Interesting Article

investigation-started-after-ea-caught-spying-via-origin-client/

Yea, I think someone asked on another thread what Origin did - and we did agree they are "spying" on us - it says so in the TOS.

It should be a LOT clearer though.

Personalize my experience? I'd rather they didn't! AT ALL, EVER. NOBODY should be personalizing anything, as far as I'm concerned, because they would need to know TOO MUCH about me to make that work.

Before you know it, when I go shopping for music, knowing that I'm an ABBA fan, they start throwing all kinds of ABBA-sound-alikes at me, which I don't care about at all, because it isn't ABBA. But in the meantime, they also block me from finding something totally new that has nothing in common with ABBA!

NO, NO, three-effing-times NO! When I surf, or whatever, I want the entire web and its contents to be available to me with no propietary filters of any kind applied.

It already upsets me that webdevelopers have their sites automatically configure to Dutch (and when they don't, browser developers have their browser do it), merely because they detect that I'm surfing from a location in the Netherlands. I prefer to see my stuff in English unless I specifically say otherwise! Google Chrome has a setting for it, but it's not instantly obvious where it is. I've figured it out and set it, but still many sites open in Dutch by default. That's annoying interference, the result of invasion of my privacy!

Sorry for ranting.... This was brought forth by part of their statement about the data they collect in order to "personalize my experience".

Yeah, that was me asking about Origin. I decided to install it anyway. Perhaps that was a mistake.

Anyway, I also have a program called PeerBlock installed. Description from their site: "PeerBlock lets you control who your computer 'talks to' on the Internet. By selecting appropriate lists of 'known bad' computers, you can block communication with advertising or spyware oriented servers, computers monitoring your p2p activities, computers which have been 'hacked', even entire countries! They can't get in to your computer, and your computer won't try to send them anything either. And best of all, it's free!"

So. When Origin is open, PeerBlock looks like this:



The first time I ran Origin I didn't think to also run PeerBlock. But after seeing that, I make sure to run PeerBlock every time I run Origin.

Thanks for that Fansee - I had uninstalled Origin because of spyware issues a few years ago - but with the Sims4 CAS demo I was wanting to check if I had it or not. (I don't).

I don't want to have to install Origin every time I need to check something because of their stupid behaviour.

@fanseelamb - that's a sweet little program thingy. Since I had to install Origin just to see my games, I installed that before installing Origin. It never even had a chance to spy on me. Take that, Origin!!

Thanks Kiri and fansee, think I will get that. Guess you all know about the free Sims Deluxe coming out on the 22nd? My codes kept saying 'already in use' so I waited for a rep on live chat and ended up having to take a picture of my case and code and attach it before he would send me a code to add Sim s2 to my origin dashboard. If you are registered you should get an email. The only reason I want the download is I am hoping it's a more up to date version should my hard copies stop working as time goes on.