No sir, I am NOT playing games at work

January 15, 2006 6:44 PM

What information can be gleaned about me and my location and past gaming history by a person if I connect to their computer to play the Halo Demo? Can anyone else on that game server who is NOT the host glean any info such as location, my computer name, preferences?
posted by anonpeon to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Provided there's no other shenanigans going on (e.g. they have not hacked the game data to download and run a separate script to your machine), you're really only an IP address and game data (e.g. your name, skin, etc) to the host server. But they'd have to be running something in addition to the game itself in order to extract the address and keep a log of everyone who was connected. The game doesn't save that data.

The IP address will resolve to your ISP, of course. From there, it's extraordinarily unlikely that they can take that and, say, find out where you live, if that's the real worry.

Assuming you did something nasty (e.g. you were a griefer, or said something to another player), they could register a complaint with the ISP. But that's about it.
posted by frogan at 8:13 PM on January 15, 2006

Oh, and your question was specifically, "can anyone who is NOT the host..." Well, that throws up even more barriers. Now you're talking about a client hacking the host in order to hack another client.

Possible, but not bloody likely. Otherwise, l33t Counter-Strike hax0rs would being going to town on players...
posted by frogan at 8:16 PM on January 15, 2006

From there, it's extraordinarily unlikely that they can take that and, say, find out where you live, if that's the real worry.

With work and the correct geo-lookup tools you can usually pin the physical location of a person on a DSL/cable connection to within two-five miles radius (read: a reasonable distance from the local central office) just based on their IP address - this is assuming use of the better lookup services, which cost $$. If you're coming in from a .edu, .mil, .gov then it's MUCH easier to figure where you physically were when you accessed said game server.

Many ISPs - even most - put an abbreviation for your area in your hostmask. ie nycap.rr.com is Road Runner, New York Capital region (Albany area), so in many cases you can get a general sense in just plain English without using any tools at all - this is loads of fun for scaring the shit out of newbies on IRC.

Assuming the game server is not radically hacked in any way, then outside of your IP address and the general location information that usually comes with it there's very little they can learn about you that you don't choose to tell them.
posted by Ryvar at 8:27 PM on January 15, 2006

On preview I missed 'not the host' as well. Assuming no major hacking and you not giving out tons of info on chat they can't find out fuckall about you. 99.99% chance you're fine. Sleep soundly.
posted by Ryvar at 8:29 PM on January 15, 2006

I vaguely remember that in Half-Life, maybe an older version, some player list command in the console would list IPs on everyone, even if I wasn't the server. So it's not inconceivable that anyone can grab your IP.

But if you're on a computer with stuff so sensitive you have to worry about if someone is going to hack you through Halo, that computer probably shouldn't be on the internet anyway and definitely shouldn't be used for Halo.

If, like your title, you're worried that some server admin is going to report you for playing at work, they're not. If it's a big enough company they could probably find that your IP belongs to the company but they're not going to care enough in the first place to find out.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 9:46 PM on January 15, 2006