banned... hehehehe?
If this works... hehehe... imagine what it'll be like if hundreds or thousands of protesters against Blizzards spyware / pranksters / people who play WoW and have rivals on WoW whom they want banned (even temporarily.. lol)... did this 
LOLOLOL... imagine the hundreds or thousands of angry emails, letters, forum posts and phone calls that Blizzard will get from their customers... hehe...
this is a valid concern i think. it's easy to trick with false positives to get other ppl into trouble.
A Forum Goon wrote:I tried to post about it in question form on Blizzard's wow general forums, and admin denied it
Blizzard could be censoring news of this. This is very unethical.
A Forum Goon wrote:A Forum Goon wrote:"You do have a choice. You can choose to not play WoW if you don't like their anti-cheating methods. "
We'd have that choice IF we knew about them, then it would be different. Why do you think they didn't tell us they were doing this...how many subscriptions might they lose if we all knew in laymans terms what this 'warden' was really doing.
Indeed. Why did they not tell anyone about this.
This is probabaly why people are so quick to call "spyware!" - because it's been snuck in without anyone having the chance to have a choice.
...
however, after
further reading i see that it IS actually mentioned in the EULA
all right, that's all i got.
