I’m a little late on this one, but as a follow-up from my previous post on Blizzard and the Warden Client (which allegedly has spyware-like attributes):
Greg Hoglund (co-author of “Exploiting Software, How to Break Code”) has released a program called “The Governor”, which shows exactly what Warden is doing.
The fact is that the warden client reads information from other processes on the computer. Regardless of the reasons, this technically counts as ‘spying’ on a user. So, reasons aside, the term ‘spyware’ is fitting.
Rather than debate the morality of this behavior, I would like to give the consumers the power to make this decision for themselves. I am releasing a program called ‘The Governor’. The Governor is very simple – it watches the activities of World of Warcraft, and clearly reports which data is being read from other processes. The Governor makes no attempt to subvert or alter the behavior of the warden client, or World of Warcraft. The Governor will not assist you in cheating. The Governor exists for one reason, to tell you the truth.
Link here via EFF Deep Links (also worth reading).
Alex Eckelberry