Is Blizzard Secretly Watermarking World of Warcraft Users?

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thecolorblue

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just another way we are tracked... AWESOME!!
the zero privacy dystopian future is right around the corner.

...actually it's here already but the 100% loss of privacy that is the wet-dream of the dissent-suppressing corporate controlled govt will take another couple of years to really solidify.
 

thecolorblue

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[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Don't worry - the tracking info will be eliminated now that the practice has been made public. They'll replace it with steganography so you won't be so distracted by it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital[/citation]

wow... very cool, ty for the link
 

Kami3k

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[citation][nom]thecolorblue[/nom]just another way we are tracked... AWESOME!!the zero privacy dystopian future is right around the corner....actually it's here already but the 100% loss of privacy that is the wet-dream of the dissent-suppressing corporate controlled govt will take another couple of years to really solidify.[/citation]

FYI, it's a private business so they can do whatever they want.

That and even the Constitution doesn't have privacy as a right. Clues, get them.
 

A Bad Day

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[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Don't worry - the tracking info will be eliminated now that the practice has been made public. They'll replace it with steganography so you won't be so distracted by it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital[/citation]

The question is, how long would it take for them to switch?
 

A Bad Day

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[citation][nom]ex_bubblehead[/nom]It's possible that they already have and that what's been found was purposly left behind as a red herring.[/citation]

It's also possible that Blizzard doesn't see it as a major problem for the users, until hacking reports ramp up, and they finally see the connection.
 
[citation][nom]BIL_ASC[/nom]Wow, so we've have been tracked all the time ?Lucky me, I don't do any strange thing[/citation]

It looks like it's not tracking anything per say; the screen has watermarks that have data about your current log in session. It might be cause increased hacking, but tracking beyond tracking screen shots that Blizz sees doesn't seem to be going on through this. Of course, they're still snagging a huge amount of data about our systems that I don't like.
 

jhansonxi

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[citation][nom]face-plants[/nom]Perfect reason why we need a white hat / grey hat hacking community. Who else would have made this info public?[/citation]
Metadata in graphic files is relatively common. Many graphics editors can show and edit them. Digital cameras add the date and time of a photo to JPEGs and most photo management tools sort them by date automatically.

Somebody with a concern about privacy was probaby the first to notice AND complain about it.
 

PreferLinux

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[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Metadata in graphic files is relatively common. Many graphics editors can show and edit them. Digital cameras add the date and time of a photo to JPEGs and most photo management tools sort them by date automatically.Somebody with a concern about privacy was probaby the first to notice AND complain about it.[/citation]
It is not metadata, it is a watermark on the image itself. The chances of any graphics editor being able to read it is extremely small as it will be a proprietary method.
 

rebel1280

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[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Don't worry - the tracking info will be eliminated now that the practice has been made public. They'll replace it with steganography so you won't be so distracted by it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#Digital[/citation]
hey man thanks for posting this, was a real fun and interesting read :)
 

jhansonxi

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[citation][nom]PreferLinux[/nom]It is not metadata, it is a watermark on the image itself. The chances of any graphics editor being able to read it is extremely small as it will be a proprietary method.[/citation]
You're correct, I misunderstood what they were doing. But stego can be performed on metadata using whitespace encoding. Would be worth investigating to see if they're doing that also.
 

azraa

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Not a huge deal.
Blizzards efforts to avoid private (pirate) servers from rising have been good.
Many play on WOTLK private servers: I do, as well as on the original

But trying to play Cata on a private server is a mess, and a waste of time
Merely sandboxes. As far as I know, encripted data relating the client to the server make impossible to create/write a server version. This has a particular encription name, I cant recall it now.

But this? This kind of watermark crap is just abusive.
 
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