Darryl Woodford

So, there has been so very much written the last few days about Blzzard’s RealID policy, but it seems just about everybody agrees that anonymity is the expected default online, and that Blizzard have gone way too far with whatever their intentions (perhaps good) were with this system. Thought provokingly for me, Metaverse Journal even pointed out that Anonymity is the default offline:

We don’t normally think of anonymity as the default state, but it is. There’s 6.25 or so billion people on the planet. There are numerous occasions that we hand over our identification or give our names for one reason or another, but we generally do so only to people that we trust to handle them properly or that simply don’t really care who we are.

Do you know your barista’s full name? Do they know yours? Would you have any idea what their first name was if they didn’t wear a name tag?

We routinely caution our children not to give out their full names to strangers, or indeed to anyone that they don’t have a very good reason to trust (eg: a policeman).

If you ask the person serving you at the grocery checkout or your bank teller what their last name is, they’ll probably be reluctant to tell you. For many establishments it is against policy to reveal that information.

Large and heavily trafficked call-centres and customer-support services routinely assign pseudonyms to their staff to avoid issues of harassment. In smaller outfits, it’s rarer, but still sometimes done if a staff member has a particularly memorable, distinctive or unique first name – or if another front-line staffer has the same first name.

Why do we go through all of this?

Because we know it’s safer!

via Metaverse Journal | True Names: identity, safety and Blizzard’s Real ID

So the question switches to what is the solution, and the below from Randy Farmer basically summarises what I would argue for:

An Alternative Everyone Can Live With

There was/is an alternative – described in the Tripartite Identity Model post from two years ago: Implement Nicknames!

Sure, have a top-level social identity, but present it as user-controlled Nickname and allow users to share a variant of their real name – but don’t require it! Sure, if the Nickname is the same as their RealID, feel free to show an indicator, like Amazon.com does with their Real Name markers. Allow users to reveal what they wish – even provide incentives for them to do so, but don’t bind full disclosure on them. Even Facebook doesn’t do this!

It’s never too late.

P.S.: I can’t stop being amazed – Asking for help on a forum requires disclosing your real name to God, Google, and Everyone? Come on! You’ve got to be kidding!

via Habitat Chronicles: RealID and WoW Forums: Classic Identity Design Mistake.

Blizzard have responded, telling Gamasutra that “we’re listening”, but continuing to insist that the system is opt-in, because players are not forced to post on the forums and ‘their gameplay experiences will not change if they choose not to use the Real ID communication features in game’. Seriously? In the same discussion they also indicate that they will attempt to crack down on players using false identities, stating ‘our Terms of Use agreement requires that players provide us with accurate information’.

Meanwhile, players are exploring how they can use the parental control features to limit or prevent data being shared in-game using Real ID, and others are continuing to explore and expose the personal lives of Blizzard executives and staff, though to my mind some are going too far:. Here’s two (slightly out of context) quotes from the linked page, along with the disclaimer, scrubbed of personal details… to me that’s going too far.

NONE OF THESE POSTS ARE THREATS. I’ve seen people at 4chan and other places saying this site is filled with thinly veiled threats. It’s not. I do not wish to see any harm or harassment come to ANYONE listed here, even Bobby.

But hey, he’s a busy man. He’s got a wife and three young daughters, ages x, y, and z. The oldest is [xxx], she likes skiing. There are pictures of her that can be found, but I’m not posting them because I think I’ve made my point there. Anyone messing with his family or kids is a sick fuck, but you know what? There are a lot of sick fucks who play WoW

The beautiful family’s current address is either xxxx or yyyy ******** Way. They own or owned both but surely they don’t need two houses, do they? ******* Way, Beverly Hills, California 90210. They spent $171,708 for renovations a few years ago, nice place!

via What’s in a name?

But in general the point is well made around the net, you can find plenty of information about almost anyone with free tools these days, as I have shown friends in the past when pointing out their facebook profiles were open for the world to see, and just about anyone can be impersonated. Just a couple of weeks ago I came across this on twitter, using all my personal information (that is on twitter) for (I assume) spamming purposes:

Twitter have now removed the account, but it’s an example of how easily privacy breaches can occur, your identity can get stolen, and why it’s worth monitoring the google results for your name!

This update brought to you from my travels, so I apologise for any typos in advance.

So Blizzard are now making it so instead of showing your character on those forums, it’ll instead show your real name with the option of attaching your char name too it (no option of not showing your real name).

Now I think it’s fairly safe to say that this is perhaps the dumbest idea that anyone has ever had ever.

To alleviate people’s concerns, Blizzard employee Bashiok decided to say his real name on the forums, his real name is Micah Whipple

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374892&sid=1&pageNo=1 Post #16

So say hi to Micah Whipple

via WoW Riot | WotLK, Wrath of the Lich King, WoW, World of Warcraft, Arena Season 5.

I’m not going to publish his details here, but suffice to say just about every detail of his (and several other Micah Whipple’s) life was made public.

The background issue here though is one of privacy. From what I understand in addition to this implementation on the forums, they also have an in-game/in-world implementation of RealID, which allows you to see the real names of your game friends, and (importantly) friends of friends. Now we all know how well that went down with facebook users.

It seems the idea behind this, and one that Eve have also championed with EveGate, is a desire to create a social network around their player base. This is an attempt to compete with the social element of facebook games, and presumably to keep their players tied to paying a subscription to maintain their social network, rather than using something like Facebook which, for all its faults, is currently free. I happen to think it’s a futile attempt for much the same reasons as I have discussed here before, there’s too much social capital invested in Facebook even for somebody of the budget of Blizzard to compete. Even Google is a long shot I think..

Blizzard responded thus:

“I should point out that showing a real first and last name doesn’t provide any one the right to then seek out additional information on that name and post it here. That has been and will continue to be a violation of the forum code of conduct, and so bans and what have you are incoming. Fair warning. 

That’s just a blanket rule that applies to everyone.”

Which is all well and good, but doesn’t excuse them from the initial privacy violation. What is to stop somebody engaged in an in-game or forum dispute with another player looking up their personal information and then publishing it on their blog, on a guild forum (for harassment purposes) or on one of the many unofficial WoW sites. In all those examples, Blizzard are enabling the harassment, and at the very least are opening themselves up to bad press.

The initial idea of allowing players to connect with each other isn’t horrible (a friend offered the example of connecting with people he used to play with that are now on different servers etc), but why they are relying on real name, as opposed to some non-character tied username I don’t understand.

So, from what I can tell from the below picture, this book consists of a series of CCP/EVE related Wikipedia articles, self-published and printed, for the princely sum of £71. I wonder how many people actually fall for this?

via Eve Online: Gameplay of Eve Online, Expansions of Eve Online, Dust 514, CCP hf, E-ON Magazine, Eve: The Second Genesis, Collectible Card Game, Escape … video game , Elite video game , Video game: Amazon.co.uk: Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, John McBrewster: Books.

It’s amazing how many people hear something, repeat it in conversation,and then happily type it with no concern how it is spelt..

From a gambling forum last week:

“So speaking in general terms, if this play was made at Bookmaker, the bettor WOULD be paid up to a maximum of 15.000 per their own rules. Someone posted Bookmaker’s horse rules per batum above.”

I think I must read ‘per batum’ at least once a day..