Should I be running windower?

[xingoo]

http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?f ... 223;page=1

Seems revelant here.

K, if this is so illegal how come Blizzard got away with it? Seems to be like this bitching will accomplish nothing, and i doubt they would ban windower, they already admited to wanting to add one, it just would not make sense.

Blizzard has it in its TOS, anyway I'm walking out the door. You people are absolutely retarded if you think that this is okay. I'm not worried about hacks or illegal deeds, since I do nether on my PC. Its just the fact they are doing this without my consent.

I can agree with that.

[Akanei]

you agreed to it when you installed the software, and anyway the constitution does not protect you against nongovernmental organizations.

but lol i really doubt they're going to ban 90% of their PC audience.

This post here? This post ended the thread.

Your 'rights' mean nothing when you are paying to use a private service. It does not give you amnesty from breaking the law; it will not give you amnesty from breaking a private company's rules.

https://secure.playonline.com/supportus/index03.html -- Right under the privacy policy

3. Information Provided During Usage
The PlayOnline Viewer includes E-mail, friend lists and chat rooms where Users may voluntarily post or exchange information, including (but not limited to) Personal Information. Users can also communicate with each other through their players and characters while using PlayOnline to play online games. While Users have complete discretion over whether they share Personal Information with other Users while enjoying these services, SEI strongly suggests that Users not reveal their Personal Information in this way. Please note that such Personal Information is stored by SEI as non-public information. SEI reserves the right to access and/or monitor Users’ personal files, E-mails, and chat room and online game conversations.

1. Use of Information by SEI
SEI uses Personal Information to respond to your requests for help or information, to complete transactions such as purchases or monthly billing, to verify that you are qualified to use PlayOnline, and for certain other purposes related to our operation of PlayOnline. We may also use Personal Information to notify you of changes in PlayOnline features, Member Agreement terms, or other related SEI agreements, and to send you updates or newsletters about our company and services, and other promotional materials via your PlayOnline E-mail address. In addition, SEI may use or disclose Personal Information and other User information in response to any subpoena or other legal disclosure obligation, or in the event that a User is participating in, or suspected of participating in, prohibited, illegal, or inappropriate activities or threats, including, without limitation, any activities that may endanger any individual’s life or property while using PlayOnline as well as any other activities that SEI determines (in its sole discretion) to be inappropriate.

SEI may use information on User-created players and characters, including but not limited to, names and location, for marketing and promotional activities, and may do so without any notice to the Users whose players and characters are used. Such activities may include, without limitation, posting player and character information on SEI websites.
2. Information Shared with Third Parties
We may share your Personal Information with our business partners, advertisers or other business affiliates, who may be responsible for responding to your requests for information, support or assistance. These business partners, advertisers and other business affiliates must agree to protect the confidentiality of all Personal Information they receive from us, as described in paragraph 4 below.
3. Confidentiality of Personal Information
Except as otherwise provided in this Policy, we will keep your Personal Information confidential and will not share it with third parties, unless SEI reasonably believes use of your Personal Information and/or such disclosure is necessary to:
(a) comply with any law, such as in response to a court order or subpoena;
(b) protect our rights or any property that we own, operate or control;
(c) enforce any Member Agreement or other terms of use applicable to PlayOnline; or
(d) protect the rights, safety and/or security of Users or third parties.

Thread over.

[sleekmotorwurkz]

3. Information Provided During Usage
The PlayOnline Viewer includes E-mail, friend lists and chat rooms where Users may voluntarily post or exchange information, including (but not limited to) Personal Information. Users can also communicate with each other through their players and characters while using PlayOnline to play online games. While Users have complete discretion over whether they share Personal Information with other Users while enjoying these services, SEI strongly suggests that Users not reveal their Personal Information in this way. Please note that such Personal Information is stored by SEI as non-public information. SEI reserves the right to access and/or monitor Users’ personal files, E-mails, and chat room and online game conversations.

Is it just me or does this seem like they are talking about stuff in the playonline viewer itself. aka playonline messages, emails, chat rooms, files etc. It doesnt seem like they are allowing themselves to scan your hard drive with this.

[HAcoreRD]

Let's worry about this when you read about people getting banned for using Windower. we Can't confirm what the program's doing.

[Celeras]

Correct me if im wrong... but doesnt this 'scan' occur when playonline starts up? As in before you even connect to your account?

Just assuming, because thats the only time launcher.exe is running. And if thats the case, why would my account be in jeopardy when I havent even logged into it yet?

[Shuvo]

I don't think they intend to ban windower users, unless they want to halve their revenue. I'm guessing they probably want to collect data on how many people use Windower for statistical purposes.

I'm curious, how does PG work, does it:

1) Prevent polscan.exe (or w/e) from reading a detected process like launcher.exe, or

2) Make it look like launcher.exe does not exist at all to polscan.exe ?

If it's 1) then from SE's end it would look a lot more dodgy, I think with a higher chance of being banned then not using PG at all.

[Hollaback]

Taj, is there any kind of program you can write that, when polscan.exe runs, you can send something back to SE and screw up their system? I know it's probably a stupid idea, but I'd love to see it, just for kicks.

[Elipse]

What I am saying is that quite frankly, I dont give a shit if it is legal or not, because it serves to benefit the FFXI community as a whole.

It doesn't, we already have a windower.

I understand the need to protect one's privacy as a general rule, and I understand that what SE did was most likely illegal. THAT BEING SAID, I would still prefer that they do what they are doing for the sake of the outcome they will achieve from it, rather than not do it.

So what you're saying is, you think its okay for a company to do something Illegal, so it can "benefit" the community that already has that benefit.

Why? just so SE can make its own windower. This reminds me of all those items in the game with DEF stats but nothing else. Lets spend our time making duplicate, useless shit in the game.

I'd rather they reassign those developers to track down and remove RMT, then to bother writing a new windower........ Or better yet, since they've done such an awesome job with this update, ask them to do another.


Oh and if you haven't noticed, they can write a windower without having to check how many are using it. So there is no need to give up a right of a privacy for it.

I don't remember them polling the community to check if we wanted chocobo racing or some other stupid noob gimmick. Had they asked the it would have gone something like this:

"Hay guyz, want some chocobo racing? bling bling 20inch chicken legs"

"How about you fix the shit thats already in game before you add more" Followed by a 2000 page write up about all the broken parts of ffxi.

Point is SE is doing something illegal by invading privacy.

Privacy is a personal right. It should be more than just "The law says I have a right to privacy". Saying "Give up your privacy cause you shouldn't have anything to hide" is stupid.

[Ohemgee]

I keep dcing when I cast utsu ichi

[Fhqwghads]

For the love of god, stfu about your goddamn "rights" already. Stop surfing the kiddie porn if you're so concerned about SE being some kind of watchdog. They're looking for hashes, and you don't even know whether or not they send ANY info back to SE. I would say there's a 99% chance they aren't sending anything other than a flag indicating which hack was found and potentially taking action based on that. There's no reason for SE to send obtain lists of running processes from their customer's machines, so take the fucking tin foil hat off. If you're that paranoid about it, you better not run anything that connects to the internet, because zomg they might do something malicious like turn on your web cam remotely when you're fapping and take pix.

you win the i didnt read anything of the whole fucking thread award for being retarded. No one is scared that there going to report us for doing illegal deeds, because they cannot take action about it. The whole thread is protecting our right to privacy

Amusing seeing you obviously didn't read my whole post. Pot meet kettle. Either that or you're too stupid to understand what I'm saying. Maybe you'd have a clue if you weren't busy foaming at the mouth and generally over-reacting about nothing.

P.S. Stop with the award giving "insults." Played out, ofn, lame, etc.

[Ohemgee]

Ok I can't go to my status bar without d/cing.

[Fhqwghads]

Why? just so SE can make its own windower. This reminds me of all those items in the game with DEF stats but nothing else. Lets spend our time making duplicate, useless shit in the game.

I'd rather they reassign those developers to track down and remove RMT, then to bother writing a new windower........

Just to clarify: they aren't going to write a "windower." They are adding windowed mode. It's not hard to support windowed mode in D3D either so don't worry about it sucking up all kinds of dev cycles, because it won't.

[Syng]

http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/wp...atter-mark.jpg

Actually, it kind of will be when like..half of the endgame PC players get banned for using POS/bots cause they didn't know about the scanner w

[TsingTao]

3. Information Provided During Usage
The PlayOnline Viewer includes E-mail, friend lists and chat rooms where Users may voluntarily post or exchange information, including (but not limited to) Personal Information. Users can also communicate with each other through their players and characters while using PlayOnline to play online games. While Users have complete discretion over whether they share Personal Information with other Users while enjoying these services, SEI strongly suggests that Users not reveal their Personal Information in this way. Please note that such Personal Information is stored by SEI as non-public information. SEI reserves the right to access and/or monitor Users’ personal files, E-mails, and chat room and online game conversations.

Is it just me or does this seem like they are talking about stuff in the playonline viewer itself. aka playonline messages, emails, chat rooms, files etc. It doesnt seem like they are allowing themselves to scan your hard drive with this.

They are. That section says (in a nutshell) that when you use any of the services included in POL they reserve the right to check what you're doing. Any mail, messages, etc. sent via POL are not private.

[Plow]

The really funny thing is if you start WoW while you have windower-ed ffxi running, apparently warden kills it lol.

Hmm. Dunno about that, I've spent time between windows at camps in WoW to pass the time... >.>

Yeah, I've played FFXI and WoW at the same time, it doesn't kill it. Not sure where he got that idea from.

I dunno it does it to me, if I have wow going and start ffxi it's np but starting wow with ffxi running kills my ffxi, and I'm on a relatively fresh windows install, and it did it on the last one too.

[megabyte]

Patriot act!

j/k

I'm not too worried about this, just seems a bit strange they would add this without updating the terms of service or at least mentioning it in the update information for PlayOnline. Also... anyone else having trouble booting PlayOnline from Windows Vista after the update? I had it working before and it refuses to open now.

[Correction]

You are right, SE "could" read all your passwords as you put them in. But WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY?

Because at the end of the day the people who collect the data sent to them by their scanners are human, and whenever humans are given undocumented control over your personal property and information without any kind of oversight two things can happen:

1) They fuck up and harm legitimate users (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_ ... on_scandal)
2) They abuse the power (http://edition.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/09/s ... index.html)

Sometimes both. While people may be blowing this out of proportion, you cannot assume that the best intentions and an outcome agreeable to every user are going to be coincident. A lot of happy, loyal SE customers are going to get fucked by this for sure, if the demonstrated record of their programmer's sophisitcation is any evidence.

[megabyte]

Well... after re-reading the Terms of Service...

SEI reserves the right to access and/or monitor Users’ personal files

It seems they warned us afterall.

Guess the only real way to get past them snooping in our processes is to not play the game since by not running the game, you are not agreeing the the ToS. D:

[Khamsin]

You are right, SE "could" read all your passwords as you put them in. But WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY?

Because at the end of the day the people who collect the data sent to them by their scanners are human, and whenever humans are given undocumented control over your personal property and information without any kind of oversight two things can happen:

1) They fuck up and harm legitimate users (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_ ... on_scandal)
2) They abuse the power (http://edition.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/09/s ... index.html)

Sometimes both. While people may be blowing this out of proportion, you cannot assume that the best intentions and an outcome agreeable to every user are going to be coincident. A lot of happy, loyal SE customers are going to get fucked by this for sure, if the demonstrated record of their programmer's sophisitcation is any evidence.

Five things can happen, actually.

1) They fuck up and harm legitimate users (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_ ... on_scandal)
2) They abuse the power (http://edition.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/09/s ... index.html)
3) They use it responsibly
4) They keep it completely anonymous
5) They ignore it

[Correction]

Five things can happen, actually.

1) They fuck up and harm legitimate users (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Sony_ ... on_scandal)
2) They abuse the power (http://edition.cnn.com/2007/LAW/03/09/s ... index.html)
3) They use it responsibly
4) They keep it completely anonymous
5) They ignore it

And without a guaranteed way that #1 or #2 will never happen, people will be concerned and protest. Can we at least be on the same page there?