Recently Blizzard included a program with its client software called "The Warden". The purpose of this program is to collect information about in game cheating by using bot software or hacking utilities. It has been claimed that is looks for these known utilities and returns the information to Blizzard. Blizzard that is "personally identifiable": is collected. Right.
Two problems.
First of all on the personal information issue. How could Blizzard NOT be collecting or know this info already? They know who's client is transmitting the info back to them, so how could they not know who sent it?
Second of all the software seems to be doing more than looking for running software. Some clever people have tracked what the Warden is doing and here is what they report:
...retrieve the title bar contents of all running processes on his computer. Next, he reported, The Warden sniffed out the e-mail addresses of his MSN correspondents, the URLs of all open Web pages in his browser, and the Registry names of all running processes, including minimized programs and toolbar functions
This seems to reach far beyond what Blizzard claims. Looking for unacceptable software that damages game play is one thing but to snoop in on what web pages I may be surfing? Looking at my address book?
