OT: SPYWARE/TROJAN and Off Topic!

[Norfleet]

So it's ILLWINTER'S Spyware, phoning home. How evil. What little faith I had in them is now destroyed. It saddens me to see them resort to spyware tactics, phoning home with all of the information about your computer. I have no idea what's in these mystery packets, but given the surreptitious nature of such an inclusion, it is obviously a Bad Thing. No software on MY computer phones home. Period.

[Norfleet]

Hmm. The more odd thing is that it doesn't happen consistently: It doesn't occur every time you try to play. Some people are unable to get it to occur at all, and it doesn't happen in every game, network or SP.

Maybe it's an update checker? I'm trying to be generous and hoping that Illwinter did not, in fact, include something so obviously malware as something that phones home every time you try to play, allowing them to track your playing habits and computer data, and that this is something more benign, like an update-checker...maybe.

[Norfleet]

Is there an official statement on this matter, or only guilty silence?

[tinkthank]

Small question here, since I really dont understand what all of this means: How can a game make your computer call "home", and what does that mean? I mean, will it make my modem dial something and then transfer information even if I dont want that to be?

[Anglachel]

Would the nature of this spyware be a tracking cookie? Kind of illiterate on spyware. If not then the ad-aware spyware remover I just ran only found tracking cookies and I removed them. There were seven of them.

[Norfleet]

No, tracking cookies are not the only thing: The program appears to call home (according to Gandalf, that's an Illwinter server), on a nonstandard port, and sends unknown data. Normal Spyware/Adware removal programs won't detect this behavior, since it occurs inside of a normal (and new) program.

Basically, this little added feature has the ability to do all of that, and your spyware checkers will not be able to detect it right now, and probably never, because it's unlikely that this will be added to their detection profiles.

However, I have no idea why this program would suddenly phone home in a change not mentioned in the patch update, so I can only assume that it is no good. Otherwise, they would have told us about it.

[Nephelim]

And the behaviour if it is unable to phone home is...?

not everyone has an always-on connection.. And some of us like to black-hole route things that try to phone home.