EA’s Origin keeps track of recently used programs

Origin, the games platform of Electronic Arts, has been accused of espionage again. The platform would keep track of which programs the user has used on his PC. In 2011, Origin was also discredited because the program behaved like Spyware.

Origin’s espionage activities are said to be apparent from a screenshot posted on Reddit. It shows Origin.exe requesting a list from the registry of apparently unknown program names. The names are scrambled with the extremely simple rot13 encryption algorithm, hiding well-known programs like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and iTunes. It would be a list of recently used programs on the PC where Origin is running. The list itself is not maintained by Origin, but by Windows itself. EA’s program simply requests the existing list.

Although it is not clear whether the program also tracks activities within the browsers and what Origin does with this information, requesting the list is already striking. In a response to the screenshot, EA said that an investigation is being launched. “Origin is not spyware and there should be no privacy snooping of any kind. We are going to get to the bottom of this,” said a spokesperson for the publisher.

It’s not the first time Origin has been accused of spying. In 2011, the program was already discredited when German users of the platform reported that Origin was recognized as malware. The program monitored, among other things, an accounting program and a mobile application. However, after an update, those issues were resolved. EA also denied that Origin is spying on users. The company does mention in its privacy terms that Origin may collect “non-identifiable information” about the user.