Blizzard Enable Harassement and Identify Theft

[Flight]

So about a year ago Blizzard decided players of any of their games would have to consolidate the games they own under a new Battlenet account. Decent idea, especially with Battlenet 2.0 on the horizon (Battlenet is the hosting system which players have used since the 90's to play multiplayer Diablo 2 on). All Blizzard games past and present need adding to one of these accounts to play them

 

Then just recently they announced two things : Battlenet accounts will need linking with a RealID account, which shows your real name and that the forums would display your real name.

 

What it's basically done is enabled easy ID theft and for people to find people in real life that they meet in games

.

 

 

1. The system is linked into the WoW API. You can do a search on a character and get their real life info.

 

 

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816898018&sid=1

 

your battle.net account full name is exposed to all your addons (and thus potentially to anyone) without ever adding any realid friends

 

proof:

/run for i=1,100 do if BNIsSelf(i)then BNSendWhisper(i,"RealID whisper from yourself..");break end end

 

 

 

 

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

 

Post #16

 

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

 

 

Within 10 minutes people had Googled and posted the following information on him :

 

 

Address:

473 Avenue B

Lakeport, CA 95453-6032

 

Phone Number:

(707) 263-0190

 

Age:

28

 

Family:

Kimberly K Whipple, age: 54

Jason Stephen Whipple, age 34

 

It looks like he's staying in the same house as his mother =[

 

 

Micah Whipple | Facebook

 

Music

Honeypie, Closed Heart Surgery, The Sound Of Animals Fighting, White Stripes, Tool Band, Radiohead, Disorient Express, The Mars Volta, The Unhandled Exceptions, As Tall As Lions, The Dear Hunter

 

Movies

*Big Trouble in Little China*, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Disney Pixar

 

Television

The Daily Show, Samurai Champloo, Tim and Eric Awesome Show: Great Job!, Freaks and Geeks, 30 Rock, Human Giant

 

Then they posted a Google photo of (presumably him at) his home adress !!

 

My link

 

 

Time to cancel those WoW subs and reconsider the Starcraft 2.0 pre-order. Especially for your kids.

Edited July 7, 2010 by Flight

[Flight]

This post is not viewable to guests.

You can sign in to your account at the login page here

If you do not have an account then you can register here

Edited July 7, 2010 by Flight

[DanielS]

This post is not viewable to guests.

You can sign in to your account at the login page here

If you do not have an account then you can register here

[Flight]

This post is not viewable to guests.

You can sign in to your account at the login page here

If you do not have an account then you can register here

[drdooom]

This post is not viewable to guests.

You can sign in to your account at the login page here

If you do not have an account then you can register here