MMOs were fertile grounds for exploitation along both signals intelligence and human intelligence lines
It sounds like the plot of a Bush-era young-adult spy thriller: as millions of players raided their way through Azeroth from 2006 to at least 2013, Western intelligence agencies like the NSA and the British Government Communications Headquarters were working out ways to surveil and build informant networks to keep tabs on suspected Islamic extremists in World of Warcraft.
WoW wasn’t the NSA’s only target: Together with GCHQ, the NSA also turned its eye toward social MMO Second Life, Microsoft’s original Xbox Live chat service, and other popular “Games and Virtual Environments.”
We know this today because of former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden, who worked with newspapers The Guardian and The New York Times, as well as investigative nonprofit ProPublica, to release a trove of classified documents from the agency in 2013.