Hi there, I use Gatherer since the first release in 2005.

Today I bought something from a totally unknown player on my realm. After that he told me, that I'm a rich player and a powerseller, because he knows that I farm very often ore and herbs and where I collect it. I was really shocked.
I asked him where from he knows it. He said, that he uses a addon called Gatherer Share, that tells him at any place, which player found what ore/herb/treasure and where. I was horrified. How the hell can he spy out on me without my knowledge? And how the hell can he do this? I havn't GathererShare, just the normal version from this download section!?

I'm sorry, but this sounds like a trojan to me! All damn players with that GathererShare thing can track what I do, where I do it and when I do it? Without having that Sharing-Addon on my Computer? That sucks. It's the first time since one year, that I deactivated the addon .

How can I switch that sharing stuff off? I wont be tracked by every "dumbass" on my realm.

PS: Sorry about my weak english.

Posted by: Islorgris on May 31 2006, 08:58 PM
he was pulling you leg.

GathererShare is a completely separate addon (not done by us) and needs to be installed to share things (it hooks Gatherer's recording function for it's sharing processing which is one of the reason we don't approve of it since that can wreck havok in the sharing player's own database, just like it happened no so long ago in fact), it's also using a channel for the sharing purpose.

But I don't have GathererShare and he knew everything about me (my farming methods/places/times). I attached a picture with the windows search function. [attachmentid=128] That's all with "Gatherer" found in my WoW folder. No GathererShare there.

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Furthermore, contributions collected by GathererShare are anonymous there's no way to tell who is making a specific contribution (and it works both way in order to receive thing you have to share things, both contributor and receiver need to have it installed).

Like written above, I just have the normal Gatherer installed, and he can spy everything I do with my name. Because he told me some other names of farming guys like me and some china farmers. That does not looks really anonymous to me .

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this guy was probably just watching auction house selling besides being a smartass that is.

He can not watch my auctions, because I don't sell any stuff with the main account I use for MC, BWL, Ony and Farming. I send all ore and herbs via post to my twink, to process them with engineering and alchemy.




Therefore the question remains: How can he spy out me, without having installed the addon GathererShare?

Posted by: Islorgris on Jun 1 2006, 05:48 PM
And it didn't occur to you that he could simply watch people in a zone with the standard who command ? or even more simply be one of these farmers on another account ?

No way. Because all farmers at my standard farming zone know me as a ore collector and skinner. Three days ago I reskilled to a herbalist and pushed to skill 300 in one day.
This guy told me the exact location in the zone and that I found many mountain silversage and that does not work with the who command ! And I was the whole day alone in that zone. Nowbody from the farming guys know, that I'm reskilled, not even my guild!

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it is not possible to communicate your gatherer database to another player ingame using only Gatherer. That a fact.

I talked to him again yesterday and he thought, that I use GathererShare or some other sharing stuff. But I don't. So it still sounds a bit fishy.

PS: I attached all my addons. He said he use a big addon package, but my addons are installed by one's own hand.

[attachmentid=129]

Posted by: Sprite on Jun 2 2006, 10:30 AM
I don't know, what I should believe now... does he lie now to collect more data from me...?

you should listen to what the addon developers tell you, that's what you came here for originally.

We know what's in our code.

As is it this guy prevented you from Gatherering (or Gatherering effectively if as you imply in your first post you disabled Gatherer), thus lessening the competition for himself or his friends farming these zones.

The fact of the matter is that the original Gatherer code (as downloaded from this site) does not contain any communication code that will allow anyone to see what you are doing.

If you don't download from this site, there are no guarantees of what may or may not have been added to the code.

We have no control over the GathererShare addon, nor it's use or abuse.

At this point I would like to point out that the most likely explanation of this phenomenon is simply that you have allowed yourself to be socially engineered. Somebody told you they know something about you, and it was close enough to the facts that you believed them. However they could have acquired this information anywhere. Certainly it's easy enough to presume that if you've been in an area gathering herbs/ore for a while, that you will have come across certain herbs that are known to grow in the area.

If you are concerned that your addon may be compromised, I would advise you to delete your addon folders and reinstall all your addons from their respective official sites, and screen every addon that you install to ensure you know exactly what it's going to be doing.