Some Sort of Tracking Data Injected Into World of Warcraft Graphics
September 12th, 2012Via: Tom’s Hardware:
One World of Warcraft gamer has discovered that his screenshots secretly contain user info like the current server IP address, and the time the shot was taken.
ZoomThere’s indication that Activision Blizzard has been watermarking screenshots captured with World of Warcraft’s in-game client application since at least 2008. There’s also indication that Digimarc is the company behind the client’s watermarking tech.
According to reports, these custom marks include user IDs, the time the in-game image was captured, and the IP address of the local World of Warcraft server. Why? Possibly to track down users that are violating Blizzard’s Terms of Service like hacking the game or running a private server.
More: Ownedcore
“Why? Possibly to track down users that are violating Blizzard’s Terms of Service like hacking the game or running a private server.”
Yes… and Blizzard certainly would want to prevent such abuse of their corporate resources. But I think this kind of digital watermarking is analogous to cell phone companies tracking their customers: regardless of their motives for gathering the data, once they have it, they can do whatever they want with it (privacy laws be damned) — including turning the information over to a government or law enforcement entity investigating, say, the use of WoW for money laundering, a la Neal Stephenson’s novel _Reamde_.
Slouchin’ towards dystopia…