Oct 11 - World of Warcraft Is Spyware!
This software is known as the ‘warden client’. It is downloaded on the fly from Blizzard’s servers, and it runs about every 15 seconds and is designed to verify compliance with a EULA/TOS.
Here is what it does, about every 15 seconds, to about 4.5 million people (500,000 of which are logged on at any given time). The warden dumps all the DLL’s using a ToolHelp API call. It reads information from every DLL loaded in the ‘world of warcraft’ executable process space. No big deal.
The warden then uses the GetWindowTextA function to read the window text in the titlebar of every window. These are windows that are not in the WoW process, but any program running on your computer. Now a Big Deal.
I watched the warden sniff down the email 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, including those that were minimized or in the toolbar. These strings can easily contain social security numbers or credit card numbers, for example, if I have Microsoft Excel or Quickbooks open w/ my personal finances at the time.
From all this info Blizzard decides to ban you … or not. For example, if you have a window titled ‘WoW!Inmate’ - regardless of what that window really does, it could result in a ban. If you can’t believe it, make a dummy window that does nothing at all and name it this, then start WoW. It certainly will result in warden reporting you as a cheater