EA's Origin is creepy and watches you sleep!

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Doclector

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Zachary Amaranth said:
Dirty Hipsters said:
I see your one to subscribe to a situational prevention theory of blaming the victims. What you're saying basically amounts to a woman being raped and then people saying "well it's her own damn fault for wearing a short skirt and walking around at night." Of course all of us should be careful, but you can't fault the victims for a wrong that is obviously not their fault. If companies weren't being malicious with their software then what I'm saying would be a moot point, but they are malicious, and I really don't see how for you the blame doesn't fall on them ENTIRELY for being that way.
Oh God, don't turn this into an issue of victim blaming. This is spelled out in the EULA. People accepting are signing a contract. They should be paying attention for the love of God. Complaining that they're made "hard to read" doesn't make you a victim, it makes you lazy. Complaining that the companies are mean doesn't make you a victim, it makes you a fool for knowing they're "malicious" and then dicing it anyway.
They shouldn't have to accept such terms! especially as EA are putting all of their PC games onto origin and only origin. So basically EA is saying "want our games? Let us see what kind of freaky porn you're into. We won't tell anyone, we promise! Promisesubjecttoit'sownmicroscopicprint."
 
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SH4DOWSL4Y3R said:
so essentially, the common response to this fiasco is: grumble grumble grumble, i don't want EA seeing what kind of dirty videos i watch in the evening! how dare they! (couldn't resist)
I don't know about you, but I access a LOT of websites with really sensitive information about me.

Stuff like my retirement investments, bank accounts, credit card information, confidential work information, etc.

How the hell would I know what EA is collecting and what it's not with an EULA like that.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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Srdjan Tanaskovic said:
Dirty Hipsters said:
Well ok, not really, but EA's Origin does watch everything you do on your computer.

If you read the End User License Agreement for Origin it states that by installing Origin you're giving EA the right to monitor your PC and to make a profile of you, including what programs you have installed (and whether you have any illegally downloaded material), what websites you use, etc., and that EA reserves the right to share or sell this information to third parties.

Why have I heard NOTHING about this yet? Where is the outrage? Is it just that no one actually reads the EULA, or is it that in the age of facebook no one cares about people monitoring everything they do?
still waiting for that picture that shows it in the EULA
Pictures were already posted on the first page of this thread by another poster.

You can also find the EULA EA's website if you're so inclined to read the entire thing.
 

KoRMorrigan

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Steam does the same thing, and has forever, so this is no big deal.

From the Privacy Policy:
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.
 

yuval152

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KoRMorrigan said:
Steam does the same thing, and has forever, so this is no big deal.

From the Privacy Policy:
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.
I think that breaks the ice,I think that you can also opt out.
 

yuval152

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TwistedComplex said:
yuval152 said:
KoRMorrigan said:
Steam does the same thing, and has forever, so this is no big deal.

From the Privacy Policy:
By using Valve's online sites and products, users agree that Valve may collect aggregate information, individual information, and personally identifiable information, as defined below. Valve may share aggregate information and individual information with other parties. Valve shall not share personally identifiable information with other parties, except as described in the policy below.
I think that breaks the ice.
Thats what the Origin agreement says.

I love how everyone here is 2 seconds away from jumping on the EA hate-wagon EVEN THOUGH the OP didn't even post the entire Terms and Agreements.

I swear to god i could make up ANYTHING about EA and i would have every gamer eating out of my hands
The_root_of_all_evil said:
Avatar Roku said:
I actually had heard some of that (I think Root Of All Evil mentioned it on some thread yesterday), but I too am surprised at the lack of outrage. That is absolutely ridiculous.
Heh, nice to know I'm remembered :) Yeah, grab any EULAs with your fine tooth comb and have a look at what they let the companies do that directly and illegally interferes with your rights. It's doubtful that they would use the EULA to those extremes, but it's only the bad publicity that's going to stop them.

Here's a quick bait and switch from EA's.

WHEN YOU USE ANY ONLINE GAME, SERVICE or WEBSITE FROM ELECTRONIC ARTS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ, UNDERSTOOD, AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS.
http://legal.ea.com/legal/legal.jsp?language=en

Hidden until you call it up, but legally binding simply by going to www.ea.com - so you acknowledge it without knowing it.

(IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THIS POLICY, PLEASE DO NOT USE ANY EA SITE, ONLINE OR MOBILE PRODUCT OR SERVICE.)
- which you have to to see this.

(And because it's in a pop-up, you can't easily use "Find" on it)

EA may collect personal information from our online visitors during:

Contest registration and prize acceptance;
Warranty registration and requests;
Customer support and/or technical service requests;
Player match up and other head-to-head online competitions;
Registration for games and/or special game-specific events;
Newsletter subscriptions, referral services, and other marketing surveys and email campaigns;
Registration for EA and/or other service accounts;
Product, service and/or subscription orders;
Service requests from third party service providers on our site; and
Otherwise through use of our software, mobile or online services where personal information is required for use and/or participation.
Information collected will vary depending upon the activity and may include your name, email address, phone number, home address, birth date, mobile phone number and credit card information.
They don't HAVE to, but they can.

We may also receive other personal information from third parties in connection with the operation and distribution of our products and services as well as market and demographic studies that we use to supplement personal information provided directly by you.
Anything our hirelings find out is fair game.

When you use EA online and mobile products and services or you play our games on your PC or console, we may collect certain non-personal demographic information including gender, zip code, information about your computer, hardware, software, platform, media, mobile device, mobile device ID, console ID, incident data, Internet Protocol (IP) address, network Media Access Control (MAC) address and connection. We also collect other non-personal information such as feature usage, game play statistics and scores, user rankings and click paths as well as other data that you may provide in surveys, via your account preferences and online profiles or through purchases, for instance.
A lot of this information is restricted under the various Data Protection Acts, but the top part of the contract says that you waive your rights to be protected by that law. That's actually wrong in a lot of countries, as you cannot waive your own rights.

Clear GIFs (a.k.a. web bugs, beacons or tags) are small graphic images placed on a web page, web-based document, or in an email message. Clear GIFs are invisible to the user because they are typically very small (only 1-by-1 pixel) and the same color as the background of the web page, document or email message. We do not use clear GIFs to collect personal information about you. However, we may use clear GIFs to capture statistical usage information for our web pages, features or other elements on a web page. We correlate this information to a user to personalize user experience and for statistical analysis of user experiences on our web pages.
Know about them? You do now.

Should you be unable to log in or wish to have your account(s) deactivated, contact the Privacy Policy Administrator in your country as listed on our site at privacyadmin.ea.com, or if your country is not listed, by contacting the Privacy Policy Administrator in the United States. We will be happy to review, update or remove information as appropriate. We may still retain your information in our files however, to resolve disputes, enforce our user agreement, and due to technical and legal requirements and constraints related to the security, integrity and operation of our websites.

Some EA sites or services may collect personal information that is not accessible via our site. However, in such cases, you may be able to access that information through alternative means of access described by the service or by writing your local privacy policy administrator at privacyadmin.ea.com and you will be contacted within 30 days regarding your request.
If we've stolen from you, it's your fault and you'll have to contact us. Unless you're in California

XIV. California Residents: Your California Privacy Rights

Under California law, California Residents who have an established business relationship with Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) or one of its subsidiaries may choose to opt out of EA disclosure of personal information about them to third parties for direct marketing purposes. As detailed above, our policy is not to disclose personal information collected online to a third party for direct marketing purposes without your approval.
I could rip into any EULA so it's not just EA, but the rights the EULA give you are far beyond what is necessary to run a big corporation - and by judicial "use" of the rights they have, they can pass everything to a third party company - which just went bankrupt. While they happily log everything you do while you have an EA program running, even if doesn't appear in Task Manager.

If you're not doing anything illegal, then you may say "Why should I be bothered?" - but how do you know you're not doing anything that "seems" illegal.

Perhaps you have a lot of pictures of your child with his friends on the beach? EA snoops and wonders why a grown man/woman has lots of pictures of semi-naked children on their computer.

Perhaps you mail box is filling up with viagra spam, EA may be wondering why you're dealing in so much viagra.

Perhaps you've left a bad Amazon comment on an EA product, EA would "politely" like to know "exactly" why you've chosen to "Amazon-bomb" their "brilliant" product, and will contact you to find out. Repeatedly. At 2am.

It's not that they will, it's that they can. And legally, they're allowed to, because you signed the EULA.
 

Randomyze

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ahtf said:
Did you miss the aprt where they say they will never share any information to third parties that can identify you.
I'm pretty sure my IP address is considered personally identifiable information which they said they would share with third parties. That and the fact I would rather not have any of my information stored that doesn't need to be especially when the legal definition of personally identifiable information is somewhat murky.

Not to mention that EA Legacy Servers were recently hacked and my account was one of the victims.
 

FieryTrainwreck

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JonnWood said:
FieryTrainwreck said:
dfphetteplace said:
Does EA realize there is a program for downloading all their games that doesn't do this type of activity? uTorrent. They are making it much more appealing to just steal their software even by people who don't want to pirate.
I absolutely hate piracy, but there comes a point where enough is enough.

I might start stealing games and sending cash to the developers (not the publishers) in unmarked envelopes.
Nope. Piracy is never justified. You never have a right to get a game for free, no matter how much the legal version may inconvenience you. You don't even have a right to a version without nonsense intrusion like this. You do, however, have the right to complain. On forums, in letters, wherever.
Since I'd be sending the people who actually made the game money, it wouldn't be stealing. Not in the appropriate moral sense, anyways. Then again, I'm someone who realizes who actually makes the laws and where they get their handouts.
 

Ultimace

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Apr 3, 2010
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Might as well copy pasta my post from the news thread:

So I wanted to see if EA's forums exploded with rage on the matter, and I came across this. Apparently you can choose to opt in/out if you want just like with Valve and Steam.

"There is an option to opt out.

If you go to http://profile.ea.com and login, scroll down to the bottom of the page where it has your billing/shipping information.

Right above this section is the "Contact Options". The first option is to be contacted by EA regarding products & news. The second option is "Share my information with select EA partners". Click on "Update Contact Options" and you can opt-out of the EA Partners section.

EA_AgentX"

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/7489278.page

Still, the EULA is cause for concern.
 

yuval152

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Ultimace said:
Might as well copy pasta my post from the news thread:

So I wanted to see if EA's forums exploded with rage on the matter, and I came across this. Apparently you can choose to opt in/out if you want just like with Valve and Steam.

"There is an option to opt out.

If you go to http://profile.ea.com and login, scroll down to the bottom of the page where it has your billing/shipping information.

Right above this section is the "Contact Options". The first option is to be contacted by EA regarding products & news. The second option is "Share my information with select EA partners". Click on "Update Contact Options" and you can opt-out of the EA Partners section.

EA_AgentX"

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/7489278.page

Still, the EULA is cause for concern.
as said last time,it dosen't mean shit EA will still collect your info but not share it.
 

Comando96

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HassEsser said:
STEAM keeps records of your programs installed, too

just tah let you know
leet_x1337 said:
Yeah, but not ALL of them. Just the ones you got from Steam.
And they ask you... its not a "DO WHAT WE FUCKING TELL YOU" clause in the sign up agreement.
 

AdumbroDeus

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mornal said:
Oh no! So you mean to say that if I have Origin I'll get spam mail based on what it thinks I like? That's horrible! This is a completely new thing that will ruin everything forever! And you say it'll detect pirated software? How dare EA try to fight against an illegal practice! What has the world come to?
Why don't you want the police randomly searching your house, you have nothing to fear if you did nothing wrong?


You know, most people don't want everything you do on your computer (including the totally legal stuff) to be distributed to everyone and their moma.
 

N3vans

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Apr 14, 2009
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Shame, BF3 was quite high up on my 'to buy' list but I'm seriously considering not bothering with it now. First EA is forcing us PC gamers to use Origin and then they sneak this big brother bullshit into the EULA. Until they either retract this rubbish or stop having a massive, gaping, waterfall of a period about their games appearing on Steam it's doubtful I'll bother.

EA just because I want your game, doesn't mean I want you to massively invade my privacy too. Sincerely, go fuck yourself.
 

MorphingDragon

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Apr 17, 2009
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This bullshit is illegal in New Zealand, an entity cannot reserve the right to sell private details to a third party. Actually considering writing to teh cunsumers authority just in an attempt to be a dick to EA.

I actually think in America you cannot reserve the rights that don't exist.