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SoE gives 60TB of player's personal server data away
Waterlily
Member UncommonPosts: 3,105
Basically everything from personal data, in-game conversations, age, and where the players live or lived, from each and every player who ever played EQ2, has been given away by SoE, for free.
arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/aaas-60tb-of-behavioral-data-the-everquest-2-server-logs.ars
Quoting the parts that I find crazy:
The complete server logs of Everquest 2, which track every action performed in the game.
Dmitri Williams introduced the project and described how researchers have been approaching various game developers over the years. He paraphrased the conversation with Sony as:
"What do you collect?"
"Well, everything—what do you want?"
"Can we have it all?"
"Sure."
The end result is a log that includes four years of data for over 400,000 players that took part in the game, which was followed up with demographic surveys of the users.
Relationships analysis of players:
In that week, his team could detect over 2,000 players that became involved in partner relationships and about 2,500 who took part in trade interactions.
But distance had a much larger effect; players within 10 kilometers of each other were five times more likely to interact.
This is such .... how they can just get away with giving out 60TB of personal data is just way beyond me.
Comments
That's inexcusable in my book. I wouldn't mind some data being shared that would in no way allow identification of any player's real identity, as long as it was for sociological studies or game development. But this is just way beyond acceptable.
I hope SOE can show that this isn't as bad as the article implies, or they may have just shot their own feet off in exchange for some quick cash from data miners.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Whoever SOEs public relations guy is they need to fire him because they really arnt aware of how not to annoy gamers. They constantly ruin games and buy up old trash and now they are giving away 60TB of data! that is absolutely insane. Especially with the amount of personal data it may contain they really need to clarify the reasons behind this.
I don't really care myself, I have nothing to hide so they can have all that info aslong as they don't give out my credit card details.
Same here.
They are just mining data. Doesn't bother me at all if some stranger saw that my lvl 44 dwarf berzerker "Dimple" was cybering with a lvl 33 Gnome rogue "Stabeena".
Just another reason to go off on SOE.
Pleeeeaase, giving away 60TB of personal data is just ridiculous, if this was a phone company they would be shutting their doors right now. SoE somehow gets away with a lot of stuff, but this is so illegal and violates so many privacy laws in so many countries that it's just beyong belief.
Yet another nail in the personal coffin that is SOE.
Trust Sony to do something nuts like that. It just reinforces the notion that I must never, ever use their services again. Ever.
that is absolutely disgusting what SOE did. lord only knows what type of data is on those logs that may or may not divulge certain aspects to a players identity and location. if that is the case this is truly a case for a high level lawsuit. this violates so many privacy laws its not even funny. to think i played eq2 off and on since 2004.typical fashion of SOE. fuck them. this reenforces my position on never using this services and games again.
3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 560GTX 2GB OC, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO.
Pleeeeaase, giving away 60TB of personal data is just ridiculous, if this was a phone company they would be shutting their doors right now. SoE somehow gets away with a lot of stuff, but this is so illegal and violates so many privacy laws in so many countries that it's just beyong belief.
Privacy laws?
What the fuck are you on?
All the information they've given out is their propery since it's only information that has been taken from their property being EQ2. Pretty sure in that EULA you agree'd to there would be a clause somewhere.
Sticks another stake into that Vampire company called SOE.
They sure like ruining games and outrightly pissing players off.
What they have done here with this is by all means not kool.
First off if you want to complain then first hold your hands up if you have a facebook/myspace/bebo/whatever the latest crap is
They ALL SELL your data. Sell not give a away. Ever noticed how you get a lot of WoW spam and currently seems to be Vangaurd? Yeah gee I wonder who's scanned your profile for ads. Hmm.
Hands up if you USE google. Have google mail. Youtube. Anything regarding google at all. That is all stored. EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION. It is also all sold. For an insanely high profit margin. Oh not to mention if you read the fine print google sends EVERYTHING you do to the US govt.
SO if you use any of the above then shut up. Dont complain. You have no right to. Oh wait WE ALL READ THE TOS DIDNT WE? No? Glossed over that bit where you agree to this? Yeah? Thought so.
Playing polished, lag free, feature complete games is carebear. Whining about a game you hate but still play is hardcore man!
They have every right to do this and have done nothing wrong.
Guess i am not like most and have right to complain as i use and never attempted to use any of that crap.
Technically (legally), they can.
Morally, they can't.
/shrug
You are using the internet. What you dont think MMORPG.com sells your data too?
Edit: Im not trying to morally justify it. Its a bit low but this is just the way it is. People should wake up and realize this. Plus it seems atleast this was for socio-scientific research. Quite a lot can be learned from such data, whether you realize/recognize it or not.
Playing polished, lag free, feature complete games is carebear. Whining about a game you hate but still play is hardcore man!
Dunno but i am sure theres laws and a limit on what they can give away or sell.
You are using the internet. What you dont think MMORPG.com sells your data too?
Edit: Im not trying to morally justify it. Its a bit low but this is just the way it is. People should wake up and realize this. Plus it seems atleast this was for socio-scientific research. Quite a lot can be learned from such data, whether you realize/recognize it or not.
I know i was refeing to what you said in your post being specific.j/k
I always get crap e-mail but thanks to the junk and spam mail features that my isp provides i don't see 3/4ths of it.
you are sure there is but there is not, simple as that. You all agreed to let them do this.
Dunno but i am sure theres laws and a limit on what they can give away or sell.
What if there wasn't? What if you agreed to it because you didn't read? Scary thought, huh?
World is cruel.
Not sure how much of this is what the OP interprets or if this is indeed the direction that they wish to go.
If it is, rest assured the data will not be for free. SOE may say to potential buyers, "You can have it. " at a conference, but the backroom deals will iron down the terms how SOE will give it to them.
MMO data is valuable. Subscriptions length, player activity, resubscriptions, avatar activity, etc. I am not sure if they can dispense personal info like name address and credit card. SOE just wants to be pioneers in the "age of data mining". Government is already interested in MMOs to look for terrorists that might be communicating in these games, information companies are now looking into this as well.
Ah the age of Obama Responsibility, gotta love it.
If they remove the personal names from the data then it is like every poll or census you fill out anyway.
And any data about someone is personal data, is actually interesting that players closer to one region are likelier to interact? Seems we are regional animals after all.
Show me the section in the EULA/ToS for EQ2 or SWG where I agreed to be part of a science experiment. Then I'll agree with you.
Yeah, my reaction was the same as Waterlily's, but my bias eventually softened my anger. The sociology & psychology information was pretty darn fascinating to me, but I study this stuff..
In the end though - technicalities aside - what they seem to have done was wrong. To get the information about people within a particular proximity (especially close proximity as mentioned in the article) talking to one another they would need to have at least general address information for the people behind those character names. That's not non-personal aggregate information, that's rather specific.
As curious as I am, the end result doesn't justify SOE's behavior. We need more information about how privacy was either respected or abused.
What bothers me is the "tell" messages between players. regardless if it's a smart thing to do or not, people do tell each other rather personal info, including everything from phone numbers to addresses to account names/passwords to credit card numbers. All of which apparently are available for these "scientist" to peruse through.
This is why you need to check the Privacy Policies of a game before joining, otherwise you risk your data being given to third parties.