In-game advertisements phoning home with your personal info
It's a foregone conclusion that video games are the next big medium for advertising, and ads in games have already become pretty commononplace. Most people will put up with them, despite the fact that they already paid a forty bucks or more for the game. But what about when the ads start connecting to the ad agency's servers over the Internet to tell them about your playing habits? As reported by our pal Vladimir at Joystiq, that's exactly what's happening with Vivendi's SWAT4: not only does the game download new advertisements to show you while you're playing, it also tells Vivendi's advertising partner, Massive, how what time you start and stop playing, and how much time you spent looking at each ad.
Head over to Joystiq for more details, or read the complete report (including how to block the ads and the intrusion) by Andrew Smith and Peter Wood.
