Some tips when you are running potentially untrustworthy software (and, unfortunately, it looks like even software you're buying from well-established companies is falling more and more into the "untrusted" category, at least by my definition):

1) Turn off autoplay for your CD drives. Doing that was never very secure to begin with.


2) For games like EQ and WoW, if you suspect that they will scan your processes and/or hard drive contents, run them under a user ID that doesn't have admin privileges. For convenience, you can even shift-right-click their start menu entry and use the handy-dandy "run as:" feature to cause that one program to run as a separate userid without having to log everything off. The game, not having admin privileges, will be unable to detect processes in your memory (other that those that run as the same userid). If you're concerned about hard-drive spying, you can setup permissions so that some areas of your HD are also off-limits to it.

It is not good what they are doing, but if you think about how they feel, they must feel like they can loose money from people copying the CD's, if they do not do something about it themselves.

One thing that will probably end up happening if they do try this with EQ:

They ban someones account for running a packet collector or something...

That person sues, saying that they have the right to run what ever program they want in the background.


If you are just trying to log packets... you can always use a crossover cable and another computer...