The Wii, Nintendo’s evil little spy.

Iwata

Nintendo is hiding a little spy in the “Nintendo Channel”. That spy will share all your dirty little secrets to Nintendo. To find out how the channel is doing it, hit the jump.

If you downloaded the Nintendo Channel earlier today, and started it up as soon as it finished. You might vaguely remember a little screen asking if you would like to participate in some type of “mailing” program. Most of you probably just clicked to participate, not realizing that by clicking the approval, you accepted “the spy” into your system.

Now each time you sign into your Wii to access the channel, the channel will take the time to record all your information, and various settings and send it back to Nintendo HQ. There is a list of certain things that the channel will check for, and that list is as follows…

  • A Summary of your play history
  • All your Wii console settings
  • All your Wii remote settings
  • How many Mii’s you have.
  • What type of TV you have.
  • Internet Connection type.
  • Your WiiConnect24 Settings.

Your play history is that “list” which has records of what you are playing and how long you were playing. The channel sends that information to Nintendo to find out what games you are currently playing, and what the consumer is interested in. Although, you should know that all of the information that is submitted through that channel is supposedly non-identifiable and anonymous, unless you have your Wii account linked to your My Nintendo account. In which Nintendo knows where exactly that information came from, and who is using that console.

Now, if that freaks you out and you decide to turn on your console and change your settings to opt out of this information sending. You will lose your access to any of the DS Demo Downloads, which is a real bummer in itself.

However, there is really nothing to worry about. If you don’t care about Nintendo knowing what you’re playing, then it really doesn’t matter. The only people who should really be concerned is those people with “Homebrew” on their consoles. A small invasion of privacy really never hurt anyone, right?

[Via Nintendo Support]

An artist from New York. Will has been writing, designing, and loving video games since he was young. He has traveled across the United States, and parts of Canada in order to learn more about the world of gaming. After visiting E3 for the first time in 2009, he has vowed to return there and show off a game of his own. In his spare time he tinkers with electronics, programming, and of course collecting video games.