MMO giant World of Warcraft's screenshot function may be showing off more than your sick gear or your massive raids, according to a discovery by a group of gamers at OwnedCore.
Posters at gaming forum OwnedCore have found that each screenshot from the game contains your account name, timestamp, and IP address of the server the image was taken on. This technique, known as steganography, hides a secret watermark into each image which contains all this info. It's not physically visible, but digitally, it's there.
The data doesn't include your password, credit card number, or mother's maiden name by any means, but can still lead to the compromising of some accounts and servers. The function however is presumably to catch pirates using private or illegitimate servers who decided to post their screenshots up.
Screenshots containing this info date all the way back to 2008, around the time of the Activision-Blizzard merge. Fortunately players can now use a few tricks to make sure their information isn't compromised. High quality screenshots, performed by using the '/console SET screenshotQuality "10"' command, or using a third party screenshot tool, will make sure this information doesn't float around the web.
Blizzard hasn't commented on the matter yet, but surely they are to get an icy reception when they do.
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