Forge of freedom is attempting to monitor..

[vaalen]

When I click on "Play", on the main menu, I get the following message from Zone alarm - "Forge of freedom is attempting to monitor user activities on this computer, If allowed, it may try to track or log keystrokes/mouse clicks, websites visited and other user behavior"
Please explain, as I find this message very disturbing.

[Erik Rutins]

That would be otherwise known as a false alarm. Put simply, Zone Alarm is wrong. I'm not sure what it's overreacting to, but we've had various security applications over the years periodically decide:

1. That a particular game is suddenly a trojan in disguise
2. That our games "call home" over the internet to (where else?) Google.com
3. That a key scenario file was a virus that needed removing

etc. The latest episode was AVG suddenly deciding a few months ago that unless it deleted a file from the War in the Pacific installation, your system was in danger. Result? System no safer, War in the Pacific broken.

I'm curious when this started and if you'd recently updated Zone Alarm, but I can definitively tell you that what it reported there is a complete load of crap. If you have a reporting mechanism back to them, please let them know that this is a false alarm.

Regards,

- Erik

[vaalen]

Erik,

Thanks for your prompt reply. I update Zone Alarm on a weekly basis. This message occurred only after I installed 1.10.10 This message comes up every time I click on play. It has occurred over a 3 week period. Zone Alarm was updated regularly during that period.

I have had this particular message appear only once before, when I ran Madden 2007. Some investigation revealed that the Madden application did, in fact, have a keylogger.

I am glad that you are confident that the alarm is false.

thanks for your help,

Stan

[Erik Rutins]

Stan,

ORIGINAL: vaalen
I have had this particular message appear only once before, when I ran Madden 2007. Some investigation revealed that the Madden application did, in fact, have a keylogger.

Madden has a keylogger? What the he would it want with that?

I can assure you there's no keylogger or any other spyware in FOF.

[Gil R.]

Yeah, definitely no key-logger. But if you've got video camera attached to your computer, FOF automatically activates it and sends us streaming video of you so that we can see what you're wearing.

Sadly, Ravinhood looks nothing like his avatar...

[vaalen]

Erik,

I recall that the Madden 2007 pc game kept track of the number of hours you played the game and the number of keystrokes. There may even have been a game purpose such as awarding "madden cards" for playing the game for a certain number of hours. I do not think it was Spyware, just that it logged keystrokes, quite likely only keystrokes involved in Madden.

I believed you the first time, and I am glad that there is no spyware.

Have you ever had your computer taken over by Spyware? I have, and it is no fun, to say the least. Ultimately, after much expense and trouble, the only thing I could do was wipe the hard drive.

After that experience, I am somewhat sensitive to this issue.

[Joram]

I have Zone Alarm and many of my games, Matrix or not, spawn that false alarm.   Must be something to do with how you allow keyboard shortcuts.
 

[Joram]

ORIGINAL: Gil R.

Yeah, definitely no key-logger. But if you've got video camera attached to your computer, FOF automatically activates it and sends us streaming video of you so that we can see what you're wearing.

Sadly, Ravinhood looks nothing like his avatar...

ROFL [:D]

[vaalen]

Thanks for letting me know I'm not the only one getting this false alarm.

[Joram]

As long as you get your game from a legit source, don't even worry about it.