How secure are Yahoo games and IMs?

[Shoe]

Are there any security threats I should worry about? Can they get my IP from playing with them or from IMs?

I have a firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, so hopefully that would be able to block anything if they could, just curious as to if anyone knows how secure those programs are. Thanks.

[UMCorona]

When you say "they" who are you referring to?

[apd138]

Go take your meds.

[DeuceKicker]

Getting your IP isn't the end of the world if you're protected. Make sure you have your file transfers set up properly - don't set it to automatically accept incoming files. The best firewall in the world is useless if you tell it to allow certain traffic in.

[Shoe]

By "they" I mean other players at the table. I don't really feel this is a threat, i'm just curious if they can monitor the traffic and get everyone's IP's at the table who they are playing with, such as when they ping them or send an IM, or if Yahoo hides this information.

Also to the other poster, where can I check to make sure I am blocking incoming files? I'm pretty sure I have all network sharing turned off if that is what you mean.

[tworooks]

yep, IP's aren't too big of a deal if you know how to stop the incoming traffic. but, if you chat on AIM, people can get ur IP by direct connecting with you. If you're really scared about them knowing ur IP, dont direct connect.

[Hojglad]

[ QUOTE ]
By "they" I mean other players at the table. I don't really feel this is a threat, i'm just curious if they can monitor the traffic and get everyone's IP's at the table who they are playing with, such as when they ping them or send an IM, or if Yahoo hides this information.

[/ QUOTE ]
As far as getting your IP from being at the same table as you, no. Yahoo games works on a client server model. If the players performed a netstat -a while playing, all they would see is a tcp connection to Yahoo. With regard to IMs, no, they cannot receive your IP address for the reason mentioned previously. The exact same thing will happen. If you use yahoo's version of direct connect, this changes things - it opens up a port on your machine and allows the other host to connect directly to you via a socket. You honestly have nothing to worry about. Most of the people who play those yahoo games are too stupid to be toilet trained, nevermind "hack" into your computer.

[Shoe]

Thanks, that's what I figured, just wanted to make sure that I shouldn't take any extra precautions so I don't get my poker accounts hacked.

I feel really dumb now because I'm an ex-programmer and should have known that.