chess.com knows if chess software is open?

was watching an old video on chess.com tv and daniel rensch made a comment about how you shouldn't have any chess engines open while playing because chess.com can see them open and you may be accused of cheating!

i don't cheat ever, but i've totally had the engine running in the background while playing games. i guess i just play so bad that i still don't get accused of cheating. in the future i'll make sure to leave it off though.

I thought there was no way chess.com can see what programs you have running.

it was an old video (about one year old), so maybe they can't/don't anymore. i don't know.

I'm pretty sure it's impossible.

 Almost sounds like you're trying to give chess.com an excuse so they don't close your account.  Personally I believe you. Now I would probably have some software too if my poor little 10 year old Dell computer could handle it.

I don't know if cookies can do that or not (Well, I'm assuming cookies), but it wouldn't surprise me. Either way, chess.com doesn't like to disclose secrets about how they find cheaters. They just know

Wrench makes stuff up.

Well, I often have software running, I use my engines for engine-allowed games and vote chess in the advanced chess group.

I think He gave a "global warning". Chess programs are not like humans. Someone told me, a grandmaster usually knows very well how an engine plays. If you want to beat the engines, you have to study how they works. Deep blue was not only an engine, raw power but also had a staff of grandmasters behind some "things"... 

A different question is guessing if the move x was made by you or by an engine. For me, it would be pointless...

I have some knowledge in web design and i tell you it is impossible for a web page to know what are you running in the background.

Impossible?  I think a web page can 'know' what other webpages you've visited (through cookie sharing arrangements). 

Scripts are so tricky these days, I'd not be that surprised if one of them were to hijack a webcam and peer out at web surfers without their knowing it.

sftac

This is totally possible. I think it was the old site WCN that would say "chess programs detected, close them before continuing" if you had an engine open, or another tab with chess stuff on it.

Does chess.com do that? Unlikely. I often have lots of chess stuff open simultaneously, and others will do too. It was complained about a lot on WCN, and would flag up only vaguely related sites as being chess sites. It's just a bad system. You can just analyse the moves a person makes and that's much more effective.

I hope they don't. I'm now using Fritz to do a "Deep Position Analysis" of the position resulting after 1.e4 e5 2.Ke2.

i think this.

I installed Linux on a handheld Double Dragon video game and ran it though PyChess0.10beta3, it gave white as having PUNCH PUNCH KICK PUNCH advantage.

I was talking about other software or chess engines. When it comes to the web browser...well...chess.com can easily know what other web pages you accesed.

Awesome.

It's impossible for a website to query that kind of information via the web browser. It would be a *huge* security risk if any web page you visited could poll your machine and discover what applications your machine is running. Chess.com is *not* doing this. Browsers don't have access to that kind of privileged process information.

If chess.com used some kind of proprietary client that you had to install on your machine, then it would totally be possible assuming you installed/ran the program with admin rights and agreed to the terms of service. I believe ICC monitors processes for engine use with their client. Games like WoW also scan processes to make sure you're not running apps that violate the ToS etc.

what do you think sites that use client side activex can do if you allow them to run - in your internet options - or if you set a website to be trusted.

Only an idiot would enable such options in their browser. Since 99% of internet users use the default browser options, it's a moot point since you have to go out of your way to give a site that kind of access to your machine. Not like it matters any way since chess.com doesn't that use that technology. My point still stands - chess.com does NOT monitor process information on your computer.