[deelowe]

I'm pretty sure this is done to combat cheating. Seems pretty clear cut to me. They likely don't want to do the domain check locally, because then the cheaters would know the hosts that are banned.

[rcxdude]

The intent doesn't matter. It's still reporting essentially your browsing history to them. Especially bad because the cheaters have caught on almost immediately (even worse that its the only reason its come to light that it is happening).

[eli]

You may well be right, but that's a crummy reason. They could have implemented that feature in a way that protects privacy with a little thought.

Look at how the Safe Browsing API accomplishes the same task: https://code.google.com/p/google-safe-browsing/wiki/SafeBrow...