Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

Hi,

I can't find another thread about this but can't believe I'm the only one who this happens to. Apologies if it's discussed elsewhere.

My Zone Alarm recently patched and I get some extra warnings about program behaviour.

Now, when I start the party client I get a warning that says :

"PartPoker Client Application is trying to monitor your mouse movements and keyboard strokes."

I'm all for them monitoring for bots and the like, but I'm definitely concerned about security. I frequently check Neteller when clients are open and sometimes my online bank account too. Oftentimes I'll open up other poker sites which will frequently have cash in.

I have no idea if this means they're collecting actual strokes/movements or just checking that the mouse and keyboard are in use. Theoretically they could have all passwords and logon information of just about every online bank, poker or other site I have money at.

I've emailed them (with screenshot) and await their response.

Anyone else ?

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

I believe their RNG uses random mouse movements to generate seeds.

Still, I wouldn't do anything else while running Party.

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

That's certainly the case on PokerStars, and that's all it's used for. I don't think that any of the big sites would/could do anything illegal though, why would they need or want to?

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

Perhaps to investigate any AOL IM messages.. to see if people are colluding.

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

Yeh, but they're improving their integrity by catching colluders at the cost of vastly weakening their integrity by basically breaking privacy law.

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Yeh, but they're improving their integrity by catching colluders at the cost of vastly weakening their integrity by basically breaking privacy law.

[/ QUOTE ]

What privacy law??

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

I am not an expert, but I imagine there's something in Gibraltar... I didn't see anything in the T&C that said they were allowed to do this either, they generally explicitly say that they won't. Of course, could be I'm just not looking close enough and am being naive :]

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

Fair enough, but why would they want my mouse movements and keystrokes when their app doesn't have focus ? There would always be plenty of players with their app in-focus if all they need are seed values, surely ?

Why do they want keystrokes at all ?

It may well be all innocent and above board but it bothers me. I've tried a couple of other sites (including stars) and I get no ZA warnings there.

Keeping away from PP until they reply.

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yeh, but they're improving their integrity by catching colluders at the cost of vastly weakening their integrity by basically breaking privacy law.

[/ QUOTE ]

What privacy law??

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm reminded of a Law & Order episode where the lead DA guy takes the Constitution off the wall and says to Jack McCoy, "where on here does it say anything about privacy."

Re: Party Keystroke Logging ?
 

Well, I got my answer. Strangely, (in my experience anyway) it came by phone. They'd even gone to the trouble of looking up my account details, I hadn't included them in the email. The personal touch is always nice [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Initially they wanted to know at what point ZoneAlarm detected the keyboard and mouse hook, and what happened when I clicked on accept or deny. I declined to answer, they can find this out for themselves.

The reason they hook into the keyboard and mouse is to help detect who's using illegal (on their site) software apparently.

Further into the conversation they added that it's also to help users who may not be able to click things or get keyboard strokes to work.

Later still, it was something about tables. I couldn't understand this bit but it was mentioned more than once.

Basically, every time I asked why they needed to record keyboard strokes that had no bearing at all on their application I got something a little bit different.

Still, they're going to put it in writing that Party are not downloading my keystrokes, and that they're not storing them anywhere.

That's alright then.