Often I have been amazed by Blizzard’s tolerance to these programs. Once, Blizzard banned all bots across to the board and many gamers revolted in disgust. Then Bot makers realized that if the Bot accessed Battle.net with a single valid CD key all problems were solved. And since then the reign of the bots has been firm again.
And Blizzards response? Silence. Why? They realized people were buying CD discs to have channel bots. All is fair in business and war. But the fact remains that by their own rules these programs are not permitted. No matter my love for the game and the game creators, of which many have already left, Blizzards double standards are still blatantly obvious. Hey after all if they sell Starcraft CDs, everyone is happy.
Still the question remains; can you trust a Bot? Many people share information that if they were wize they would do better not to do so. Did you know that most bots have the ability to log all conversation that occurs in a channel? Did you know you can monitor up to six channels with one Bot? Did you know it is technically possible to monitor a channel with an invisible Bot if you create a split server issue? If you doubt any of these questions please have a long chat with
»
Imperceptus from entropyzero.org or ask any of the bot lads from » Valhalla legends or stealth at » Stealthbot Forums
Given the fact that the vast majority of Battle.net users are underage, which has its specific legal implications, and the growing statistics in online scams and fraud what policy does Blizzard, Battle.net and its parent company (Vivendi) have? What exactly is their responsibility toward valid legal CD-keys being used to operate bots that park in private and public channels and monitor and log all text? I asked them these same questions and I got a typical “Sorry we can not answer those questions presently.”
People and especially the underaged teen-agers, that make up the majority of their costumers, often share e-mails, telephones, addresses and even personal information about themselves and their families. They are of course free to do this and Battle.net is not responsible so long as they don't divulge these conversations, but most are often unaware of the capabilities of these third party bots and their text monitoring activity. In fact these bots look like you regular player accounts so it is impossible even for those who know the capability of text logging by bots to be able to differentiate them.
Blizzard have been sued in the past successfully for breaching online privacy issues and yet they remain silent and ambiguous on this matter. I do not even want to touch the subject of internet security and spying and all the questions and abuse that could potentially arise from BOTS.
If you do not believe me about this by all means please check the following site to see how one Clan out there monitors its own channels and at times other channels. Click on the saved text of the hundreds of Bot logs available for anyone in the web to access.
» Clan [cf] chat logs East gateway.
» Clan [cf] chat logs West gateway.
» List of clan [cf] Bots East gateway.
» List of clan [cf] Bots West gateway
Yes, many other clans do this. This is just one clan in thousands. And by the way Clan [cf] is a ‘benign’ clan. Imagine the activity of ‘evil’ Clans.
Now on the other hand, without Bots we would not have the BWScanner monitoring system, nor the Wgtour reporting system and all those power happy clan leaders would be lost without the fun provided by their little bots in the glorious name of channel moderation and dividing all human beings into clan members and non clan members..
So are they good or evil? The answer is simple: they are tools. It is men that are good or evil. And a tool can very easily become a weapon and an instrument of abuse. The rather harmless spamming you see from bots, aside from causing congestion, pales in comparison of the true potential for abuse.
Why this article you may ask? So you become aware. All that you say in the web and Battle.net is recorded, sometimes monitored and yes sometimes used against you. So you become aware that Blizzards “active stance against the use of third party programs that modify how you interact with Battlenet and the game” is active so long it touches their pockets only.
Become aware.
