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Added the article without the pictures in this spoiler.
+ Show Spoiler +How to prevent Battle net Facebook integration revealing your in game identity
With the release of Starcraft 2 and the new World of Warcraft expansion Blizzard have announced the release of battle.net 2.0, the new identity/game management “portal” for all their games. The new system supports some great new features, but it has also brought quite a few that a lot of gamers don’t like.
The feature that most people have a problem with is the Facebook integration. The Facebook integration allows someone to provide battle.net 2.0 with their Facebook details and then Battle.net 2.0 will tell them which of their friends has an account with Battle.net 2.0 and give them their friends username. This, for some people, is a very big problem. However there is a solution!
It’s a very simple process, but it’s not something that Battle.net 2.0 supports “natively”, you’ll need to change settings on your Facebook account to prevent this. With the solution provided below you can choose to block everyone on your friends list from finding you, or just a select group of people like your boss and girlfriend! I’ve linked to a video below explaining how to do this but I’ll explain it in text form too!
How to prevent people from finding you through battle.net 2.0 Facebook integration (click the images for a full view)
Login to your Facebook account, once you’re logged click “Account” in the top right, a drop down will appear and from there you should select “Privacy Settings”. At the bottom of the page you should see a link for “customise settings”: Select this.
Now you’ll be taken to a page that lists all your different options in depth, if you scroll to the very bottom of this page you should see your email address listed, to the right of this is a button that displays your current choice, click this and then select “customise” from the drop down box.
This is where you can select who to hide yourself from. To hide from everyone simply select “Only me” then “Save Setting”. If you wish to hide from specific people, for example your wife, girlfriend or boss, enter their name into the field and select them and click “Save Setting”.
Done! It’s that simple! Now the people listed (or everyone!) can’t connect your Facebook account with your Blizzard account!
How/why does this work?
The way battle.net 2.0 Facebook integration works is pretty simple. After entering your username and password it’ll connect to Facebook as you and look for the Email address associated with each of your friends accounts, after it has all these email addresses it will compare them against their database and if a match is found it’ll say “oh hey, we found your friend”. Facebook’s extensive privacy settings (fortunately) allow you to say that you don’t want your friends to be able to see your email address and because battle.net 2.0 simply logs in as your friend they’ll also be unable to see the email!
Are you sure?
I’ve tested this out with a friend and I am 100% sure. After changing the settings (as instructed above) my friend no longer showed up on my list when entering the Facebook information required. This doesn’t mean that in the future it won’t change, however it would require Blizzard to work directly with Facebook which is unlikely!
The video is below, although the sound is quiet and it doesn’t add very much beyond visual representation of the instructions.
Hopefully this explanation will help those of you who will suffer adversely from people being able to find you! Don’t worry, your secret WoW addiction is safe with me.
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i read through some of the comments and what i got out of that is this:
most of the complainers against facebook integration are from WoW.
they are scared about what it will all mean for them. i'm pretty sure blizzard won't screw over the WoW players, but if they do, it's not a big deal, imo. but whatever. if you can't admit that you play a mmorpg, why are you playing it in the first place?
if people want to discriminate against you because they see you play some video game, that's up to them.
quite honestly i'm still amazed at how little smokers are discriminated against. if anything, knowing you're a WoW player could make it easier to get a job, who knows. the interviewer may have the same addiction.
On July 08 2010 00:41 stroggos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2010 21:06 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:On July 07 2010 20:21 aPsychonaut wrote:On July 07 2010 20:15 nyshak wrote:On July 07 2010 19:30 Ullis wrote:
I've found a super effective way too.
I don't have facebook.
Never fails. This. Yeah, that's clever! Instead of just changing a setting, let's all cancel our Facebook-accounts and stop having contact with old friends and family members. you know.. people had contact with old friends and family members before facebook... might sound crazy to the younger generation but people used to meet or call eachother and actually talk! or even use other online services to communicate which dont expose evrything to the whole freakin world. facebook makes it so much easier to stalk girls i barely know though
yeah most of them can be pretty boring but every once in a while you meet someone who is really a great person but already has a boyfriend...lol.
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If you are such a loser that you (think you) need to hide your hobbies from your 'friends' in order for them to like you, find some new friends or grow a pair.
Otherwise I don't see why this matters at all.
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On July 08 2010 00:44 citricsquid wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2010 23:50 Ikkath wrote:On July 07 2010 21:12 citricsquid wrote:On July 07 2010 21:07 m00n wrote:
I think you have to connect to facebook through b.net before people can see you. No, not the case. If you're on your friends friend list and your Facebook email matches your battle net email they'll be shown your account details, whether or not you've ever connected with Facebook in SC2 (or other battle net 2.0 games) is irrelevant. This is of course unless they've changed something during the downtime... Absolute rubbish. As a developer that has a little experience with the Facebook Connect API I can tell you are totally wrong. You have to explicitly give the facebook login details within battle.net to link the accounts and allow battle.net to access any data stored in your facebook profile. Edit: Thinking about it I guess it is possible that Blizzard and Facebook have a special deal worked out that would negate the requirement for a password - though I can't fathom as to why this would be advantagous to either party. I am also a developer, I don't see your point. If I login to the Facebook section of SC2 it will scan my friends list and tell me who on my friends list is a player of SC2 and will give me their username. If my friend has NEVER logged in with the Facebook integration they will still be returned as a result, which I have tested. If you'd read the Facebook documentation and consider why this feature exists (the ability to hide your email from certain people) you'd realise it's very much possible. Maybe you're misunderstanding my explanation, but it does work how I described. I tested this with a friend who had NEVER entered his Facebook information into the box provided by SC2, yet he showed up when I searched for friends. why is that the case, if as you say, it's "impossible"? You're misunderstanding. If I am logged in as you, I can query Facebook (through the API) and it'll respond with the email addresses of all your friends. When you give SC2 your Facebook information it queries Facebook for your friends Emails, it then matches those Emails against the battle net database. This is the reason Facebook allow you to hide your email from friends. When the beta is back online we can verify if you like.
All other facebook connect transactions are opt in only by both parties.
If Blizzard is as you say sidestepping the API and just linking on email addresses (which AFAIR was never given out by default with the facebook connect API) then I guess all bets are off. I am pretty sure this kind of thing was originally against the terms of use of the connect service though hence my caveat about them maybe having a Blizzard specific deal in place...
Taking your evidence at face value I am shocked they have gone down this route to be honest. /sigh
Edit: having just spoken to a friend of mine who is both in the beta and on facebook he could not confirm your evidence. He is adamant that when he originally linked his facebook I did not appear in the list and it was only a few days later when he checked it again did I popup. Though we all know how dodgy battle.net was just after database resets so I wouldn't take it as conclusive.
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On July 08 2010 01:42 Ikkath wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 00:44 citricsquid wrote:On July 07 2010 23:50 Ikkath wrote:On July 07 2010 21:12 citricsquid wrote:On July 07 2010 21:07 m00n wrote:
I think you have to connect to facebook through b.net before people can see you. No, not the case. If you're on your friends friend list and your Facebook email matches your battle net email they'll be shown your account details, whether or not you've ever connected with Facebook in SC2 (or other battle net 2.0 games) is irrelevant. This is of course unless they've changed something during the downtime... Absolute rubbish. As a developer that has a little experience with the Facebook Connect API I can tell you are totally wrong. You have to explicitly give the facebook login details within battle.net to link the accounts and allow battle.net to access any data stored in your facebook profile. Edit: Thinking about it I guess it is possible that Blizzard and Facebook have a special deal worked out that would negate the requirement for a password - though I can't fathom as to why this would be advantagous to either party. I am also a developer, I don't see your point. If I login to the Facebook section of SC2 it will scan my friends list and tell me who on my friends list is a player of SC2 and will give me their username. If my friend has NEVER logged in with the Facebook integration they will still be returned as a result, which I have tested. If you'd read the Facebook documentation and consider why this feature exists (the ability to hide your email from certain people) you'd realise it's very much possible. Maybe you're misunderstanding my explanation, but it does work how I described. I tested this with a friend who had NEVER entered his Facebook information into the box provided by SC2, yet he showed up when I searched for friends. why is that the case, if as you say, it's "impossible"? You're misunderstanding. If I am logged in as you, I can query Facebook (through the API) and it'll respond with the email addresses of all your friends. When you give SC2 your Facebook information it queries Facebook for your friends Emails, it then matches those Emails against the battle net database. This is the reason Facebook allow you to hide your email from friends. When the beta is back online we can verify if you like. All other facebook connect transactions are opt in only by both parties. If Blizzard is as you say sidestepping the API and just linking on email addresses (which AFAIR was never given out by default with the facebook connect API) then I guess all bets are off. I am pretty sure this kind of thing was originally against the terms of use of the connect service though hence my caveat about them maybe having a Blizzard specific deal in place... Taking your evidence at face value I am shocked they have gone down this route to be honest. /sigh Edit: having just spoken to a friend of mine who is both in the beta and on facebook he could not confirm your evidence. He is adamant that when he originally linked his facebook I did not appear in the list and it was only a few days later when he checked it again did I popup. Though we all know how dodgy battle.net was just after database resets so I wouldn't take it as conclusive.
It's really not that magical, the API has made your friends data accesible for years and will continue to. I'll confirm it when the beta comes back online and record it for you, but I checked before (although I didn't record it) and I'm 100% sure it's accurate. The friend I tested it with had never "connected" his account and he showed up, yet after doing my method (and still not connecting) he didn't. That to me is conclusive.
All blizzard is doing is taking your friends data that they make available to your account and comparing it to their own data.
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Um heres another thought dont have a facebook , i know i dont ;p
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On July 08 2010 01:49 citricsquid wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 01:42 Ikkath wrote:On July 08 2010 00:44 citricsquid wrote:On July 07 2010 23:50 Ikkath wrote:On July 07 2010 21:12 citricsquid wrote:On July 07 2010 21:07 m00n wrote:
I think you have to connect to facebook through b.net before people can see you. No, not the case. If you're on your friends friend list and your Facebook email matches your battle net email they'll be shown your account details, whether or not you've ever connected with Facebook in SC2 (or other battle net 2.0 games) is irrelevant. This is of course unless they've changed something during the downtime... Absolute rubbish. As a developer that has a little experience with the Facebook Connect API I can tell you are totally wrong. You have to explicitly give the facebook login details within battle.net to link the accounts and allow battle.net to access any data stored in your facebook profile. Edit: Thinking about it I guess it is possible that Blizzard and Facebook have a special deal worked out that would negate the requirement for a password - though I can't fathom as to why this would be advantagous to either party. I am also a developer, I don't see your point. If I login to the Facebook section of SC2 it will scan my friends list and tell me who on my friends list is a player of SC2 and will give me their username. If my friend has NEVER logged in with the Facebook integration they will still be returned as a result, which I have tested. If you'd read the Facebook documentation and consider why this feature exists (the ability to hide your email from certain people) you'd realise it's very much possible. Maybe you're misunderstanding my explanation, but it does work how I described. I tested this with a friend who had NEVER entered his Facebook information into the box provided by SC2, yet he showed up when I searched for friends. why is that the case, if as you say, it's "impossible"? You're misunderstanding. If I am logged in as you, I can query Facebook (through the API) and it'll respond with the email addresses of all your friends. When you give SC2 your Facebook information it queries Facebook for your friends Emails, it then matches those Emails against the battle net database. This is the reason Facebook allow you to hide your email from friends. When the beta is back online we can verify if you like. All other facebook connect transactions are opt in only by both parties. If Blizzard is as you say sidestepping the API and just linking on email addresses (which AFAIR was never given out by default with the facebook connect API) then I guess all bets are off. I am pretty sure this kind of thing was originally against the terms of use of the connect service though hence my caveat about them maybe having a Blizzard specific deal in place... Taking your evidence at face value I am shocked they have gone down this route to be honest. /sigh Edit: having just spoken to a friend of mine who is both in the beta and on facebook he could not confirm your evidence. He is adamant that when he originally linked his facebook I did not appear in the list and it was only a few days later when he checked it again did I popup. Though we all know how dodgy battle.net was just after database resets so I wouldn't take it as conclusive. It's really not that magical, the API has made your friends data accesible for years and will continue to. I'll confirm it when the beta comes back online and record it for you, but I checked before (although I didn't record it) and I'm 100% sure it's accurate. The friend I tested it with had never "connected" his account and he showed up, yet after doing my method (and still not connecting) he didn't. That to me is conclusive. All blizzard is doing is taking your friends data that they make available to your account and comparing it to their own data.
The facebook graph API only grants access to a "proxied email" address which is not going to be directly comparable to the one stored by Blizzard themselves.
Blizzard should be using the friends.getAppUsers to make the connections.
I am no expert in this API (having only used it briefly - and not for this kind of thing) but it seems that what you suggest (local comparision of returned email addresses) is not possible unless of course Blizzard are not using the public API - which I originally stated could be a possibility.
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On July 07 2010 21:06 BeMannerDuPenner wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2010 20:21 aPsychonaut wrote:On July 07 2010 20:15 nyshak wrote:On July 07 2010 19:30 Ullis wrote:
I've found a super effective way too.
I don't have facebook.
Never fails. This. Yeah, that's clever! Instead of just changing a setting, let's all cancel our Facebook-accounts and stop having contact with old friends and family members. you know.. people had contact with old friends and family members before facebook...
people walked before they had wheels
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Am I the only one concerned about the idea that someone had to make an article explaining how to PREVENT it, and that its not a simple, intuitive dialog box when you load up the game asking you "Do you want SC2 to hook into your Facebook account?"?
I have to wonder if this is the same thing they're going to do with the parental lock on the forums with the RealID thing. Only aware parents who know about this new system, who are concerned about their kids handing out personal information, are going to know about it and proactively prevent it. Everyone else just gets thrown into the mix automatically.
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On July 07 2010 23:50 Ikkath wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2010 21:12 citricsquid wrote:On July 07 2010 21:07 m00n wrote:
I think you have to connect to facebook through b.net before people can see you. No, not the case. If you're on your friends friend list and your Facebook email matches your battle net email they'll be shown your account details, whether or not you've ever connected with Facebook in SC2 (or other battle net 2.0 games) is irrelevant. This is of course unless they've changed something during the downtime... Absolute rubbish. As a developer that has a little experience with the Facebook Connect API I can tell you are totally wrong. You have to explicitly give the facebook login details within battle.net to link the accounts and allow battle.net to access any data stored in your facebook profile. Edit: Thinking about it I guess it is possible that Blizzard and Facebook have a special deal worked out that would negate the requirement for a password - though I can't fathom as to why this would be advantagous to either party.
No, it's not rubbish. You are misunderstanding how it works.
Here's the way I understand it. Myself, "Abyss", and my friend, "Ikkath" both have facebook and both play on B.Net. If I go through Facebook to look up Ikkath's email, I can. If I use Battle.net's Facebook integration, I tell Battle.net my email and pass, it logs into Facebook and brings up a list of my friends and their email addresses (visible to me, as a friend of them). Battle.net then cross references the list of friend's emails to the list of battle.net users emails.
You give Facebook permission to share any of your information with your friends. Your friends give permission for Battle.net to access anything that they can access.
That's how I understand it, how the article explains it, and the means of blocking it follows suit.
On July 08 2010 02:24 Bibdy wrote:
Am I the only one concerned about the idea that someone had to make an article explaining how to PREVENT it, and that its not a simple, intuitive dialog box when you load up the game asking you "Do you want SC2 to hook into your Facebook account?"?
I have to wonder if this is the same thing they're going to do with the parental lock on the forums with the RealID thing. Only aware parents who know about this new system, who are concerned about their kids handing out personal information, are going to know about it and proactively prevent it. Everyone else just gets thrown into the mix automatically.
Read how it works. You DO have to give battle.net permission to access your account to see YOUR friends, but Your friends can give Battle.net access to view what they can view (your email).
What I don't understand is why people go up in arms about it. this is no different from any of your friends going through each of their friends lists and adding every email listed for every friend they have - just goes a lot quicker.
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wow, thanks so much man.
great post
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On July 07 2010 19:30 Ullis wrote:
I've found a super effective way too.
I don't have facebook.
Never fails.
You are a very smart man.
Let's be friends! :p
For the other people who don't get why it's such a bad thing. You
a) don't work at a place that checks references and does background checks
b) aren't job/career hunting
c) probably don't use facebook that much anyway
Privacy is always a major issue on the internet.
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On July 08 2010 03:19 StarStruck wrote:
You are a very smart man.
Let's be friends! :p
but not on Facebook!
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On July 08 2010 03:19 StarStruck wrote:
You are a very smart man.
Let's be friends! :p
Add me on facebook <3
Edit: horribly slow me 
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I'm confused..
I personally don't want most of my friends to know I play Starcraft II, and definitely not my coworkers. But why would I care if my friends that also play Starcraft II find out I play Starcraft II?
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On July 08 2010 04:03 PokePill wrote:
I'm confused..
I personally don't want most of my friends to know I play Starcraft II, and definitely not my coworkers. But why would I care if my friends that also play Starcraft II find out I play Starcraft II?
Explain yourself.
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On July 07 2010 19:39 fams wrote:
Could just use a different email address for B.net...
Nah, that'd be too easy!
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wowww this is very nice! thanks!
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On July 08 2010 03:59 citricsquid wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 03:19 StarStruck wrote:
You are a very smart man.
Let's be friends! :p but not on Facebook!
Ofc we can <3
I'm a sucker for compliments. I never liked facebook and other sites (like there is a site at least in sweden named birthday.se where you can look up peoples age, name, location etc.)
I'm no "1337 h4xx0r" but even I could dig up pretty much everything I'd like to know..
I've always avoided facebook partly because it keeps me a tiny tad under the radar and also because I don't see the point of it. MSN and forums goes a long way for me.
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On July 08 2010 02:53 AbyssV3 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2010 23:50 Ikkath wrote:On July 07 2010 21:12 citricsquid wrote:On July 07 2010 21:07 m00n wrote:
I think you have to connect to facebook through b.net before people can see you. No, not the case. If you're on your friends friend list and your Facebook email matches your battle net email they'll be shown your account details, whether or not you've ever connected with Facebook in SC2 (or other battle net 2.0 games) is irrelevant. This is of course unless they've changed something during the downtime... Absolute rubbish. As a developer that has a little experience with the Facebook Connect API I can tell you are totally wrong. You have to explicitly give the facebook login details within battle.net to link the accounts and allow battle.net to access any data stored in your facebook profile. Edit: Thinking about it I guess it is possible that Blizzard and Facebook have a special deal worked out that would negate the requirement for a password - though I can't fathom as to why this would be advantagous to either party. No, it's not rubbish. You are misunderstanding how it works. Here's the way I understand it. Myself, "Abyss", and my friend, "Ikkath" both have facebook and both play on B.Net. If I go through Facebook to look up Ikkath's email, I can. If I use Battle.net's Facebook integration, I tell Battle.net my email and pass, it logs into Facebook and brings up a list of my friends and their email addresses (visible to me, as a friend of them). Battle.net then cross references the list of friend's emails to the list of battle.net users emails. You give Facebook permission to share any of your information with your friends. Your friends give permission for Battle.net to access anything that they can access. That's how I understand it, how the article explains it, and the means of blocking it follows suit. Show nested quote +On July 08 2010 02:24 Bibdy wrote:
Am I the only one concerned about the idea that someone had to make an article explaining how to PREVENT it, and that its not a simple, intuitive dialog box when you load up the game asking you "Do you want SC2 to hook into your Facebook account?"?
I have to wonder if this is the same thing they're going to do with the parental lock on the forums with the RealID thing. Only aware parents who know about this new system, who are concerned about their kids handing out personal information, are going to know about it and proactively prevent it. Everyone else just gets thrown into the mix automatically. Read how it works. You DO have to give battle.net permission to access your account to see YOUR friends, but Your friends can give Battle.net access to view what they can view (your email). What I don't understand is why people go up in arms about it. this is no different from any of your friends going through each of their friends lists and adding every email listed for every friend they have - just goes a lot quicker.
I am not misunderstanding how it works at all. I am trying to understand how such a setup would work given the facebook public API (that I have used a little bit so its not like I am talking out of my arse here).
Did you even read my other post about the API? It doesnt look like you get access to the real email address of the users - you get a proxied email that is a hashed email based on the user/app pair. With this it wouldnt be possible for them to do the matching at Blizzard's end.
Though I am by no means an expert in the API so there may well be another call that gets you the unmasked email address - though I couldn't find it this afternoon. Of course that is all by the by if Blizzard have a special deal with facebook (which I find hard to believe at face value).
My facebook email isn't the same as my battle.net email - yet people added me just fine after I had logged in once and thus had the "battle.net service" application authorised on my facebook profile. The presence of this app is what determines if the user is flagged up as a potential RealID friend - not a reverse lookup of the email address.
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EPT
