AMD says Wild Tangent is no spyware

AFTER POSTING THE story about AMD's Live! software suite which included "AMD Live! Games", on-line game distribution software by WildTangent Inc., we received a lot of e-mails from readers claiming AMD was bundling spyware/malware/foistware in their product.

After checking security sites on the worldly wibble, we discovered that WildTangent components were indeed checked as a possible security problem at the time when the company was bundling its software with AOL instant messaging client.

We have contacted AMD over the claims that encompass WildTangent Inc., and the company told us:

"Both the AMD team and Wild Tangent IT team confirm that the application AMD recently announced and will be available shortly from www.amdlive.com site is spyware-free. According to WildTangent, of the 11 software vendors they track, none of them flag the application as spyware."

Wild Tangent saidthe reason they were "flagged" as spyware was due to an incident several years back where they were included in an AOL AIM gaming build and the EULA for the product did not disclose the collection of data.

"Wild Tangent no longer ships with the AOL platform and currently discloses all collection of data to the customer via the EULA. This is a widely-accepted practice." As a side note, Wild Tangent currently hosts sites for both HP and Dell among other respected companies.

All in all, AMD claims its on-line service does not touch security and privacy of the users, and we managed to find out that usually, Wild Tangent software "phones home" once to be certain that the distributed titles will work on a user's machines. The details are as follows:
1. Operating System Version
2. DirectX Version
3. CPU Type and Speed
4. Memory Amount
5. Video Card type and Driver Version
6. Sound Card type and Driver Version
7. Location from where was application installed from (bandwidth test)

As you can read for yourself, this level of checking is even less intrusive when compared to some other on-line services. According to our sources, AMD Live! Games service is set for introduction in time for Yuletide. µ L'INQ:
Official Live! site