It's official Parsers are illegal in FFXIV

[Ronduwil]

ACT hooks into the FF14 process and then it reads informations directly from the memory claimed by the FF14 process. It can read literary every information which is stored in the FF14 process. Not only your combat log but propably also things like your character data and maybe your login credentials.

It goes even beyond that. The installation instructions for ACT ask for administrator privileges on your machine so that it can sniff your packets in real time. That is an absolute no go for me. Never mind your FFXIV login info. Those privileges allow the program to look at any and everything you do on your computer.

For me it is way too risky to allow such things to a third-party-tool. It is really strange that SE doesn't use a protection to prevent this.

I agree that it's far too risky. I'm completely with you there. As for SE providing protection, they really can't control what you choose to install on your computer. All they can do is advise you not to do it, and they've done that. WoW supports addons that are written in a language that runs within their game client itself, so they have control over what those addons can and can't do. Third party programs like ACT have no such constraints, and there's nothing SE can really do about it beyond asking you not to install them. Running an addon in FFXIV is nothing like running one in WoW.

[Ronduwil]

Character details , and especially player account log in information is not held in RAM like some kind of temporary readable text file.

It sniffs your packets. Here's a direct quote from the ACT installation instructions on github:

ACT should always be run as Administrator and excepted from Windows Firewall to make sure it works properly. This is because ACT uses memory reading and packet inspection to collect accurate data, which Windows doesn't allow by default.

There's a reason Windows doesn't allow that.

There is no doubt that the developers responsible for SE security have , many years ago , studied popular tools such as ACT to check if it breaches security in anyway. Not only them but some of the community fluent in code especially in online security would have also done the same and if ACT was a data sniffer sending personal data to the owner it would have been flagged years ago.

That was years ago, but the program is constantly being updated. I seriously doubt that anyone from SE security is wasting their time inspecting every single change for every single release. They have enough on their plate maintaining their own code to bother with third party code that they have explicitly forbidden in their terms of service anyway.

[Jin-]

Disappointed that it wasn't Titanmen necro this time

[Caitsithhh]

Cool. I hope everyone that uses a parser is Parma banned

Can’t even spell sadge. They said they can’t see what’s on your pc and good luck finding a good group if you don’t have good logs.

[Caitlyn]

snip.

Well, most games (including FFXIV) need to run as administrator and with firewall exceptions, too. Carefull, if you want use them...

[Ronduwil]

That is actually not true. Like Yoshi-P said, it just reads the combat log and adding the numbers. You can do that by yourself using a calculator (which may take a few hours).
Sorry to say this, but you fear something you dont understand.

Yoshi-P was speaking hypothetically. As in, "suppose it behaves just like an excel spreadsheet..." He wasn't making any statements about its inner workings. Tom Richter says otherwise at https://gist.github.com/TomRichter/e...514ffb20a201a9:

ACT should always be run as Administrator and excepted from Windows Firewall to make sure it works properly. This is because ACT uses memory reading and packet inspection to collect accurate data, which Windows doesn't allow by default.

I consider the ACT FFXIV plugin programmer's statement to be more authoritative than Yoshi-P's hypotheticals in this regard.

Login credentials cant be read, because they are used within the launcher and are not stored inside the game. Almost the same goes with the character data, but you will find such data easily on your lodestone page ; )

Except that they can be read because ACT is not running inside the game. It's running as a separate program that, if you followed the installation instructions, has been granted Windows Administrator privileges. That gives the program the ability to look at everything you're typing while it's running, including FFXIV login credentials, banking credentials, your gmail credentials, and any other bit of data that you send across the network while ACT is running.

And why should SE make a protection against ACT? And how?

They can't, and that's why they don't. They've already protected you by telling you not to install third party programs. WoW supports addons only when they run inside of their own proprietary LUA engine. That's how they can control what the program can and can't do. SE's stance is completely different. If there's functionality that you're lacking, they build it into the game themselves instead of relying on third parties to add it. ACT functionality is something that they've deemed to be detrimental to the game's social experience, so they refuse to build it in. You're using these third party programs at your own risk.

[Ronduwil]

Well, most games (including FFXIV) need to run as administrator and with firewall exceptions, too. Carefull, if you want use them...

You have no idea what you're talking about. You need to install most games as Administrator, but they certainly don't have to run as Administrator. There's a difference. I'm not so worried about the firewall exceptions. I'm worried about how the program has indiscriminate access to all my network packets, not just the FFXIV packets.

[Caitsithhh]

You have no idea what you're talking about. You need to install most games as Administrator, but they certainly don't have to run as Administrator. There's a difference. I'm not so worried about the firewall exceptions. I'm worried about how the program has indiscriminate access to all my network packets, not just the FFXIV packets.

You remind me of all those players that think they are playing well because they’ve convinced themselves they are.

And that’s fine. Completely fine. It’s when you try to interject yourself into content you have no place being in.

The harder encounters(or all really) are based around do “X” amount of damage to kill. If you’re totally ok being oblivious then that’s cool find others like that.

If you’re not going to be an A-hole then it’s perfectly ok to see where you stand and push yourself to be better.

Just don’t talk about it. ACT has been around for a very very long time. If they were taking people’s info without permission and using it incorrectly it would had gone POOF long ago.

[Izar_Chillen]

You remind me of all those players that think they are playing well because they’ve convinced themselves they are.

And that’s fine. Completely fine. It’s when you try to interject yourself into content you have no place being in.

The harder encounters(or all really) are based around do “X” amount of damage to kill. If you’re totally ok being oblivious then that’s cool find others like that.

If you’re not going to be an A-hole then it’s perfectly ok to see where you stand and push yourself to be better.

Just don’t talk about it. ACT has been around for a very very long time. If they were taking people’s info without permission and using it incorrectly it would had gone POOF long ago.

Indeed . The community ( the ones that would deconstruct ACT to ensure its not doing anything bad) would have torn it a new backside if it was scanning personal info and sending it to an unknown IP

[Kyrj]

Damn that's some necro