World of Warcraft RealID Fiasco... What NOT to do...

[Technowraith]

Greetings...

Ever wander why bulletin board forums never tell you to put your real name as your user name? Let BLizzard Entertainment show you why.

Just recently, as in the last 72 hours, they made a change on their forums. Instead of using character handles (like they used to) Blizzard posted Real Names (first and Last) of all users posting on their forums. The current fiasco: people are now getting hacked outside of World of Warcraft. All because Blizzard posted real names as user handles. You be thinking, "Well, Facebook does that and I don't get hacked on Facebook." True, but social networks are a bit different than standard bulletin board forums.

A case in point is a blizzard employee who said "It's not a big deal, stop whining." Well, ten minutes later in the thread he posted that in:

-His real address was posted
-His DOB/Social was posted (but edited to hide the social)
-His facebook was hacked
-His cell phone had to be disconnected due to call volume
-His parent's phone had to be changed
-His parent's real address was posted

This is why forums don't allow you to put any real identifying information about yourself in a publicly viewed area.

Blizzard may have already applied a fix to this issue in order to resolve the complaints and issues relating to this change on their forums.

Keep in mind that Blizzard made it painfully clear that sharing ANY personal information over the internet is unsafe. And now they decided to post a players REAL name? Something didn't click quite right back there. O_o

If you play World of Warcraft and posted on their forums, consider flagging your accounts for suspicious activity. Even if you didn't post during the period real names were made visible, prior posts would display your name. Contact Blizzard for more information or details through their customer support contact point both on the phone or on the web.

[Payä Tìrol]

I'm confused, was this an bug or something which released the names? All I know that is they're going to use real names for all forum posts in the future, but that it will not be retroactive to posts already made. I believe this is an attempt to curb the pretty rampant trolling that goes on.

Basically, people are going to stop posting on their  forums, as will I. It doesn't look as if very many people are all that pleased about the prospective change, and whether RealID gets any more intrusive.

[Technowraith]

I'm confused, was this an bug or something which released the names? All I know that is they're going to use real names for all forum posts in the future, but that it will not be retroactive to posts already made. I believe this is an attempt to curb the pretty rampant trolling that goes on.

Basically, people are going to stop posting on their  forums, as will I. It doesn't look as if very many people are all that pleased about the prospective change, and whether RealID gets any more intrusive.

From what i gathered, I learned that blizzard tried a 24-hour test run of RealID system. People are mostly railing against the sharing of personal data and account names. Things Blizzard told people not to give out. With RealID you have to give out your account name and real name. So people are really againgst the RealID system. Which makes sense naturally. Seems like Blizzard needs to rethink the system, as it does have potential.

[Tompa'Ivong]

yep, blizz has a big fail there, they need to come up with a way to mask the names, maybe only display the 1st letter of the last name, I think blizz  has opened up a pandora's box if they don't fix this, people are still vunerable if it displays their 1st name, all they have to do is search IPs and do hunting around the web for the same IPs, information is cheap nowadays.