RealID Changes for 3.3.5

[Shadowwolf]

Heres the screenshot from some of the changes incorporated for RealID in case anyone wasnt aware where to look.

[dharq]

No offense to anyone here, but I'm not giving anyone my login e-mail address.

Blizz. Security?!?!. 

[Shadowwolf]

Same, I dont like this system at all. I understand the idea, I dont like the implementation.

[Kothnok]

No offense taken Dharq.  This feature is THE reason they forced everyone to go to a Battle.net account.  Ever since then, we've seen a sharp rise in security breaches.  I think they still have a lot of work ahead of them to figure something out that is a bit more protected from just plain old guesswork.

[dharq]

Exactly Koth, and it'd be very easy to solve if they'd just create a visible e-mail field, put some data validation on it to prevent it from being the same as the login e-mail, and require account owners to validate it before it became usable.

One extra field, and the account breaches would be lessened considerably. It's still a mess because of that e-mail username thing, but at least it'd be better.

[Shadowwolf]

The way its working now seems only useful for family/VERY close friends because it just exposes too much personal data. This reminds me of the whole Facebook privacy fiasco last month how world-class jackass Mark Zuckerberg figured he could "dictate" privacy to people and just do whatever he wanted with their information. This RealID thing seems almost akin to that same situation.

[dharq]

The thing I find most bizarre is how blizz just seems to be dismissing any concerns about it....

[Shadowwolf]

This person covers a lot of what I think of this new system

http://tagn.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/blizzard-real-id-vs-my-privacy/

[Shadowwolf]

The 2 main things I dislike here are:

1) I have no control over showing my real name and email address. Id like the ability to control what people see for a name (i.e. my First name only, a nickname, something else other than my full on name). No offense to you all, but I like my privacy, always have, always will, and taking away my option of it with using this new system annoys me extremely. Granted I can always choose not to use RealID and stick to what I have, but how nice would it be to have the ability to have the whole guild on RealID and be able to chat with people on Horde alts easily, etc. Unfortunately, in order to do that, Blizzard is forcing not only me but you as well to be on a level of comfort where I am basically a step away from sharing my social security number, drivers, lisc, etc. Granted some of you may view a whole name or email address as nothing big, but these days with things like Google scouring every obscure hole on the net, you'd be amazed how much information can make its way online if you arent careful and even if you are.

2) Friends of Friends seeing the info. This is a HUUUUUGE problem for me. Not only do I need to be on a huge comfort level of sharing my information with whomever I may choose to be a RealID buddy with, but all of their friends too...WTF is this crap?!? People I may not even know can now see my full name and email addy for my account and I have no control over that? Thats just straight up BS. Honestly this is even worse than Facebook's privacy debacle last month because its just chaining your personal info across multiple people you may or may not even know...thats just beyond stupid. Now you have to rely on the people you share info with to be cautious who they share info with too.

This whole layout just wasnt well thought out at all from a security or privacy standpoint. I wouldnt be surprised if Blizzard got slapped with a class action lawsuit over privacy violations after this goes into effect. They like to think they can protect themselves by their ToS but that only works so well as Microsoft learned first hand years back.

[Kothnok]

The thing that bugs me is that none of the RealID crap is needed.  Everything is in place for cross-realm/faction/game chat right now.
No need to share anything or signup or what-have-you.

If you're in StarCraft and you send a tell to "Kothnok.Alexstrazsa", you would get me when I'm playing that character in WoW.  Now.  No need to use RealID.  They purposefully withhold this ability just to entice you to signup with RealID.  But the tech is there and none of the privacy/security concerns needed to be packaged with it.  All RealID means is that it auto-tracks my account with all the various games/servers/chars that I make.  It need not be, and I would prefer just using the chat w/o RealID.

[fiere redfern]

Aside from the friends of your friends being able to see your Real ID thing (which I think is just a dumb move on Blizzard's part), I'm really not a fan of the way you can't turn it off. No offense to you lot, but there are times when I really don't want to talk to -anybody-; friends, guildmates, whomever, and in order not to be viewed as a complete jerk I just take myself away from everyone and screw around on an unguilded alt on another server.

It just seems like Blizzard should've put a lot more thought and flexibility into the Real ID thing before making it live. At this point, they just seem headed for a facebook-like privacy fiasco. I'll be waiting it out and seeing what tweaks are made before I even think about using it.

[Shadowwolf]

Just some information on privacy issues as of late many of you probably havent been watching since its been kept low key for some reason.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20008422-38.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20007933-38.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20001393-38.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20004975-38.html

These are relatively short articles, I recommend reading them as these are issues that affect everyone and relate closely to this whole RealID garbage as of late.

[Grendeel]

If you want to know more about the issue, this link is an interview with the person implementing it.....  Greg Canessa.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2010/05/blizzard-and-facebooks-friendly-social-networking-deal-launches-with-starcraft-ii-/1

Read the first comment after the article.  Its hillarious!   

[Liege]

horrible implementation, as you guys have said, and like you i like the idea, however...did you guys see the wow forum post on the "changes" they are making in the near future?

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1&pageNo=1 ... they have lost a lot of customers and caused me to change my BN real name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjWFZPJZTxU comes to mind, at least for me.

[dharq]

Hehe. Actually, we've been discussing it for a couple of days now, Liege. Join the conversation.

Oh, and join the campaign -- http://www.stopblizzrealid.org