Bnet forums to be Real Name Only - Page 76

It's not a matter of pride or people hiding who they are. We don't have to deal with this anonymity problem generally in our real lives. Each place we go is compartmentalized generally with relatively little overlap.

For example, I can go out to the bar with friends and we have our conversations, our modes of speak, and a shared level of knowledge that we feel comfortable sharing. We may go to our therapist and have a different set of conversations and shared knowledge. We then go to work, to the gym, to a store, etc.

The issue with the internet is that these places aren't compartmentalized. They're cross-referenceable. A name is one of the ways to draw together all the threads. The anonymity on the Internet allows us to take back some of that privacy that the Internet is inherently not designed to provide. This doesn't mean that people should misrepresent themselves wherever they choose to associate, but it does mean that I shouldn't have to use information that unnecessarily connects my different associations online.

In a future Internet that behaves this way, should someone need to fear when they go post on some medical forum or legal forum for advice and guidance, and then that gets dredged up when someone posts on a discussion board or another gaming board?

Just because someone knows your name, doesn't end your life. Clearly it doesn't. It doesn't guarantee that your identity gets stolen. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. But it's a lot more threatening than people give it credit for. It's just a sign of the time, perhaps. In an age where the day after someone like Joe the Plumber appears on the scene, Internet sleuths can find out if he owes back taxes, ever had any tickets, whether he's a real plumber, etc and cast serious aspersion on his character and his life, do we really want to turn a blind eye while companies like Blizzard help with this?

Think about the politicians who end up having to drop out of races because of something they wrote in college. Politicians and celebrities have to go through therapy and training to deal with the increased scrutiny and decreased privacy that they typically have. Attaching our personally identifiable information to things we do online is just one step towards making that the norm for everybody.

The answer to this is persistent aliases. Let me choose how I want to be called, but make me stick to it and not arbitrarily change that. That's fair. Now, I'm accountable for what I write, but I have no fear that what I say no matter how innocuous can be linked back to something else. If someone wants to write in a thread about Gay Gaming or something like that, they don't have to be worried that that gets traced back to their facebook, to their work, or wherever.

There're far larger philosophical and practical considerations to this than just the exact repercussions of Blizzard posting your name next to your whine about TvZ balance. Sometimes you have to look one step farther on these things.

It's my business if I want to be proud of who I am to the extent of telling everyone about it, or if I want to create an internet persona and not attach my gaming habits to my real name. You may not be experiencing this yourself, but a GREAT many people are, in their own lives, connected to a lot of ignorant, selfish, volatile, presumptuous, and WORSE people, who we none the less love and don't want to have to cut ourselves off from.

This being the case, use at least 2% of your imagination and think about just a few of the myriad reasons you might want or even NEED to hide your real name on the public internet to avoid friction with your real life situation. Do you have any family members that google your name on a weekly basis looking for dirt, and then email you about it? Email your mom? Post on your facebook (I've long, long since disabled my facebook due to these behaviors)? Are you related to politically active fundamentalist christians who would be extremely angry about you playing and supporting "the devil's games?" Hey! All of the above are part of my situation. I don't post on the WoW boards, ever, and I certainly won't after this,

This is an extremely bad precedent for the internet as a whole for a vast number of reasons, and I really weep and face-palm at all the people without the imagination to think outside their own tiny little situation and see how this change might affect other people. So you sit around here defending this change with your little presumptions and party lines. Man, if only you could see yourselves as I see you.

Don't you get the feeling that you're being straight up dicked with like a little toy soldier? Like some corporate asshole is sitting in his office trying to solve problems he doesn't understand, from a bird's eye view with no connection to the problems the solution is causing? Are you really so naive as to think THERE'S NO DANGER in using your real name on the internet? Do you think that the countless places it's already being used changes the fact that using it in more places is a BAD IDEA? Don't you get that this a very bad precedent which needs to be vehemently opposed so it doesn't become the norm? When Activision and Blizzard do the same thing with the next game and the next game, and the game after that, and then EA and 2K do it too, will you just keep accepting it? Will you accept the idea that "well, I don't want to post my real name on the public internet, I guess I'm not allowed to post anywhere" one day, maybe less than a decade away?

RealID -- Unethical and Dangerous

The RealID changes to Blizzard's official forums are unequivocally unethical and potentially dangerous. The community response on their official forums -- as well as nearly every fansite -- is huge and overwhelmingly negative.

Blizzard's stated goal is to help reduce trolling on the forums. The idea is that when a poster has an identity they can't escape, they're less likely to threaten their reputation. Their other, less-discussed goal is the creation of a Blizzard-owned Facebook which they can directly monetize and which can also provide an advertising platform for future games.

They're doing this entirely at the expense of your personal privacy. If you want to use a service you had used in the past, you now have to be willing to post your real name to the public alongside every post.

Here's where the problems are:
Employment -- Posting to Blizzard's forums will now show up for any employer doing a search on your name. Given Blizzard's search engine rankings, you can bet this will be pretty high up on the list of results. No matter how unfair, many employers will look on this negatively.

Women -- Many women playing the game choose to conceal their gender to avoid harassment. Whether fair or not, posting publicly with their real name will not only be uncomfortable for some but could very well lead to direct sexual harassment in and out of game.

Minors -- Any parent will need to be far more concerned about their children's activities on Blizzard sites than they currently are. This is especially true in any case where a child's real name can be found or their address can be tracked.

Uncommon Names -- Anyone with an uncommon name can much more easily be tracked.

Security & Hacked Accounts -- Blizzard is not doing a good job safeguarding accounts. If they have another breach in their account system, it won't matter how clean your own computer is -- a malicious user could be posting under your name, leaving a permanent and damaging trail.
This move probably will get rid of trolls. It is certain to get rid of a lot of good posters, too. Unfortunately, the forums are also one of their main avenues for both customer and technical support, and users are often redirected to them even while on the phone w/ those departments.

You will never see another post from me on their forums. I've already given my name out via other platforms, but those were my choice, and those were done in a setting where I can completely control how a potential employer views it. I know a number of other good users who are being faced with this same decision and coming to the same conclusion.

You don't need to be a security or privacy rights advocate to understand how bad this can be for you or your friends on a personal level.