MMORPG.com is really going down hill. I don't know how articles like this get put on the front page to be honest.
If you don't want to share the information, don't, why in the WORLD are you complaining? It's so stupid. It's just an OPTION, your complaining, about an OPTION, that some people like and will USE.
Why do idiots like this get to post on websites?
This was a good article and brought a ligitimate concern of players to the forefront. Sorry you feel it is OK for Blizzard to freely hand out personal information on a player - some of us do not.
"THERE IS NO PHISHING PROBlEM INCREASE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EMAIL GIVEN TO STRANGERS STOP YOUR UNIFORMED BS"
Wow, the ignorant can get upset. Sorry, if you have not figured it out yet, if they have your real name it takes next to nothing to find out all manner of information including your email address(s).
You might want to think next time before you post something as foolish as your reply was.
You'd again be wrong. Thinking its that easy that a simple pipil search would give out my email? Na I just did a search on my name via pipil and it didn't come up with my email address. It came up with intelius to buy record access, but again they would have to spend money to actually purchase records, and thats for everyone. Sure I spose they could have more of an advantage because they can then spend money to get record access on that specific person, but that doesn't seem as worth it. Given that it costs money to do the look up and on a phishing scam you don't know if they are going to click, so its more risky then just randomly sending emails.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Pipil its a person search, it searches the internet for any findings of your username, email address, or real name. So even a username on a forum can be searched with pipil. www.pipil.com is what most people use for finding information about them selves [To see what they have revealed about themselves online.] or by others. So yes in general phishers don't have that much access to your real identity unless they buy a background check on you from intelius or various other places. Or unless you were foolish enough to leave your email or other stuff on an open forum or other public sites.
Sounds like a lot of paranoia to me. Fears of evil internet snoops are all the rage these days with the recent controversy in the media about Facebook and Google, but the bottom line is you have complete control over who you choose to "friend" in Battle.Net. I wouldn't be a part of any guild that demands that you give them your RealID in order to raid with them. If you decide to go along with it, that's on you. You can always find another guild. If an evil-doer gets your name and somehow uses that information to melt your life, I say it's your fault for trusting him. But really, I think this article significantly exaggerates the power of having a person's first and last name. Unless your name is Engelbert Humperdinck, there are probably at least a dozen people who have the same name as you, and maybe hundreds or thousands if your name is even slightly common.
The only part of this article where Jamie may have a point is regarding children. But honestly, there are MUCH scarier things on the internet for parents to be worried about than Battle.net. Besides, if RealID takes the name from the billing account details, people will only be able to get the parent's real name not the child's name.
Don't understand why people asking for more privacy options are considered paranoid. They might actually want to use the realid, but would be happy with an advanced way of configuring it. With all the account hacking going on in the mmo industry I'd say it's understandable. I don't know how many hackers are after facebook accounts, but I think it's common knowledge that alot are after wow accounts. So I don't see how wanting more options for a tool is bad. It's not like they want it removed completly.
So yes in general phishers don't have that much access to your real identity unless they buy a background check on you from intelius or various other places.
You're either grossly misinformed, naive, blind, a troll or a mix of all the above. The criminal element that thrive on - and from - the gaining and/or misuse of personally identifiable information via the internet (or just about anywhere else, for that matter) are, generally, exceptionally proficient in the matching up of the information we're discussing, do it "for a living" and they don't need to "pay for a background check."
While people exist that are retarded enough to believe the random "Blizzard is opening a new service, click on <stupidlyobviousURLhere> for your free mount!" whispers that we're bombarded with, in-game, you can be damn sure those same people will add random folks to their RealID lists, with promises of shiny things blurring their senses, giving criminals access to associative lists of real names that they can then work with. That is just another valid and extremely serious concern to add to the list.
Criminals are significantly better at what they do than you seem to be willing to give them credit for; and these are just the "obvious" loopholes. I dread to think what not-so-obvious loopholes they'll find.
How many of you have a Facebook? seriously the CIA/FBI already has your info.
I don't think you see the problem, i couldn't care less that those two have all my info. I do care about those who. for a living, like to do criminal activities like identity-theft and all other sorts of fun. If you're fine with the risks that's ok, others do have legitimate concerns about RealID.
If I wanted to have my email an other personal information "out there", I'd print it on the front wall of my house.
I go to every social networking site, or "find-a-person" source, and carefully delete and block all possible options to allow people to find me. It's kind of a crusade of mine.
My REAL friends already know how to contact me (and the government will ALWAYS know how to find me!) and everyone else can go stuff a sock in it.
So yes in general phishers don't have that much access to your real identity unless they buy a background check on you from intelius or various other places.
You're either grossly misinformed, naive, blind, a troll or a mix of all the above. The criminal element that thrive on - and from - the gaining and/or misuse of personally identifiable information via the internet (or just about anywhere else, for that matter) are, generally, exceptionally proficient in the matching up of the information we're discussing, do it "for a living" and they don't need to "pay for a background check."
While people exist that are retarded enough to believe the random "Blizzard is opening a new service, click on for your free mount!" whispers that we're bombarded with, in-game, you can be damn sure those same people will add random folks to their RealID lists, with promises of shiny things blurring their senses, giving criminals access to associative lists of real names that they can then work with. That is just another valid and extremely serious concern to add to the list.
Criminals are significantly better at what they do than you seem to be willing to give them credit for; and these are just the "obvious" loopholes. I dread to think what not-so-obvious loopholes they'll find.
In short: quit spewing your nonsense, please.
You treat phishers and scammers like they are all knowing gods. Having been to defcon, I can tell you that its not true. Everyone uses the same thing, pipil is for broad information and is usually a decent start if all you have is a username. However with realid you have to use intelius, or people finder, both of which are the top ranking programs for people finding which is what they would have to use to find any information about me. Its not like oh they have my name, now they can google me, they HAVE to use a people finder application, they don't have access to the FBI/CIA database so the next best thing is peoplefinder or intelius both of which are background checks of the highest quality and with the most information.
If someone gives them their email fine thats their fault, I'm not talking about a person giving their email, that I agree with will increase phishing. I'm saying friend of friend isn't dangerous because information isn't that wildly available, they have to use a background checker either an internet based or a software based aka inelius or people finder. Now if all you want to do is find an email, that is still not as easy as it sounds. For instance I have two email accounts, the one on intelius is my old email account that is 10 years old, my new one isn't listed on intelius.
They don't have better software, they use the same software as every other person, I mean if a background check already does all the information grabbing they need, why would they invent another application that does the same thing? Also as an aside, the people that might be added will then give their own name out to the random people they add. If its a fake credit card then thats a different story, but otherwise thats terrible inefficient way of doing things.
Having a friendlist where everyone has 10 alts is a pain. It would be nice to just add or ignore people by their account name and see all their chars. But giving away the e-mail address and real name is a bad idea. However I would have done this with 5-6 people I know. Till now I did not know about the friends of friends thing, which makes it completley unusable. They should change it. I would love a "real id light" system just for wow where I can see all the chars of the people in my friendlist and don't add them by e-mail but by one of their char names.
I wouldn't mind the setup for myself because if someone wants to try and steal my ID and my lousy credit score... more power to them.
But showing personal information on minors is simply wrong. Many minors are NOT responsible enough to use this system correctly, and may fall victim to someone.
This is a very poor design plan IMO.
Our spirit was here long before you
Long before us
And long will it be after your pride brings you to your end
RealID will be deactivated/disabled on mine, nothing to gain, and too much of a security risk/issue to have it enabled. I had no idea that Blizzard would make 2 such gaffes in one year... it began with the battlenet email address fiasco, and now we have an 'app' that gives out even more personal details, that will inevitably be used by the very people you don't want to have access to those details, IT security, phishing? how many accounts will be hacked before Blizzard start taking some responsibility for their actions?
I'm Happy this is finally out. Even before this I only added real friends to my friends list. I always wished there was something like this. I wish Xbox live was setup like this. I hate all the fake names when I add REAL friends. I have to make a list with everybody's real name on it..sucks.
They didnt need to add real names is the thing they could have just use a handle let us Pick one toon that we have to represent us. it just breaks the trust with private info i gave them. And its just realy silly to add somthing like this when they cant even control poeple getting there acounts hacked
I quit playing WoW a long time ago, after they switched to the Battle.net login for WoW. Mainly because my account got banned, because someone hacked it. It's still banned, and I doubt any of the 7 level 80s and 15 or so level 30-79s have anything, including my main's 168,000 gold, and T8.5, but oh well. I'm not the only one. Several of my friends got hacked when the switch occured too. Now, they're just going to give out your name. Why not just give everyone your SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, and address while they're at it...
Didn't Facebook just go through a lawsuit over something like this. It should have options to hide information...Facebook has to do it now.
I quit playing WoW a long time ago, after they switched to the Battle.net login for WoW. Mainly because my account got banned, because someone hacked it. It's still banned, and I doubt any of the 7 level 80s and 15 or so level 30-79s have anything, including my main's 168,000 gold, and T8.5, but oh well. I'm not the only one. Several of my friends got hacked when the switch occured too. Now, they're just going to give out your name. Why not just give everyone your SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, and address while they're at it...
Real ID is for your Real friends not your online friends. You know like the people that already know your real name. Giving out your name to your friends is not the same as your SSN, mother's maiden name, or registered credit card.
Having a friendlist where everyone has 10 alts is a pain. It would be nice to just add or ignore people by their account name and see all their chars.
I don't agree. At times it is nice to avoid the guildies and do some farming or crafting on my alt without people bugging me all the time and asking me to join a dungeon or something. Some of the alts is in the guild with text that they are my alts but sometimes it is nice to be by yourself.
While it would be nice to ignore all alts of an idiot it isn't worth the price of my privacy.
Don't you guys think it is nice to play an alt at times when you don't feel to chat?
An option to take away some of your characters would fix this. While the whole idea have some advantages it is my opinion that Blizzard should have thought more about this before adding it. Privacy is very important.
It is good that you can turn it off but it sucks that some guilds forces it's players to use it.
As a small aside, the friends of friends thing NEVER identifies you as a character name/real name combo. You can see a list of your friends friends, that's it. There's nothing saying who is online, who isn't, who is who. You can send requests from their list, but that person has to approve you before you can see their online status. Is the system perfect? No, it needs work. But used as intended, by real friends who might play on other servers or soon other games, it's pretty handy really. I play on several servers, nice to be able to keep in touch without being on vent all the time.
Don't no where you get this, but if you read the FAQs on the RealID it specifically says that anyone on the list will be able to see ALL of your toons that you play, and you do NOT have to accept them as individuals for them to contact you.
If I put Joe on my list, and Joe puts Fred on, and I'm playing my toon Taenar, Fred can contact me as I'm playing Taenar and I may not even know who Fred is. I might not be identified as Taenar to him at that time, but he still knows that is one of my toon's names, and it would be very easy to figure out which one was logged on.
Now, at that point I can decide to take Fred off the list (or, if I know Fred is Joe's friend and on his list but I don't like him, I can do it as soon as I put Joe on my list and see Fred's name on the extended list), but the fact is Fred will know my real name and the toons I play and I DID NOT TELL HIM that info.
What should happen is that I put Joe on my list, and he presents a list of his friends, and I allow EACH ONE by choice, or all if I want, but they are NOT automatically added to my list. If there is an option to automatically add people to your friends list, it should be OFF by default, not on.
Really the FAQ said that? Well the FAQ is wrong, because I'm online in wow righ tnow and I'm looking at my friend's friend of friend list. I click on said name of one of his potential friends. And lo and behold, it doesn't tell me the characters name, only the real name. Yes they can request to be your friend. However it doesn't tell them if the request went through or if you declined the request, ONLY IF YOU ACCEPT THE REQUEST CAN THEY CONTACT YOU. When you look at friends of friends, you are adding them through that window and not by email login. THERE IS NO PHISHING PROBlEM INCREASE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EMAIL GIVEN TO STRANGERS STOP YOUR UNIFORMED BS
I re-read the FAQ's and the poster I disageed with (skimming through these things is not good idea when you are in a discussion, I know better, shame on me), and found that I had misread. darienmask was correct. Rakarai was right to correct me.
However, Rakarai's manner puts him in the truly ignorant class; I made a mistake, but he is full of misdirection and partial truth in the arguments he makes in his later posts. He also denigrates people wantonly, a sign of a weak personality with something to hide - meaning, he knows his arguments are at least partially flawed, but doesn't have the character it takes to admit it.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Those are the same concerns I had first time I use it. First I added just my husband and it was ok. Than I added a friend that likes to quest with company. My solo days are over... It could at least have an "invisible" option. The raid thing also happened. This is becoming quite stressfull.
As a small aside, the friends of friends thing NEVER identifies you as a character name/real name combo. You can see a list of your friends friends, that's it. There's nothing saying who is online, who isn't, who is who. You can send requests from their list, but that person has to approve you before you can see their online status. Is the system perfect? No, it needs work. But used as intended, by real friends who might play on other servers or soon other games, it's pretty handy really. I play on several servers, nice to be able to keep in touch without being on vent all the time.
Don't no where you get this, but if you read the FAQs on the RealID it specifically says that anyone on the list will be able to see ALL of your toons that you play, and you do NOT have to accept them as individuals for them to contact you.
If I put Joe on my list, and Joe puts Fred on, and I'm playing my toon Taenar, Fred can contact me as I'm playing Taenar and I may not even know who Fred is. I might not be identified as Taenar to him at that time, but he still knows that is one of my toon's names, and it would be very easy to figure out which one was logged on.
Now, at that point I can decide to take Fred off the list (or, if I know Fred is Joe's friend and on his list but I don't like him, I can do it as soon as I put Joe on my list and see Fred's name on the extended list), but the fact is Fred will know my real name and the toons I play and I DID NOT TELL HIM that info.
What should happen is that I put Joe on my list, and he presents a list of his friends, and I allow EACH ONE by choice, or all if I want, but they are NOT automatically added to my list. If there is an option to automatically add people to your friends list, it should be OFF by default, not on.
Really the FAQ said that? Well the FAQ is wrong, because I'm online in wow righ tnow and I'm looking at my friend's friend of friend list. I click on said name of one of his potential friends. And lo and behold, it doesn't tell me the characters name, only the real name. Yes they can request to be your friend. However it doesn't tell them if the request went through or if you declined the request, ONLY IF YOU ACCEPT THE REQUEST CAN THEY CONTACT YOU. When you look at friends of friends, you are adding them through that window and not by email login. THERE IS NO PHISHING PROBlEM INCREASE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EMAIL GIVEN TO STRANGERS STOP YOUR UNIFORMED BS
I re-read the FAQ's and the poster I disageed with (skimming through these things is not good idea when you are in a discussion, I know better, shame on me), and found that I had misread. darienmask was correct. Rakarai was right to correct me.
However, Rakarai's manner puts him in the truly ignorant class; I made a mistake, but he is full of misdirection and partial truth in the arguments he makes in his later posts. He also denigrates people wantonly, a sign of a weak personality with something to hide - meaning, he knows his arguments are at least partially flawed, but doesn't have the character it takes to admit it.
OMG!? Did somebody just admit to being wrong in an internet forum? Wow never seen that before. Smokeysong Personality +5
Comments
This was a good article and brought a ligitimate concern of players to the forefront. Sorry you feel it is OK for Blizzard to freely hand out personal information on a player - some of us do not.
You'd again be wrong. Thinking its that easy that a simple pipil search would give out my email? Na I just did a search on my name via pipil and it didn't come up with my email address. It came up with intelius to buy record access, but again they would have to spend money to actually purchase records, and thats for everyone. Sure I spose they could have more of an advantage because they can then spend money to get record access on that specific person, but that doesn't seem as worth it. Given that it costs money to do the look up and on a phishing scam you don't know if they are going to click, so its more risky then just randomly sending emails.
'Pipil'?
Anyway, I gather you must have intimate detail about the workings and methods of phishers, scammers and hackers.
Your simple trials have already proven how limited their options must be.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Pipil its a person search, it searches the internet for any findings of your username, email address, or real name. So even a username on a forum can be searched with pipil. www.pipil.com is what most people use for finding information about them selves [To see what they have revealed about themselves online.] or by others. So yes in general phishers don't have that much access to your real identity unless they buy a background check on you from intelius or various other places. Or unless you were foolish enough to leave your email or other stuff on an open forum or other public sites.
Sounds like a lot of paranoia to me. Fears of evil internet snoops are all the rage these days with the recent controversy in the media about Facebook and Google, but the bottom line is you have complete control over who you choose to "friend" in Battle.Net. I wouldn't be a part of any guild that demands that you give them your RealID in order to raid with them. If you decide to go along with it, that's on you. You can always find another guild. If an evil-doer gets your name and somehow uses that information to melt your life, I say it's your fault for trusting him. But really, I think this article significantly exaggerates the power of having a person's first and last name. Unless your name is Engelbert Humperdinck, there are probably at least a dozen people who have the same name as you, and maybe hundreds or thousands if your name is even slightly common.
The only part of this article where Jamie may have a point is regarding children. But honestly, there are MUCH scarier things on the internet for parents to be worried about than Battle.net. Besides, if RealID takes the name from the billing account details, people will only be able to get the parent's real name not the child's name.
Don't understand why people asking for more privacy options are considered paranoid. They might actually want to use the realid, but would be happy with an advanced way of configuring it. With all the account hacking going on in the mmo industry I'd say it's understandable. I don't know how many hackers are after facebook accounts, but I think it's common knowledge that alot are after wow accounts. So I don't see how wanting more options for a tool is bad. It's not like they want it removed completly.
You're either grossly misinformed, naive, blind, a troll or a mix of all the above. The criminal element that thrive on - and from - the gaining and/or misuse of personally identifiable information via the internet (or just about anywhere else, for that matter) are, generally, exceptionally proficient in the matching up of the information we're discussing, do it "for a living" and they don't need to "pay for a background check."
While people exist that are retarded enough to believe the random "Blizzard is opening a new service, click on <stupidlyobviousURLhere> for your free mount!" whispers that we're bombarded with, in-game, you can be damn sure those same people will add random folks to their RealID lists, with promises of shiny things blurring their senses, giving criminals access to associative lists of real names that they can then work with. That is just another valid and extremely serious concern to add to the list.
Criminals are significantly better at what they do than you seem to be willing to give them credit for; and these are just the "obvious" loopholes. I dread to think what not-so-obvious loopholes they'll find.
In short: quit spewing your nonsense, please.
How many of you have a Facebook? seriously the CIA/FBI already has your info.
I don't think you see the problem, i couldn't care less that those two have all my info. I do care about those who. for a living, like to do criminal activities like identity-theft and all other sorts of fun. If you're fine with the risks that's ok, others do have legitimate concerns about RealID.
Congrats on utterly ignoring that not everyone wants WoW to be a social network, let alone one with our actual name.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
If I wanted to have my email an other personal information "out there", I'd print it on the front wall of my house.
I go to every social networking site, or "find-a-person" source, and carefully delete and block all possible options to allow people to find me. It's kind of a crusade of mine.
My REAL friends already know how to contact me (and the government will ALWAYS know how to find me!) and everyone else can go stuff a sock in it.
You treat phishers and scammers like they are all knowing gods. Having been to defcon, I can tell you that its not true. Everyone uses the same thing, pipil is for broad information and is usually a decent start if all you have is a username. However with realid you have to use intelius, or people finder, both of which are the top ranking programs for people finding which is what they would have to use to find any information about me. Its not like oh they have my name, now they can google me, they HAVE to use a people finder application, they don't have access to the FBI/CIA database so the next best thing is peoplefinder or intelius both of which are background checks of the highest quality and with the most information.
If someone gives them their email fine thats their fault, I'm not talking about a person giving their email, that I agree with will increase phishing. I'm saying friend of friend isn't dangerous because information isn't that wildly available, they have to use a background checker either an internet based or a software based aka inelius or people finder. Now if all you want to do is find an email, that is still not as easy as it sounds. For instance I have two email accounts, the one on intelius is my old email account that is 10 years old, my new one isn't listed on intelius.
They don't have better software, they use the same software as every other person, I mean if a background check already does all the information grabbing they need, why would they invent another application that does the same thing? Also as an aside, the people that might be added will then give their own name out to the random people they add. If its a fake credit card then thats a different story, but otherwise thats terrible inefficient way of doing things.
Having a friendlist where everyone has 10 alts is a pain. It would be nice to just add or ignore people by their account name and see all their chars. But giving away the e-mail address and real name is a bad idea. However I would have done this with 5-6 people I know. Till now I did not know about the friends of friends thing, which makes it completley unusable. They should change it. I would love a "real id light" system just for wow where I can see all the chars of the people in my friendlist and don't add them by e-mail but by one of their char names.
I wouldn't mind the setup for myself because if someone wants to try and steal my ID and my lousy credit score... more power to them.
But showing personal information on minors is simply wrong. Many minors are NOT responsible enough to use this system correctly, and may fall victim to someone.
This is a very poor design plan IMO.
Our spirit was here long before you
Long before us
And long will it be after your pride brings you to your end
RealID will be deactivated/disabled on mine, nothing to gain, and too much of a security risk/issue to have it enabled. I had no idea that Blizzard would make 2 such gaffes in one year... it began with the battlenet email address fiasco, and now we have an 'app' that gives out even more personal details, that will inevitably be used by the very people you don't want to have access to those details, IT security, phishing? how many accounts will be hacked before Blizzard start taking some responsibility for their actions?
I'm Happy this is finally out. Even before this I only added real friends to my friends list. I always wished there was something like this. I wish Xbox live was setup like this. I hate all the fake names when I add REAL friends. I have to make a list with everybody's real name on it..sucks.
They didnt need to add real names is the thing they could have just use a handle let us Pick one toon that we have to represent us. it just breaks the trust with private info i gave them. And its just realy silly to add somthing like this when they cant even control poeple getting there acounts hacked
I quit playing WoW a long time ago, after they switched to the Battle.net login for WoW. Mainly because my account got banned, because someone hacked it. It's still banned, and I doubt any of the 7 level 80s and 15 or so level 30-79s have anything, including my main's 168,000 gold, and T8.5, but oh well. I'm not the only one. Several of my friends got hacked when the switch occured too. Now, they're just going to give out your name. Why not just give everyone your SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, and address while they're at it...
Didn't Facebook just go through a lawsuit over something like this. It should have options to hide information...Facebook has to do it now.
Real ID is for your Real friends not your online friends. You know like the people that already know your real name. Giving out your name to your friends is not the same as your SSN, mother's maiden name, or registered credit card.
Wow. Fuck that- I would never sign up for that!
A witty saying proves nothing.
-Voltaire
I don't agree. At times it is nice to avoid the guildies and do some farming or crafting on my alt without people bugging me all the time and asking me to join a dungeon or something. Some of the alts is in the guild with text that they are my alts but sometimes it is nice to be by yourself.
While it would be nice to ignore all alts of an idiot it isn't worth the price of my privacy.
Don't you guys think it is nice to play an alt at times when you don't feel to chat?
An option to take away some of your characters would fix this. While the whole idea have some advantages it is my opinion that Blizzard should have thought more about this before adding it. Privacy is very important.
It is good that you can turn it off but it sucks that some guilds forces it's players to use it.
I re-read the FAQ's and the poster I disageed with (skimming through these things is not good idea when you are in a discussion, I know better, shame on me), and found that I had misread. darienmask was correct. Rakarai was right to correct me.
However, Rakarai's manner puts him in the truly ignorant class; I made a mistake, but he is full of misdirection and partial truth in the arguments he makes in his later posts. He also denigrates people wantonly, a sign of a weak personality with something to hide - meaning, he knows his arguments are at least partially flawed, but doesn't have the character it takes to admit it.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Oh my...
Those are the same concerns I had first time I use it. First I added just my husband and it was ok. Than I added a friend that likes to quest with company. My solo days are over... It could at least have an "invisible" option. The raid thing also happened. This is becoming quite stressfull.
OMG!? Did somebody just admit to being wrong in an internet forum? Wow never seen that before. Smokeysong Personality +5