Origin (EA) looks to be scanning your privacy...

Hello all,

Every gamer (well almost) have heard about the EULA problems of EA's Origin. Well, it turns out being far more disturbing. Germany is currently exposing that Origin is scanning your personal files (tax reports, phone history, etc). I just wanted to warn you fellow gamers.

Here is a link that contains a great summary:
http://www.overclock.net/video-game-news/1155275-various-battlefield-3-outrage-germany.html

A link showing that Origin starts scanning your PC even before you accept the EULA:
Origin verstößt klar gegen deutsches Recht? - YouTube

Keep an eye on this!

 

Another reason to add to my list of why I refuse to use Origin.

 

before you even accept??

wait I hardly have any personal information on my gaming pc

 

Yeah... I had to install it to retrieve my free copy of ME2 (giving away because I bought DA2)... I wasn't sure at all... but since it was the only way...

I can't tell you how quick I uninstalled it just after. But now I discovered those sites and looks like Origin did have a lot of time to gather information dammit.

 

more origin nonsense...

 

Some people are claiming that everything transmitted from Origin is encrypted, which doesn't allow people to really know what was transmitted.

I cannot confirm, since I don't want to install Origin

EDIT: and to my knowledge, the author of the quote above is wrong about Steam. To my knowledge again, Steam checks your installed software, just like when you click on "Uninstall Program" in Windows. This is different than scanning a PC.

 

Pshaw. People said the same thing about Steam back when it was required for their Half-Life 2 installs. Look at the praise Steam gets now.

EA has no interest in your personal information, and should anyone technically savvy enough discover that they are stealing personal information, then we should initiate a class-action lawsuit. But I see no evidence that Origin is necessarily more evil than the other software you install on your computer.

 

We will know soon enough. According to the first link in my OP, looks like the news is on the radio, in the newspaper and on the website (top article) of the most important information source of Germany.

I'm just stating what I read in the link.

 

i can claim anything without providing facts, people berate origin just because they love valve. origin is fine and works great.

 

Ignorant people should not have access to the internet.

 

Repost!!!

Stuff like this has been posted already.

Example:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...s/613708-origin-sony-psn-user-agreements.html

Probably some hate here too:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...s/550483-battlefield-3-discussion-thread.html

I dont care about whatever Origin finds if it even does search your computer.
I use my notebook for gaming ONLY, no private data at all.

 

Why does Origin need to know what games I have installed so they can register them?
I do not want nor need that extra "feature"

 

well... you would feel alone!

 

No, I would imagine that there are enough intelligent people on the internet to keep me company...actually, you're right, the internet would be a lonely place.

 

I'm curious to see your standards defining "Intelligence". Who exactly are you targeting with such constructive comments?

But anyway, since it's out of topic, maybe you can explain me this in PM?

 

That extra feature of registering games is not true BTW. I had BFBC2 installed and it do anything.

 

i have installed Origin in a sandbox, using Sandboxie. its access to my data is completely restricted, but it's working fine. i'm playing FIFA 12 without any problems.

 

oh get real, its shocking to me just how whiney pc gamers are.

tons of software you have installed probably does a ton of edited you don't want it to.

 

I only responded to the excuse given by yoru post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/621156-origin-ea-looks-scanning-your-privacy.html#post8032065

If that is indeed a valid excuse, I don't see how I am wrong...

 

Are you familiar with how process monitor works? or other logging programs?
Have you ever ran any other programs through procmon or similar. You'd be surprised at the results. This isn't new, TONS of software exhibits the same behavior.

Valve is god among pc gamers, I don't hate origin nor steam; but I do get sick of seeing ridiculous assumptions that origin is turning your pc into a bomb and stealing your social when it CLEARLY isn't doing anything malicious.



this statement is extremely true, and I give most pc gamers the benefit of the doubt that they would know this. however looks like i've been wrong on this end. Origin bashing is the flavor of the month. I get it, but its much easier to bash big bad ea. uninformed masses. I should probably stay off the forums, since like I said tons of uninformed masses spreading misinformation.

 

No, I'm not familiar with most technical aspects of programs.

If what you say of software is true, then I'm more disturbed of how all software devs conduct their business. Gah, truly depressing; and Don't worry I have 3 games installed via Origin so I'm not trying to "hate" on them.

 

blah, i wouldnt care even if origin did. but what i hate is (since im at a military institute), i cannot log on to origin because of the "network" i have. but i can log onto steam fine, which is why im leaning towards steam.

another thing i hate is battle-log. but thats bf3...i just dont like the fact that we dont have an in-game browser. gosh this makes me furious


i do apologize for all this, im just venting...

 

Not to intrude into your personal affairs, but why can't a military network log into Origin, but can log into STEAM ?

Just curious

 

well, one, (remember, this is a military SCHOOL, so we have youngin's here), our school uses Cisco to monitor and block specific sites. Now, to get around that, most of us use hotspot . Apparently, origin only allows a VPN network, to work (which the schools is not im guessing), so therefore i cannot log into origin.

Steam on the other hand, doesnt require that. At first i did have a problem with steam, but after a flush of the DNS servers/settings i was able to log in fine. Origin still doesnt allow me to log in. every time i try, i get a "could not connect to the Origin Network" error

edit: BTW, networking is NOT my forte, so i dont know half the terms i said in there, lol

 

Good to know! I'm trying to get into USUHS, so I might run a similar problem; hopefully I won't

 

lol, yeah, ...i hate to dampen the spirits, but you most likely will, unless you buy your own network. since schools have a different network service (aka business service)

i would totally buy my own network, but its a no-no here.

i mean i was thinking of buying a DSL line, but i think the school would notice the hogging on the phone line... i mean, i dunno how this would work.

 

any firewall/anti-virus?

Also what I bolded makes no sense. Its probably an ACL issue on the networking side. I'd just make a plea to the network eng's and let them know what you're trying to accomplish.

 

negative, on the firewall or antivirus. i turned them off when i tried and still no joy

ive tried everything below and it hasnt worked:

Link to the site (just to show how many peeps are having this problem

 

First of all I really doubt there are that many people who really use their laptop for "gaming only" and never say buy something on Amazon on the laptop using their Credit Card.

However, it would be a class action lawsuit if it transmitted anything personal like that to Origin. Like Apple got into big trouble just for anonymous user data.

Steam is better because it doesn't make you enter a web browser before, that is a lot nice then having to reboot your game every time you log in. Plus it does a bunch of companies games so you don't need to worry about moving friends lists and stuff. I like Steam because of that convenience factor. Plus I'm sure the web browser drops me 2-3 FPS.

I know the web browser is BF3 only, but thats the only origin game I have and it irritates me.

 

What don't you like about battlelog? Its inconvenience?
Battlelog is freaking awesome, stat tracking, friends, platoons, etc.. etc.. and its WAY freaking faster than the browser was in bc2 and much easier to navigate. I know people hate change, but this is a great thing for bf3 imo. Are you saying battlelog is dropping you 2-3 fps? or the origin overlay, if its the overlay, than simply disable it. And if you haven't read, Origin has just announced third party support (THQ, WB, and Capcom Games) so yeah...


And origin isn't opening your word docs, and scanning your pdf's for keywords. Thats simply absurd. And this is what i'm talking about when I say uninformed users.

And please could I get a link to the apple anon stuff? Did a quick google and didn't find anything nor on any of the bigger mac blogs.

 

Location tracking, iPhone would be the best way: Why You Should Care About the iPhone Location-Tracking Issue | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

I don't like having a browser open and launching my game from a browser. Its very unimmersive. That 3rd party support is pretty low (compared to Steam). There are some things I am fine with a monopoly, and that is why I liked Steam.

I'm saying IE8 running in the background is probably dropping me 2-3 FPS. How do I disable that?

 

a monopoly is never good regardless for the end user. lol @ ie8 dropping frames, don't be silly.
3rd party support is something that comes with time, you think steam had all these third party games day 1. i'll answer that for you. no.

and that apple article is from the beginning of this year, you made it sound like there was a week old exploit or something. which basically proves if anyone has physical access to your device they can/will get anything they want from it. if you're stupid enough to leave ssh open with the default password of alpine than you deserve to get you're data stolen. this is an issue yes, but a non-issue to most of the public.

 

A monopoly is good for some services. Such as OS. If there were 20 different OS's out there it would be a major pain to write code for all of the different OS's out there. Similarly processors. It would be a pain to write code for 20 different types of processor architecture. The user would suffer more if Windows 7 was not on 90% of computers. A service like Steam is similar. Its way more convenient if every single game I own is in one service, instead of having to use multiple services.

I think ie8 definitely drops a frame or two. When I run games I run them with nothing in the background at all. I get smoother performance because of that. Still, its super unimmersive. I'm in game mode and then I'm back at my desktop.

 

there are more than 20 different os's out there (same with processors, think enterprise level). monopolies hold back innovation and technology. if there was no competition there would be reason to push forward.

 

If there was no competition there would be no need reason for someone to be better than anyone else. Stagnation.

Also, this thread is full of misinformation backed by circumstantial evidence. This what happens when people who don't know jack about something start looking into it too much. CONSPIRACY!

 

Maybe, maybe not.

If it weren't for individuals like the OP issues like Apple and Google tracking and collecting information on you would never have been exposed. IOW i'm all for conspiracy if it engages productive discussions and we can prove the company is without fault.

Companies tend to do stuff below the radar and hide behind it until caught. But I do like your Battlefield avatar it does look nice.

 

A monopoly is never good, even Natural Monopolies need to stop. (Electric Companies!)

 

A confirmation:
Actual Origin testing - Battlefield 3 Message Board for PC - GameFAQs

Quote:
A person on the EA forums had a concern about Steam scanning your software and hardware when accessing help and system info in Steam so I performed another test and posted the results in this forum for those interested (wish I could rename the topic title to include Steam now) and in EA's forums.

I opened up Steam once more with Process Monitor running and found that it did not really access other program's folders and registry settings outside of what I mentioned in my first post. The only other thing I noticed was that it did a basic query on the Program Files (x86)\Common Files folder but remember that that only reveals the following info: CreationTime, LastAccessTime, LastWriteTime, ChangeTime, FileAttributes (just had DNCI for mine).

Registry access was the same as my first post, however I did also notice that steam accessed various AppCompatFlags\Layers keys which show compatibility modes to be used for certain executables which is rather odd I must admit. Looks like if you have a program running in compatibility mode then Steam will find out about it although I don't see what use that info would be to them as Steam did not look into the executable files or info related to them any further.

After clearing the results I went into help and system info within Steam and saw that it accessed another bunch of files and registry entries. It didn't access other software's folder's except for Nvidia and it accessed its own folder as well as some system stuff.

Its registry access showed Steam accessing system stuff but it didn't access registry keys for other software except for the following collection of keys to find out what other software was installed on the system:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

When the System Information dialogue was opened and then closed I didn't see an increase in Internet utilization from Steam.

There you go, I can't say with 100% certainty but from what I've seen the following seems apparent:

-Steam will access registry keys which show what compatibility modes have been set for executables (if the exes don't have compatibility info then the program isn't listed in AppCompatFlags\Layers it seems)

-Steam will only learn about other installed programs when accessing the aforementioned collection of registry keys when you open the system info dialog, but since it doesn't appear to exchange more info with the servers it looks like it doesn't relay the info to them but I can't be certain

-Steam will not delve further into details about the other software that has been installed after checking the aforementioned registry keys

In short if you don't want Steam to learn about other installed programs then don't open its system info dialog

 

Steam doesn't and didn't scan your personal folders and your SMS message sent from computer.

EA of course has no interest in our personal information. EA is interested in the resale of our personal information.

 

Not really, everything is really Unix at its core or the IBM platform Windows runs on. (For home computers). At the consumer level however, there are only 2 Major OS's and one controls 90%, this just makes things more convenient for users in a lot of ways. Yeah there are 20+ different processor architectures out there but for home computers its primarily x86 from AMD/Intel. This simplifies things for developers.

If there were 2 OS with 50/50 share of the market, imagine having to have a dual boot on every computer just so you could run games and programs for the other OS. It would be annoying. Now imagine 10 os with 10% each, all having unique programs. You would have to quad boot or have 10 os running on a computer to run all of your games and programs if that happened.

Now I don't know if online distribution for games is really like that in convenience level (it might not be) but for some services, a monopoly is beneficial. Take a power plant, it would be a major waste of resources to have power lines from different power plants going everywhere.

Competition is good, but in some markets a monopoly is the natural state of things, because of the convenience the monopoly gives.

 

Well... it's in the newspapers now:

Zurich:
Battlefield 3: EA im Kreuzfeuer der Nutzer (Digital, NZZ Online)

Austria:
Battelfield 3: Electronic Arts ändert EULA nach Protesten - Games - derStandard.at ? Web

Austria:
Battlefield 3 spioniert Spieler aus | kurier.at

Germany:
Electronic Arts erbost PC-Spieler: Battlefield 3 im Spionage-Modus - n-tv.de

Probably more...

 

When a power plant has a natural monopoly it is because it is to costly to invest in the infrastructure and what not. Doesn't mean it is good, here is an example.

Back in 2009 there were two electric companies in my area. TECO and Progress Energy. TECO was bought out by Progress Energy in my area and stopped offering their service to my area. I can now only choose to use Progress Energy and my rates have quadrupled since then. They go up almost every year, and the company has become a bully of sorts. If you don't like the rates you can't do anything about it as there is no more competition. They have poor customer service, and they do not care to much what the consumer thinks.This is a complete 180 from how they used to be when TECO was around here. My point is NO MONOPOLY is good Natural or not.

 

Nope.

Games would use Open GL instead of Directx and programs would use some programming language that is platform independent. There would simply not be multiple environments to program for because developers simply wouldn't bother unless they have the market share needed.

 

most programming (including pretty much all game programming) is done at a high enough level so that the differences between platforms wouldn't matter if a marginal amount of effort was put in up front to keep everything portable.

once you build a huge amount of technology that depends on something that wasn't portable, then you're stuck. compilers are pretty amazing, though, and there really shouldn't be any issues going from x86 to arm to ppc, if developers planned for it in advance. As it stands, many developers have already built proprietary platform specific technology, and it is expensive to recreate it.

 

Origin scanning lexmark printer folder = crazy.

Not sure why you guys are still using your pc for both gaming and normal stuff or on the same pc or same hard drive.
Surely by now you have 2 hd's, 1 for gaming and one for important security data and only 1 hd/ssd is working for gaming and the other is off or vice versa.
If you can not do this then virtualbox and usb backup for data and let it boot from a ghost image so when it gets infected after restart it loads the ghost image and infection gone.

Either have 2 pc or hotswap you hd's / ssd's or virtualbox non persistent or use a livecd/dvd for important security data / personal data work.

Then origin and other trojan horse software can do what they want.

I still don't understand why anyone would want to install origin or the extra garbage that comes with nvidia drivers instead of only what is needed drivers not bloatware drivers.

Also decide what is more important, your security or the free game and installing a trojan origin.

PS> the Germans should get the gov. involved as this is a data and personal info security breach and brakes close to 400 international data laws. This can be classified as a cyber attack by origin and it's botnet.
Do this before you are labeled and locked up as a cyber attacker.

 

Paranoid much?

 

Paranoia is good in my books.

 

Lol seriously? Lmao...This is what all the origin hate and no working knowledge of how the program works leads to.

 

Are you trying to say that every one would run on an interpreted language? Unless that was the case then trying to compile and optimise programs for 20 different systems would be a complete nightmare.

 

I believe IL2 Sturmovik was written in Java. But that aside, opengl is supported on many platforms, as well as C. Directx is Windows only. Writing game code that is strictly ANSI compliant with an opengl base would go a long ways in making the code cross platform compatible. Although directx has improved considerably, I remember programming in directx 6/7 was a complete nightmare, and I definitely preferred opengl because of it.