When Blizzard, the games company that makes World of Warcraft, got caught sneaking invasive spyware, it responded with a bunch of PR spin about how it's spyware wasn't so bad as all that (my favorite was sliming the whistle-blower who caught them doing it because he writes bot software; either it's spyware or it isn't, the occupation of the guy who caught you is beside the point). Now on EFF Deep Links, a great post deconstructing Blizzard's lame excuses:
According to Greg Hoglund, co-author of "Exploiting Software, How to Break Code," this hidden program opens every process on a gamer's computer, from email programs to privacy managers, and sniffs email addresses, website URLs open at the time of the scan, and the names of all running programs–whether or not those programs, emails, or websites could conceivably have anything to do with hacking…
Response 1: Warden doesn't collect personal information, so what's the problem?
Well, problem one is that gamers have no choice but to accept Blizzard's word on that. More importantly, if Hoglund is right, Blizzard has a pretty skewed idea of privacy–we can look at your personal info, but if we don't collect it there's no invasion? Hardly. We also wonder how Blizzard's executives would feel if we searched their homes, wallets, and bank accounts and read their letters and emails but didn't write down anything we found.
