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EA's Origin scans your PC

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ymmv said:
..... the whole thing is based on paranoid ravings by people who don't know how to interpret Process monitor logs. Origin isn't constantly reading through your files to spy on you. The screen shots were made when Origin was recursively reading a few directories for games to add to library. This is a one time action and no information is actually sent to EA servers.
( http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32350316&postcount=505 )

This is GAF:

Steam scans my system to help me find games so I can play everything through one amazing interface. Steam, why are you so awesome and super-kewwwwl?

Zomg! Origin scans your computer. It's looking for my monies and secrets! My privacy! Whelp! Lol EA! They never learn!

smh
 
I'm a bit lazy now, according to spiegel.de the origin EULA contained the following until the end of last week.

(Google translation):

spiegel.de said:
By installing the Origin software, the user agrees
that the use of "automatic licensing rights for
may consider some or all EA products, without you
separately to inform about it. "

Also provide for the conditions that EA by software
Information about "computers, hardware, media,
Software can use "the" use of the application "to
"To consider the application and license rights to
"Update.

EA allows and "partners" - who that is,
is not running - the "gathering, use, store
and transmit technical and related
Information "of the monitored computers. Specifically,
are the following: IP addresses, usage data,
Software, equipment, software usage and existing
Hardware peripherals. The information may, according to EA
Terms of Use also for "marketing purposes" use.


I actually haven't read the EULA because I'm not a pc gamer. But soon I'm going to have a full Origin account, just because I played some EA games on PS3 and 360 online. And I can do nothing about it. I already tried to close the account, EA did not want to.
 

ctrayne

Member
kurtrussell said:
This is GAF:

Steam scans my system to help me find games so I can play everything through one amazing interface. Steam, why are you so awesome and super-kewwwwl?

Zomg! Origin scans your computer. It's looking for my monies and secrets! My privacy! Whelp! Lol EA! They never learn!

smh
Point taken, but no need to be an ass. Steam is opt-in, which makes it more transparent.
 
Why is steam checking out my external hard drive, in the folder where I hide my porn at?


PskUr.jpg
 

Derrick01

Banned
Fortinbras said:
I'm a bit lazy now, according to spiegel.de the origin EULA contained the following until the end of last week.

(Google translation):




I actually haven't read the EULA because I'm not a pc gamer. But soon I'm going to have a full Origin account, just because I played some EA games on PS3 and 360 online. And I can do nothing about it. I already tried to close the account, EA did not want to.

You should be ok if you don't download and install Origin. They can't scan your computer when they don't have their shit on your system to begin with.
 
ctrayne said:
Point taken, but no need to be an ass. Steam is opt-in, which makes it more transparent.

Not trying to be an ass :( If anything, I'm entirely agnostic towards this sort of thing (okay then, maybe leaning towards GOG and Onlive at a push) - I just find it ridiculous that people take sides and seem to have serious personal investment over two services that have the potential to be equally as evil as each other.
 

ctrayne

Member
kurtrussell said:
Not trying to be an ass :( If anything, I'm entirely agnostic towards this sort of thing (okay then, maybe leaning towards GOG and Onlive at a push) - I just find it ridiculous that people take sides and seem to have serious personal investment over two services that have the potential to be equally as evil as each other.
I dig it. Makes sense. Sorry for calling you an ass. :)
 

Blizzard

Banned
Metalmurphy said:
Why is steam checking out my external hard drive, in the folder where I hide my porn at?
Is that using an opt-in feature and/or the add external Steam game button? Is the feature used an equivalent one to the Origin case?
 
Metalmurphy said:
Why is steam checking out my external hard drive, in the folder where I hide my porn at?


PskUr.jpg
D:/OtherStuff...? Dude, that's way too obvious, trust me I'm a pro at hiding porn. You've gotta put it in a legit program folder...

Here's mine, it's a folder I made called gamedata inside my Crysis 2 directory. It used to be in another sub-folder but I got lazy clicking into 2 folders so I just put it in the main Crysis 2 dir.

EZNyI.jpg
 

lowrider007

Licorice-flavoured booze?
Heavy said:
D:/OtherStuff...? Dude, that's way too obvious, trust me I'm a pro at hiding porn. You've gotta put it in a legit program folder...

Here's mine, it's a folder I made called gamedata inside my Crysis 2 directory. It used to be in another sub-folder but I got lazy clicking into 2 folders so I just put it in the main Crysis 2 dir.

EZNyI.jpg

You guys are amateurs :p, you should put porn into an encrypted partition that can be dismounted, truecrypt is a great app and it''s completely free.
 

KKRT00

Member
Heavy said:
Here's mine, it's a folder I made called gamedata inside my Crysis 2 directory. It used to be in another sub-folder but I got lazy clicking into 2 folders so I just put it in the main Crysis 2 dir.
But Crysis 2 is already porn.
 

Emily Chu

Banned
oh noes my transsexual porn stash will be founds out....

whatever shall I do ?

it's like 700GB worth of the stuff

scan that EA scan it with my dick

fucking assholes
 
Heavy said:
D:/OtherStuff...? Dude, that's way too obvious, trust me I'm a pro at hiding porn. You've gotta put it in a legit program folder...

Here's mine, it's a folder I made called gamedata inside my Crysis 2 directory. It used to be in another sub-folder but I got lazy clicking into 2 folders so I just put it in the main Crysis 2 dir.

[]http://i.imgur.com/EZNyI.jpg[/]

Yes but you see, I change all my porn to .dll files, no one will know!
lol.gif




ClovingSteam said:
Steam has you opt in.
That entry on my external drive happened without me choosing to add a non steam game so...
 

webrunner

Member
This has to be the first time that anyone has WANTED a game banned in Germany.

I'm sure 1942 didn't have any problem being banned.
 

MNC

Member
Steam doesn't allow you to opt out of the EULA/ToS/Whatever the shit it's called. It's only for the hardware survey.

I love Steam much more than Origin but facts need to be straightened out.
 
Metalmurphy said:
Yes but you see, I change all my porn to .dll files, no one will know!
lol.gif





That entry on my external drive happened without me choosing to add a non steam game so...
You know I'm always a bit paranoid about my parents just doing a quick search for ".avi" files on my PC and finding all my porn but I don't think they're PC-savvy enough. If I ever get a girlfriend or something then it's time to try that .dll thing + what lowrider said... good god if someone ever found my porn folder, can't imagine.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Anton Sugar said:
Needs to be quoted.

Yay. Conspiracies. So let's see what Origin really does, shall we?
If you hook process monitor onto Origin you will not see Origin scanning anything, independently of how long you use it. So what triggered the OP's screenshot?

1.Origin on installation will try to find games installed on your harddrive and automatically register them within Origin. It does that in a couple of different ways:
2.It reads the windows games registry
3.It looks for games in Program Files
4.It looks for games in ProgramData (where, for unknown reason the OP's SMS and tax software are storing the data instead of the user profile where that data should go!)
it reads the xfire config if it finds one for games

If you look at the screenshot closely you will see that it does not actually read any files. Instead it looks for their existence and recursively walks the directory. It does not read any of your files, at least not judging from this screenshot or anything I have found on my machine.
Lastly if you monitor the network traffic that Origin causes you will see that it does not transmit anything of value to EA. So far I have not seen anything bug login credentials being submitted.
But it's always so much more fun to assume that software is inherently evil. You can hook a syscall monitor on any application and you will see that it operates all over the drive. That's not something unique to Origin. Steam will do the same if you click the "add non steam game" button.
//EDIT: something I forgot: I think people should not run any sysinternals tools without a basic understanding of what they do or at least not jump to conclusions.

Thoughts?
My thoughts is that this sounds like the most likely possibility. The first thing people should have asked is what information it scans for and why and not just assume the worst.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Metalmurphy said:
That entry on my external drive happened without me choosing to add a non steam game so...
I asked, were you using the Steam add external game feature, or some other feature when that happened? Or was Steam just sitting idle, and you haven't opted into scanning or the hardware survey, and you happened to catch it with Process Monitor?
 
Blizzard said:
I asked, were you using the Steam add external game feature, or some other feature when that happened? Or was Steam just sitting idle, and you haven't opted into scanning or the hardware survey, and you happened to catch it with Process Monitor?

I'm not sure I follow, what's the "external game feature" if not the "add non steam game" i just mentioned?
 

Blizzard

Banned
Metalmurphy said:
I'm not sure I follow, what's the "external game feature" if not the "add non steam game" i just mentioned?
It's me who didn't follow, I was blind and didn't parse your sentence correctly. Yes, I meant the add non-steam game feature.

How did you catch those entries with Process Monitor? Was Steam sitting idle or was it during the Steam startup period? Have you opted into any features like hardware survey?
 
Blizzard said:
It's me who didn't follow, I was blind and didn't parse your sentence correctly. Yes, I meant the add non-steam game feature.

How did you catch those entries with Process Monitor? Was Steam sitting idle or was it during the Steam startup period? Have you opted into any features like hardware survey?

Steam was already on when I turned process monitor on, I logged off and logged in again, then filtered all the steam stuff and started looking. There was also some entries on my Program Files even though i have no games there.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Metalmurphy said:
Steam was already on when I turned process monitor on, I logged off and logged in again, then filtered all the steam stuff and started looking. There was also some entries on my Program Files even though i have no games there.
Ah, I just wondered if you'd opted into anything since people were saying that Steam is opt-in. Steam normally stores everything in Program Files, but I imagine you may be using another location.
 

Durante

Member
alphaNoid said:
Not sure how many of you are regular users of Process Monitor but reading that log shows me that Origin isn't doing much if anything. Lots of people are probably freaking out
KuGsj.gif


If you run Process Monitor, start a capture and launch any of your 'trusted' applications you sue every day, you'll see the exact same kind of log litter. Its embarassing that information like this circulates as valid computer scans, and nobody with any kind of knowledge checks.
Agreed. This kind of forced outrage based on misinterpreted (but nonetheless widely circulated) information is one of the worst things about the internet.

HarryDemeanor said:
Quick! Make a thread about it! People must know!
And forward it to all (games and other) news outlets you can find.
 

Derrick01

Banned
Label said:
Damn it must suck being a PC gamer without Steam!

Read the Origin ToS from the original topic about this. It blatantly said you agree to let EA monitor a bunch of stuff including other programs and web use.

That's why I currently do not have BF3.
 

Akkad

Banned
Can a mod close this topic or at least change the topic title? Some people are just embarrassing themselves
 

TheContact

Member
So what Germans have a ton of like illegal porn or something on their computer and don't want others to find out so they give the game a bad rating? Why only in Germany is this such an outrage. Personally, I don't agree with Origin scanning your computer, especially WHEN IT DOESN'T WORK. Battlefield 3 is littered with cheaters that can get around Origin scan and Punkbuster. I have to play on a server that has their own anti cheat which announces bans every time they catch someone, and I swear at least one hacker joins every 5 minutes and gets banned immediately. But this isn't because of Origin or Punkbuster, it's their own server-side anti cheat! For Origin to scan your computer, and STILL not find any cheats is just downright pathetic and sad. I don't mind Origin as a mediator for my EA games, but it doesn't do what its supposed to do and is invasive, although Blizzard has been doing this for a few years now (but at least they catch the cheaters!)
 

Dunlop

Member
kurtrussell said:
( http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32350316&postcount=505 )

This is GAF:

Steam scans my system to help me find games so I can play everything through one amazing interface. Steam, why are you so awesome and super-kewwwwl?

Zomg! Origin scans your computer. It's looking for my monies and secrets! My privacy! Whelp! Lol EA! They never learn!

smh

just quoting as this is literally what I was thinking as I was reading the thread.

Happy with the Germany ruling though as I image it will force EA to either remove it or make it manditory worldwide to avoid similar ruling against then
 
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