I've come to the conclusion that the creeping facebookization of the world is a bad thing. Annonimity is a shield against all sorts of ways that information can be randomly used against you - from account security to stalking to potential employers filtering out people who "waste their lives on games".
It's not the person-to-person privacy that really bugs me about decisions like this (although like adding a new API to the billing database, one bug in the implementaiton and the data's not going back in the bottle), it's what it says about what must be going on behind the scenes with setting up the invisible sharing of data with other companies.
Am I only one who is not really concerned over this. If someone that I have accepted as a friend and his or her friends see my name does that reveal all that much? I guess that all the John Smiths and Pedro Martinezes are shaking at the moment as anyone can find 10,000 others named the same and aged the same. Also, in general this article echoes worries of mainly US players, e.g. in terms of what official information (cf. crime records) there are available online. I think that by joining Facebook I am giving people way more information from myself. Yet, most of the people are more than willing to share their Facebook profile with next to everyone they happen to pass by.
If we are looking for Internet privacy it might be better to start elsewhere than from Blizzard's totally optional service. I do not think that the number of guilds requiring RealID will surpass those that do not anytime in the foreseeable future, hence, you are not per se risking your raid spot by not sharing your RealID. Also, what more is a random name that you have met in the game (referring to friends of friends) than just that: you can find random person's phone number by just opening one of those books that has them in neat lines...what a source of manipulative social engineering I have had all these years! Does their identity in a virtual world somehow create such a meaningful meta-data that we would all the sudden be interested from random strangers? Or is it a real hit amongst madhatters to peruse through Facebook or Linkedln pages just for these vast opportunities?
Jaime Skelton also raises the issue of children, which indeed is a popular argument. Just not necessarily the most rational one. If parent's fail to control what their kids do, I can assure you that there are likely more dangerous things to be done than sharing their RealID with a random stranger. It is not Blizzard's fault if people are having hard time parenting, now is it? Also, the moment years ago when I first entered some data of myself to internet I knew that this data can be linked back to my physical existance. This is the "risk" everyone takes when using the Internet. I am considering it a risk worth taking as the information others can find from me are likely either out-dated or irrelevant. There are other sources of data gathering that are much more omnious and threatening to myself than any of this active sharing I am part-taking on. For example the fact that Google can monitor my searches or that service providers are storing data of my visits for a random government to use that I have no control over is much more risky. In sum, there is no great army of villanous spies or cunning conspiracies out there and even if there are their main source of evilness is certainly not Blizzard's new RealID.
Am I only one who is not really concerned over this. If someone that I have accepted as a friend and his or her friends see my name does that reveal all that much? I guess that all the John Smiths and Pedro Martinezes are shaking at the moment as anyone can find 10,000 others named the same and aged the same. Also, in general this article echoes worries of mainly US players, e.g. in terms of what official information (cf. crime records) there are available online. I think that by joining Facebook I am giving people way more information from myself. Yet, most of the people are more than willing to share their Facebook profile with next to everyone they happen to pass by.
If we are looking for Internet privacy it might be better to start elsewhere than from Blizzard's totally optional service. I do not think that the number of guilds requiring RealID will surpass those that do not anytime in the foreseeable future, hence, you are not per se risking your raid spot by not sharing your RealID. Also, what more is a random name that you have met in the game (referring to friends of friends) than just that: you can find random person's phone number by just opening one of those books that has them in neat lines...what a source of manipulative social engineering I have had all these years! Does their identity in a virtual world somehow create such a meaningful meta-data that we would all the sudden be interested from random strangers? Or is it a real hit amongst madhatters to peruse through Facebook or Linkedln pages just for these vast opportunities?
Jaime Skelton also raises the issue of children, which indeed is a popular argument. Just not necessarily the most rational one. If parent's fail to control what their kids do, I can assure you that there are likely more dangerous things to be done than sharing their RealID with a random stranger. It is not Blizzard's fault if people are having hard time parenting, now is it? Also, the moment years ago when I first entered some data of myself to internet I knew that this data can be linked back to my physical existance. This is the "risk" everyone takes when using the Internet. I am considering it a risk worth taking as the information others can find from me are likely either out-dated or irrelevant. There are other sources of data gathering that are much more omnious and threatening to myself than any of this active sharing I am part-taking on. For example the fact that Google can monitor my searches or that service providers are storing data of my visits for a random government to use that I have no control over is much more risky. In sum, there is no great army of villanous spies or cunning conspiracies out there and even if there are their main source of evilness is certainly not Blizzard's new RealID.
Good Post I agree. The phone book was a good example. When I meet new people out in the real world I always give out my real name and I've been ok so far.
Hastely implemented? How about hastely researched by the reporter.
Several of this controls are available ingame under *suprise* the options menu.
Scondly, its not a secure way to add all you casual friends on WoW, thats what a friends list is for. Criticizing RealID for not being what you want it to be is kinda of silly. A bikes not a peice of crap cause it has no engine... its got a different use than a car, if you're trying to judge it as a car ofcourse it will look bad.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
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.
And what about your friends of friends? Are they all carefully vetted as well?
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Edit: The fact that it uses your email adress without your direct consent should be a big clue to anyone who doesn't "get it".
Just try to imagine whats going on behind the doors with our information.
Someone mentioned facebook and its true. These are social engineering tools being used by compagnies and not for your benefit.
Ever heard of creating a pseudo-email account just for this purpose? You do not have to give your work e-mail address to them but instead you can create a gmail one. Fill in the information however you wish, it does not have to be accurate either. I guess that this paranoia people have is starting to take over their everyday life. Ever wondered how your gmail account happens to have ads that are actually related to what the message you are reading is about? Or how Facebook is suggesting you friends that have no apparent connection but that of your sent e-mails?
You can hide in an underground bunker and seal it. It just so happens to be that the world is filled with dangers and information about you that you cannot control. Has always been and will always be. Or did you feel that you could control what other people talked of you before the internet-era? Social interaction is always a risk as we cannot control other people no matter how much we want to. This tool of social interaction Blizzard is providing is one you can opt out, just as you can decide not to join Facebook, Twitter, &c. It is you who has to weigh the pros and cons.
And there are many more things like this but this is not the time or place for stuff like this.
But its OK, keep marching that line.
Last reply here for we are heavily off-topicing. The link that you provided actually states that the main sources of identity theft (likely the reason you are critical of this system, I presume) are: out-of-date software, unsafe web browsing habits, or lack of appropriate anti-virus systems. (p. 8) The only area under which Blizzard's new RealID system could fall under is that of unsafe web browsing habits. Also, the amount of critical data for one's identity is limited to that of one's name, which, as pointed out on my previous post, has been public data for quite some time. The issue at hand is whether the game identity data will provide a sufficient meta-data to make personal identity theft worth something. Say, can you use person's name to overtake his account in-game or can you target marketing efforts to the person.
The answer to first of these questions is obviously negative. Armed with only other persons real name and their character name you cannot gain access to their in-game character. If you happen to know their password to their e-mail you will have this information, but that is a data security issue of a different scope than the one RealID poses. Similarily, knowing solely person's name and their e-mail address does not constitute a data register of any particular kind as this sort of information is relatively publicly distributed by the person-in-question him- or herself. Also, perusing web page of virtually any governmental, non-governmental, or private sector organisation you can find countless e-mail addresses linked to persons, normally accompanied even with a picture of them -- something more than Blizzard's RealID provides.
Hence, you have to consider what is the value of knowing the character name of a certain individual in an online game. I do think that Blizzard has taken sufficient security measures whilst demading users to manually accept all invitations to be someone's friend. If you do proceed to use "unsafe web browsing habits" you can certainly open this character name information to a wider range of people than you originally expected but still the question remains what is the value of this information. Does it open new avenues for blackmailing, harressing, threatening, &c. to people compared to whatever prior data they might have gathered from official sources that are easy-to-use. Certainly, if someone has promised not to play an online game to their parents the data of him or her playing such game would be information worth something but I doubt this is the sort of information you are refering to.
Is it possible for a company to scour through the data Blizzard has stored in its database of battle.net customers? Outside Activision-Blizzard, I'd dare to say no. Is it possible to gain access to someone's property, material or immaterial, through the information available via RealID. On this account as well the answer would likely be no. Can I find out the credit card number, address or phone number of someone solely based on this data. No to that as well. By combining data from a number of sources you can get this information but this information was already available before RealID. Only actually new information is that of their games played and their character names on said games.
I still think that it is not an over-arching data which would put my real identity in jeopardy or place me under duress of personal assault from those able to access this data. Therefore I call it hypocrisy (or paranoia) from the part of those criticising it due to information safety issues whereas we at the same time are sharing much more crucial information on a daily basis via various other social networks. If we are concerned over Internet safety issues at large, then, sure we can also target Blizzard but as it stands their RealID system is not particularily threatening compared to string of other Internet safety issues that are brought up by the report you linked (and which I have addressed on my prior posts). Therefore, you can either go with the flow and manage the risks yourself or refuse to take risks that are posed. It is a question of personal choice, not a looming and ever-present threat to identity.
Am I only one who is not really concerned over this. If someone that I have accepted as a friend and his or her friends see my name does that reveal all that much? I guess that all the John Smiths and Pedro Martinezes are shaking at the moment as anyone can find 10,000 others named the same and aged the same. Also, in general this article echoes worries of mainly US players, e.g. in terms of what official information (cf. crime records) there are available online. I think that by joining Facebook I am giving people way more information from myself. Yet, most of the people are more than willing to share their Facebook profile with next to everyone they happen to pass by.
If we are looking for Internet privacy it might be better to start elsewhere than from Blizzard's totally optional service. I do not think that the number of guilds requiring RealID will surpass those that do not anytime in the foreseeable future, hence, you are not per se risking your raid spot by not sharing your RealID. Also, what more is a random name that you have met in the game (referring to friends of friends) than just that: you can find random person's phone number by just opening one of those books that has them in neat lines...what a source of manipulative social engineering I have had all these years! Does their identity in a virtual world somehow create such a meaningful meta-data that we would all the sudden be interested from random strangers? Or is it a real hit amongst madhatters to peruse through Facebook or Linkedln pages just for these vast opportunities?
Jaime Skelton also raises the issue of children, which indeed is a popular argument. Just not necessarily the most rational one. If parent's fail to control what their kids do, I can assure you that there are likely more dangerous things to be done than sharing their RealID with a random stranger. It is not Blizzard's fault if people are having hard time parenting, now is it? Also, the moment years ago when I first entered some data of myself to internet I knew that this data can be linked back to my physical existance. This is the "risk" everyone takes when using the Internet. I am considering it a risk worth taking as the information others can find from me are likely either out-dated or irrelevant. There are other sources of data gathering that are much more omnious and threatening to myself than any of this active sharing I am part-taking on. For example the fact that Google can monitor my searches or that service providers are storing data of my visits for a random government to use that I have no control over is much more risky. In sum, there is no great army of villanous spies or cunning conspiracies out there and even if there are their main source of evilness is certainly not Blizzard's new RealID.
Just a small point, but, there is only one other person in the world (that I know of, I checked google) with the same name as me. Things like RealID make me wish I had a more common name.
The issue some of us are trying to highlight is the fact that people are opted in to this by default. There would be far less of an issue (and we'd be more in tinfoil hat land) if Blizzard required people to opt in. You say you knew when you put info on the net that that info could be found by other people, yes true, and fair. But when you signed up to play a game years back before Friendster, Bebo, Facebook and their ilk existed, could you have realistically anticipated that game company making that info a part of a social network you did not sign up for?
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.
And what about your friends of friends? Are they all carefully vetted as well?
When I meet friends of real friends I use my real name. I personally use Real ID for my Real life friends. I don't care if a friend of a friend knows my real name. Hell when I meet people for the first time in real life i say Hi my name is Joe I don't make up something. When I tell friends of friends my Real name they don't all of a sudden know my SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, or address. I didn't know so many people were afraid of telling people their real name. Are you all wizards?
When I meet friends of real friends I use my real name. I personally use Real ID for my Real life friends. I don't care if a friend of a friend knows my real name. Hell when I meet people for the first time in real life i say Hi my name is Joe I don't make up something. When I tell friends of friends my Real name they don't all of a sudden know my SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, or address. I didn't know so many people were afraid of telling people their real name. Are you all wizards?
Heh, not following this thread that much since it has become a rehash and pingpong of the same arguments pro and contra again and again, but this one I found amusing.
Since it's about examples, let's try this one:
if there are sex pictures around from your girlfriend in possession of a former boyfriend of hers, or your cute sister made a fun sextape from her with her boyfriend, that's one thing. Maybe even several people have seen them, still a limited number of people. But then those nude pictures of your girlfriend or your sister's sextape hit the internet, getting linked and spreading until it's all around there, even your friends and complete strangers you know nothing about have received those links...
What I'm saying there is a huge difference between people and friends that you meet in person, and personal information that is spread around on the internet where your control over it is far smaller and chance of anonymous people being able to obtain it far larger. It doesn't have to happen that it's being used for malpractices, just that the chances are higher because of higher availability.
Besides, I think that there are enough people who have experienced at least once getting suspicious email from friends after which you get a message from said person saying that their email account had been compromised by whatever virus or faulty clicking after which their address list has been abused for spreading around virusmails.
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."
When I meet friends of real friends I use my real name. I personally use Real ID for my Real life friends. I don't care if a friend of a friend knows my real name. Hell when I meet people for the first time in real life i say Hi my name is Joe I don't make up something. When I tell friends of friends my Real name they don't all of a sudden know my SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, or address. I didn't know so many people were afraid of telling people their real name. Are you all wizards?
Heh, not following this thread that much since it has become a rehash and pingpong of the same arguments pro and contra again and again, but this one I found amusing.
Since it's about examples, let's try this one:
if there are sex pictures around from your girlfriend in possession of a former boyfriend of hers, or your cute sister made a fun sextape from her with her boyfriend, that's one thing. Maybe even several people have seen them, still a limited number of people. But then those nude pictures of your girlfriend or your sister's sextape hit the internet, getting linked and spreading until it's all around there, even your friends and complete strangers you know nothing about have received those links...
What I'm saying there is a huge difference between people and friends that you meet in person, and personal information that is spread around on the internet where your control over it is far smaller and chance of anonymous people being able to obtain it far larger. It doesn't have to happen that it's being used for malpractices, just that the chances are higher because of higher availability.
Besides, I think that there are enough people who have experienced at least once getting suspicious email from friends after which you get a message from said person saying that their email account had been compromised by whatever virus or faulty clicking after which their address list has been abused for spreading around virusmails.
I agree with what you are saying about the internet, but that is not my point. Real ID only gives out your real name and nothing more. I personally will only use Real ID for real friends. When I add Real friends on real ID I call them on the phone and say “hey is that really you” just to be safe.
I will never add friends I don’t hang out with in real life to any buddy list on any system. I do agree with the people that think there should be something like this with more options for people who want to add online friends. Real ID is for real friends only. Maybe in the future blizzard will make something for everybody.
Real ID would be a lot better if it had the level of control that Facebook offers. If it had, I still would frown upon having to use my RL personal data just to play a game, but my reservations against it would be far less.
I don't see why they didn't build it in from the start, it could have been easily done.
Until then and as for now I adopt a 'wait and see' mode and will not activate Real ID for now.
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."
Will never use RealID. Not a chance in Hell. I don't care if my RL GF (who is also a very serious gamer) wants to add me... will not happen.
In WoW, we've wanted last names for along time... just not our own, RL last names.
If I want to talk to my RL friends then I'll pick up the phone, use Skype, Vent, TS, or open up an IM session outside of the game... it's not that difficult.
Blizzard already has issues with people that can't secure their PC's, username's, passwords, etc.,.. A lot of account theft there. Giving away even more information isn't going to help that scenario.
The question is why would Blizzard do something so apallingly stupid that would jeopardise the welfare of their customers? do they stand to profit from this? i don't mean the chat function, but the harassing.
There's already X-fire so whats the need anyway. Is the function just an excuse for something else?
Sorry for double posting. But those saying that they'll only use it for their real life friends because they know them from real life are stupid. You don't have any guarantee they will do the same. And even if they do you don't know their friends. Its like telling a secret, only an idiot tells a secret to a friend just because he is a friend and he thinks because he is a friend he'll keep it. If you tell a secret or share something private like real life information online, you should only do it when you know someone is trustworthy, not when someone becomes a friend, its the most stupid and naive thing I ever heard.
You guys can call me friend if you want =D, then when you aren't looking ill sell you to some romans for a couple of gold coins
hell even if its a good friend and a good person it doesn't mean he's trustworthy, when you tell someone a secret they'll want to tell their own friends who they think will keep a secret (just like they did, human stupidity huh? still it does happen like this)
IE: A tells B that she lost her virginity to X, B tells C and tells her to keep it a secret, C is friends with D and repeats what B just did, couple of days later everyone in the damn neighborhood knows.
Same goes for this case, if the friends of a friend can see your information and you can't deny that you are in big shit. In X-fire you can block the friend's friend function but from what i read in this article you cant do it with RealID
And i think we all have to accept that most people don't care to check things out before they try them, maybe Blizzard is or isn't aware of this? but it is still so. Meaning this is a risk, not a joke.
I have been looking for a reason to quit WOW again because I hate playing that game and am only forced to because my sister and her family have me playing it..hell I hardly even log onto it...
This is a good a reason as any to quit...thanks for the informative article..
It is a great article. It was great when I went over this same thing point by point in my podcast 2 weeks ago. And a month before that, when we first discussed the upcoming system.
Also, have you even used the RealID system? If you have, you know that you CAN disable it. Simply by not accepting Real ID friend invites. People can't automatically see your information without YOU giving them consent. Don't want to participate? Fine. Don't accept friend requests, don't give them out. It's not that hard.
You can choose to remove people from your friends list - when you remove them from your list, you are automatically removed from theirs.
There are some problems with the system, but really it's not as bad as you make it seem.
And it all comes down to something blizzard said MONTHS ago, and still holds true today:
RealID is only to be used with REAL friends. Not guildies, or the guy you want to run heroics with later. It's for friends you know in Real Life. If your using the system responsibly, the majority of these issues dissolve.
(and before that "But don't give us this if we need to be responsible!!!!!" - just grow up. If your a parent worried about your kids playing games like this and what might happen, try being a part of their lives. At least read the patch notes and news, see what's going on. If your a gamer whose life gets destroyed because you used this tool to share your information with half your server - tough. If you won't give out your information without this, why the heck would you with it?)
/rant off.
Well seems not a smart idea become member of battle.net.
Before you know some weirdo stands at your door and wanne smash your head becouse you kill steal a mob or ganked him:P
NO THX Blizzard =D
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009..... In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
When I meet friends of real friends I use my real name. I personally use Real ID for my Real life friends. I don't care if a friend of a friend knows my real name. Hell when I meet people for the first time in real life i say Hi my name is Joe I don't make up something. When I tell friends of friends my Real name they don't all of a sudden know my SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, or address. I didn't know so many people were afraid of telling people their real name. Are you all wizards?
Heh, not following this thread that much since it has become a rehash and pingpong of the same arguments pro and contra again and again, but this one I found amusing.
Since it's about examples, let's try this one:
if there are sex pictures around from your girlfriend in possession of a former boyfriend of hers, or your cute sister made a fun sextape from her with her boyfriend, that's one thing. Maybe even several people have seen them, still a limited number of people. But then those nude pictures of your girlfriend or your sister's sextape hit the internet, getting linked and spreading until it's all around there, even your friends and complete strangers you know nothing about have received those links...
What I'm saying there is a huge difference between people and friends that you meet in person, and personal information that is spread around on the internet where your control over it is far smaller and chance of anonymous people being able to obtain it far larger. It doesn't have to happen that it's being used for malpractices, just that the chances are higher because of higher availability.
Besides, I think that there are enough people who have experienced at least once getting suspicious email from friends after which you get a message from said person saying that their email account had been compromised by whatever virus or faulty clicking after which their address list has been abused for spreading around virusmails.
I agree with what you are saying about the internet, but that is not my point. Real ID only gives out your real name and nothing more. I personally will only use Real ID for real friends. When I add Real friends on real ID I call them on the phone and say “hey is that really you” just to be safe.
I will never add friends I don’t hang out with in real life to any buddy list on any system. I do agree with the people that think there should be something like this with more options for people who want to add online friends. Real ID is for real friends only. Maybe in the future blizzard will make something for everybody.
Not good enough. As long as your real name is visible not only to your 'real friends' but to everybody they add as their own 'real friends' this feature remains a useful tool for real life mischief.
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.
And what about your friends of friends? Are they all carefully vetted as well?
When I meet friends of real friends I use my real name. I personally use Real ID for my Real life friends. I don't care if a friend of a friend knows my real name. Hell when I meet people for the first time in real life i say Hi my name is Joe I don't make up something. When I tell friends of friends my Real name they don't all of a sudden know my SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, or address. I didn't know so many people were afraid of telling people their real name. Are you all wizards?
This system as described remains a valuable tool for real life mischief. Your real name and one other piece of information you might mention in passing ('Living in Cincinatti isn't so bad') is enough to figure out who you are, which will provide not only your real address, but the names of your immediate family members, their addresses, old addresses, income status, age, and in the facebook/google age its likely to provide other information such as pictures and other online activity (resume's, medical questions etc.).
You've heard of identity theft and the difficulties it causes for YEARS to the victims. Imagine yourself an identity thief for a moment, think you are happy to hear about this little online loophole to people's real identities?
Comments
I've come to the conclusion that the creeping facebookization of the world is a bad thing. Annonimity is a shield against all sorts of ways that information can be randomly used against you - from account security to stalking to potential employers filtering out people who "waste their lives on games".
It's not the person-to-person privacy that really bugs me about decisions like this (although like adding a new API to the billing database, one bug in the implementaiton and the data's not going back in the bottle), it's what it says about what must be going on behind the scenes with setting up the invisible sharing of data with other companies.
Am I only one who is not really concerned over this. If someone that I have accepted as a friend and his or her friends see my name does that reveal all that much? I guess that all the John Smiths and Pedro Martinezes are shaking at the moment as anyone can find 10,000 others named the same and aged the same. Also, in general this article echoes worries of mainly US players, e.g. in terms of what official information (cf. crime records) there are available online. I think that by joining Facebook I am giving people way more information from myself. Yet, most of the people are more than willing to share their Facebook profile with next to everyone they happen to pass by.
If we are looking for Internet privacy it might be better to start elsewhere than from Blizzard's totally optional service. I do not think that the number of guilds requiring RealID will surpass those that do not anytime in the foreseeable future, hence, you are not per se risking your raid spot by not sharing your RealID. Also, what more is a random name that you have met in the game (referring to friends of friends) than just that: you can find random person's phone number by just opening one of those books that has them in neat lines...what a source of manipulative social engineering I have had all these years! Does their identity in a virtual world somehow create such a meaningful meta-data that we would all the sudden be interested from random strangers? Or is it a real hit amongst madhatters to peruse through Facebook or Linkedln pages just for these vast opportunities?
Jaime Skelton also raises the issue of children, which indeed is a popular argument. Just not necessarily the most rational one. If parent's fail to control what their kids do, I can assure you that there are likely more dangerous things to be done than sharing their RealID with a random stranger. It is not Blizzard's fault if people are having hard time parenting, now is it? Also, the moment years ago when I first entered some data of myself to internet I knew that this data can be linked back to my physical existance. This is the "risk" everyone takes when using the Internet. I am considering it a risk worth taking as the information others can find from me are likely either out-dated or irrelevant. There are other sources of data gathering that are much more omnious and threatening to myself than any of this active sharing I am part-taking on. For example the fact that Google can monitor my searches or that service providers are storing data of my visits for a random government to use that I have no control over is much more risky. In sum, there is no great army of villanous spies or cunning conspiracies out there and even if there are their main source of evilness is certainly not Blizzard's new RealID.
Good Post I agree. The phone book was a good example. When I meet new people out in the real world I always give out my real name and I've been ok so far.
Hastely implemented? How about hastely researched by the reporter.
Several of this controls are available ingame under *suprise* the options menu.
Scondly, its not a secure way to add all you casual friends on WoW, thats what a friends list is for. Criticizing RealID for not being what you want it to be is kinda of silly. A bikes not a peice of crap cause it has no engine... its got a different use than a car, if you're trying to judge it as a car ofcourse it will look bad.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
And what about your friends of friends? Are they all carefully vetted as well?
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Another good reason not to pick up one of their games.
Who are they to decide that I want to share my real information with virtual people.
Its just another way for them to try and introduce another set of peer control tools to add consumer pressure.
If it were only that 'innocent" but its not.
Acquiescence comes to mind.
Edit: The fact that it uses your email adress without your direct consent should be a big clue to anyone who doesn't "get it".
Just try to imagine whats going on behind the doors with our information.
Someone mentioned facebook and its true. These are social engineering tools being used by compagnies and not for your benefit.
Ever heard of creating a pseudo-email account just for this purpose? You do not have to give your work e-mail address to them but instead you can create a gmail one. Fill in the information however you wish, it does not have to be accurate either. I guess that this paranoia people have is starting to take over their everyday life. Ever wondered how your gmail account happens to have ads that are actually related to what the message you are reading is about? Or how Facebook is suggesting you friends that have no apparent connection but that of your sent e-mails?
You can hide in an underground bunker and seal it. It just so happens to be that the world is filled with dangers and information about you that you cannot control. Has always been and will always be. Or did you feel that you could control what other people talked of you before the internet-era? Social interaction is always a risk as we cannot control other people no matter how much we want to. This tool of social interaction Blizzard is providing is one you can opt out, just as you can decide not to join Facebook, Twitter, &c. It is you who has to weigh the pros and cons.
And why do you think I don't know that. Why do you even assume I deal with that stuff.
Social networking is not what I use the internet for.
You can call it paranoia.
That is OK for me. The problem with "people" who like to call these observations paranoia is that they appear to be clueless about other developments.
http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/ns_tic.pd
And there are many more things like this but this is not the time or place for stuff like this.
But its OK, keep marching that line.
paranoid americans and their precious privacy....
Last reply here for we are heavily off-topicing. The link that you provided actually states that the main sources of identity theft (likely the reason you are critical of this system, I presume) are: out-of-date software, unsafe web browsing habits, or lack of appropriate anti-virus systems. (p. 8) The only area under which Blizzard's new RealID system could fall under is that of unsafe web browsing habits. Also, the amount of critical data for one's identity is limited to that of one's name, which, as pointed out on my previous post, has been public data for quite some time. The issue at hand is whether the game identity data will provide a sufficient meta-data to make personal identity theft worth something. Say, can you use person's name to overtake his account in-game or can you target marketing efforts to the person.
The answer to first of these questions is obviously negative. Armed with only other persons real name and their character name you cannot gain access to their in-game character. If you happen to know their password to their e-mail you will have this information, but that is a data security issue of a different scope than the one RealID poses. Similarily, knowing solely person's name and their e-mail address does not constitute a data register of any particular kind as this sort of information is relatively publicly distributed by the person-in-question him- or herself. Also, perusing web page of virtually any governmental, non-governmental, or private sector organisation you can find countless e-mail addresses linked to persons, normally accompanied even with a picture of them -- something more than Blizzard's RealID provides.
Hence, you have to consider what is the value of knowing the character name of a certain individual in an online game. I do think that Blizzard has taken sufficient security measures whilst demading users to manually accept all invitations to be someone's friend. If you do proceed to use "unsafe web browsing habits" you can certainly open this character name information to a wider range of people than you originally expected but still the question remains what is the value of this information. Does it open new avenues for blackmailing, harressing, threatening, &c. to people compared to whatever prior data they might have gathered from official sources that are easy-to-use. Certainly, if someone has promised not to play an online game to their parents the data of him or her playing such game would be information worth something but I doubt this is the sort of information you are refering to.
Is it possible for a company to scour through the data Blizzard has stored in its database of battle.net customers? Outside Activision-Blizzard, I'd dare to say no. Is it possible to gain access to someone's property, material or immaterial, through the information available via RealID. On this account as well the answer would likely be no. Can I find out the credit card number, address or phone number of someone solely based on this data. No to that as well. By combining data from a number of sources you can get this information but this information was already available before RealID. Only actually new information is that of their games played and their character names on said games.
I still think that it is not an over-arching data which would put my real identity in jeopardy or place me under duress of personal assault from those able to access this data. Therefore I call it hypocrisy (or paranoia) from the part of those criticising it due to information safety issues whereas we at the same time are sharing much more crucial information on a daily basis via various other social networks. If we are concerned over Internet safety issues at large, then, sure we can also target Blizzard but as it stands their RealID system is not particularily threatening compared to string of other Internet safety issues that are brought up by the report you linked (and which I have addressed on my prior posts). Therefore, you can either go with the flow and manage the risks yourself or refuse to take risks that are posed. It is a question of personal choice, not a looming and ever-present threat to identity.
Where is my tinfoil hat? I smell conspiracy!!!
Help support an artist and gamer who has lost his tools to create and play: http://www.gofundme.com/u63nzcgk
Just a small point, but, there is only one other person in the world (that I know of, I checked google) with the same name as me. Things like RealID make me wish I had a more common name.
The issue some of us are trying to highlight is the fact that people are opted in to this by default. There would be far less of an issue (and we'd be more in tinfoil hat land) if Blizzard required people to opt in. You say you knew when you put info on the net that that info could be found by other people, yes true, and fair. But when you signed up to play a game years back before Friendster, Bebo, Facebook and their ilk existed, could you have realistically anticipated that game company making that info a part of a social network you did not sign up for?
That's my issue.
When I meet friends of real friends I use my real name. I personally use Real ID for my Real life friends. I don't care if a friend of a friend knows my real name. Hell when I meet people for the first time in real life i say Hi my name is Joe I don't make up something. When I tell friends of friends my Real name they don't all of a sudden know my SSN, mother's maiden name, registered credit card, or address. I didn't know so many people were afraid of telling people their real name. Are you all wizards?
Heh, not following this thread that much since it has become a rehash and pingpong of the same arguments pro and contra again and again, but this one I found amusing.
Since it's about examples, let's try this one:
if there are sex pictures around from your girlfriend in possession of a former boyfriend of hers, or your cute sister made a fun sextape from her with her boyfriend, that's one thing. Maybe even several people have seen them, still a limited number of people. But then those nude pictures of your girlfriend or your sister's sextape hit the internet, getting linked and spreading until it's all around there, even your friends and complete strangers you know nothing about have received those links...
What I'm saying there is a huge difference between people and friends that you meet in person, and personal information that is spread around on the internet where your control over it is far smaller and chance of anonymous people being able to obtain it far larger. It doesn't have to happen that it's being used for malpractices, just that the chances are higher because of higher availability.
Besides, I think that there are enough people who have experienced at least once getting suspicious email from friends after which you get a message from said person saying that their email account had been compromised by whatever virus or faulty clicking after which their address list has been abused for spreading around virusmails.
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."
I agree with what you are saying about the internet, but that is not my point. Real ID only gives out your real name and nothing more. I personally will only use Real ID for real friends. When I add Real friends on real ID I call them on the phone and say “hey is that really you” just to be safe.
I will never add friends I don’t hang out with in real life to any buddy list on any system. I do agree with the people that think there should be something like this with more options for people who want to add online friends. Real ID is for real friends only. Maybe in the future blizzard will make something for everybody.
Real ID would be a lot better if it had the level of control that Facebook offers. If it had, I still would frown upon having to use my RL personal data just to play a game, but my reservations against it would be far less.
I don't see why they didn't build it in from the start, it could have been easily done.
Until then and as for now I adopt a 'wait and see' mode and will not activate Real ID for now.
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."
Will never use RealID. Not a chance in Hell. I don't care if my RL GF (who is also a very serious gamer) wants to add me... will not happen.
In WoW, we've wanted last names for along time... just not our own, RL last names.
If I want to talk to my RL friends then I'll pick up the phone, use Skype, Vent, TS, or open up an IM session outside of the game... it's not that difficult.
Blizzard already has issues with people that can't secure their PC's, username's, passwords, etc.,.. A lot of account theft there. Giving away even more information isn't going to help that scenario.
The question is why would Blizzard do something so apallingly stupid that would jeopardise the welfare of their customers? do they stand to profit from this? i don't mean the chat function, but the harassing.
There's already X-fire so whats the need anyway. Is the function just an excuse for something else?
Sorry for double posting. But those saying that they'll only use it for their real life friends because they know them from real life are stupid. You don't have any guarantee they will do the same. And even if they do you don't know their friends. Its like telling a secret, only an idiot tells a secret to a friend just because he is a friend and he thinks because he is a friend he'll keep it. If you tell a secret or share something private like real life information online, you should only do it when you know someone is trustworthy, not when someone becomes a friend, its the most stupid and naive thing I ever heard.
You guys can call me friend if you want =D, then when you aren't looking ill sell you to some romans for a couple of gold coins
hell even if its a good friend and a good person it doesn't mean he's trustworthy, when you tell someone a secret they'll want to tell their own friends who they think will keep a secret (just like they did, human stupidity huh? still it does happen like this)
IE: A tells B that she lost her virginity to X, B tells C and tells her to keep it a secret, C is friends with D and repeats what B just did, couple of days later everyone in the damn neighborhood knows.
Same goes for this case, if the friends of a friend can see your information and you can't deny that you are in big shit. In X-fire you can block the friend's friend function but from what i read in this article you cant do it with RealID
And i think we all have to accept that most people don't care to check things out before they try them, maybe Blizzard is or isn't aware of this? but it is still so. Meaning this is a risk, not a joke.
I have been looking for a reason to quit WOW again because I hate playing that game and am only forced to because my sister and her family have me playing it..hell I hardly even log onto it...
This is a good a reason as any to quit...thanks for the informative article..
http://www.forceofarms.com/index.php
Well seems not a smart idea become member of battle.net.
Before you know some weirdo stands at your door and wanne smash your head becouse you kill steal a mob or ganked him:P
NO THX Blizzard =D
Games played:AC1-Darktide'99-2000-AC2-Darktide/dawnsong2003-2005,Lineage2-2005-2006 and now Darkfall-2009.....
In between WoW few months AoC few months and some f2p also all very short few weeks.
Not good enough. As long as your real name is visible not only to your 'real friends' but to everybody they add as their own 'real friends' this feature remains a useful tool for real life mischief.
This system as described remains a valuable tool for real life mischief. Your real name and one other piece of information you might mention in passing ('Living in Cincinatti isn't so bad') is enough to figure out who you are, which will provide not only your real address, but the names of your immediate family members, their addresses, old addresses, income status, age, and in the facebook/google age its likely to provide other information such as pictures and other online activity (resume's, medical questions etc.).
You've heard of identity theft and the difficulties it causes for YEARS to the victims. Imagine yourself an identity thief for a moment, think you are happy to hear about this little online loophole to people's real identities?
Glad I'm not subscribed anymore.
Good article OP.