You haven't seen the 51 page thread no the WoW forums that filled up in hours have you? And the number of people that have quit wow over it (supposedly by people posting in the thread).
I have seen it. And I believe that 95% of the people who say they quit WoW never really go through with it.
The fact remains (and that goes for what mojosdoj said) that unless you specifically mention it, nobody knows who you are in real-life. I fail to see how your privacy is compromised when someone cannot link a toon's name to a real life identity.
If someone had an unhealthy interest in you, they could already watch your armory profile closely, see your achievements evolve over time, see the statistics change, see your gear evolve... etc. It's pretty easy to see a pattern and figure out when someone raids for example, without the RSS feed. Not to mention websites that track characters on realms...
The fact that this adds the time of the day is just one extra detail. Everyone's acting as if a pile of info has suddenly become public. That's not the case. Only the time is new and it's now provided in the form of a feed for easy integration into feed readers. So great... you don't have to write an armory parser to get the dates for achievements, statistics... etc. Big deal... there are tons of websites tracking achievements, guild progression by checking individual achievements and the like. Did everyone suddenly realize this was out there?
It reminds me of the ilvl situation. Now that it's been made more visible by Blizz, all those GearScore-like addons have come out of the woodwork, even though ilvl isn't a new concept. Same thing here. All they added is the time, the rest was already there and anyone dedicated enough could already know quite a lot about you. Everyone needs to relax and needs to learn to keep their real-life identity separate from their online characters' names. If you don't, you're not being careful enough about security. Your privacy is NOT the same thing as your toon's privacy.
Finally, I still question this concern over the time. People who play when they shouldn't are playing with fire anyway. It's only a matter of time before they got caught anyway, whether they do it at work, or home when they're not supposed to... etc.
I admit that I fail to see the interest of the feature, any concern aside. You probably have a good idea what your character has done, looted and achieved. I don't quite see how relevant it is to you to get that information in atom format.
What kind of service or added value are you expected to get from this ?
Given the RSS feeds are public, one could build a script to consolidate the feeds of every level 80 characters of a guild. This would help to follow who got what without requiring that someone ran a spying addon for every raid. It is also better than scraping the armory because it lists what you looted and not only what you have equipped.
I'm sorry, I really fail to see the privacy concerns. Can someone explain how this effects your privacy more, than having achievements on the armory? Sure it tells you exact times for something but unless they have a link between your real life name and your character name there is no credible reason of how your privacy is effected.
If its concerns about people in real life checking on you (which at the moment I'm guessing it is) then I still don't see the problem, if you shouldn't be on it then the answer is don't be on it or don't tell people your characters name?
If its people like your gf/bf or family, why the hell do they care? Unless your lying to them about being on it and they don't trust you enough to check on your RSS then you have bigger issues to sort out.
All in all I may of missed the reason but I think this all boils down to people doing what they shouldn't be doing AND the modern day attitude that anything that can place you somewhere is EVIL, will be used by governments to keep track off you and is the new anti-christ. None of these concerns hold any credibility 99% of the times there bought up.
Sorry, but I have to strongly disagree with a lot of people in here and I'm really frightened to see how many people don't think this isn't a privacy concern.
Just think of it like that: Would you really want everybody (and I mean it) to know, what you did yesterday between 12 and 2 am? Really? It may not be WoW, but it's a matter of perspective... So next time you get to think of that, it's not your free time, in which you're getting observed and logged, but something of more importance to you.
First of its not everybody, its only people who know your character and real life name. My answer to "Do I want everybody to know what I did yesterday between 12 and 2" is I honestly 100% don't care I weren't doing anything I shouldn't off been doing so why should I care?
Some people don't care that what they do is cataloged for all the world to see (Facebook, Twitter blogs telling everyone what you are doing in the bathroom, web pages with people's piano-playing cats, etc.). Others do in fact care.
Just because "you don't see a problem" doesn't mean there isn't one. "Your privacy is NOT the same thing as your toon's privacy." No, actually, it can be.
Blizzard has your name on the account your characters are on. People in the past you have given your real life name to can far more easily look up your goings-on in WoW now. And many (if not all, i.e. griefers/idiots) people playing on non-RP servers play their characters as a representation of themselves. They behave in RL similar to how they do in-game. Along with people getting to know you even better over Ventrilo voice chat, etc..
Those who don't care about privacy will say "so what". Those who do care may be disturbed over the new RSS feeds. A person's desire for privacy should have no effect on your desire not to have any.
Every character has a player behind it. Blizzard should allow an opt-out.
Blizzard has your name on the account your characters are on. People in the past you have given your real life name to can far more easily look up your goings-on in WoW now. And many (if not all, i.e. griefers/idiots) people playing on non-RP servers play their characters as a representation of themselves. They behave in RL similar to how they do in-game. Along with people getting to know you even better over Ventrilo voice chat, etc..
Then don't give out your name. That's a pretty silly thing to do on the internet anyway. I've met some guildies in RL in the past, and they still don't know my last name. Why on earth would I give them that info?
The rest has nothing to do with privacy. So what if they behave online as they do in RL? What are the odds someone will actually recognize you from your voice on vent or actions in game? And if they did, why does it matter? Is it gonna be your boss recognizing you, out of all 11.5 million possible players out there? And do your play when you shouldn't?...
And no, your privacy has nothing to do with your toon's privacy. You need to learn to break the link between the toon and the player and that starts by not giving out your name on the net. Your personality online isn't enough to ID you.
And frankly... what kind of disturbed individual is out there stalking people on the armory? And what are the odds that you're the one being stalked? Before the feed, anyone could have written a script mining someone's achievements and stats from the armory every few hours and they'd have gotten the same result anyway... this thing is being blown out of proportion.
Just because "you don't see a problem" doesn't mean there isn't one. "Your privacy is NOT the same thing as your toon's privacy." No, actually, it can be.
Before the feed, anyone could have written a script mining someone's achievements and stats from the armory every few hours and they'd have gotten the same result anyway... this thing is being blown out of proportion.
You need to learn to break the link between the toon and the player and that starts by not giving out your name on the net.
You need to learn that not everyone shares your disregard for privacy.
If Blizzard allows an opt-out to the Armory RSS feeds for people, how is that going to negatively affect you personally? If you are so obsessed over someone's movements in WoW that it does affect you personally, there are other, more difficult alternatives to looking up someone's activity (as you have brought up).
Before the feed, anyone could have written a script mining someone's achievements and stats from the armory every few hours and they'd have gotten the same result anyway...
You can pick whoever you want to "stalk" there, and this was well before the RSS feeds on the Armory site.
This is the same straw man argument used by every other supporter of erosion of privacy. "Well, if people want to find out where you have coffee every morning, they could hire a private investigator". The problem with such arguments is that making access to your goings-on easier (as the Armory RSS feeds now do), it very much increases access for others to find out your goings-on.
Increase in ease of finding out information about someone/someone's activities=a corresponding effective reduction in privacy. No matter what the situation; whether its people trying to track your kitty in your house ("my kitty is not me, what do I care") or anything else. If you don't care, cool. Some/many do care.
Again, they should provide an optional opt-out of the RSS feeds.
You need to learn that not everyone shares your disregard for privacy.
You got me figured out all wrong. I don't Twitter, I don't have a Facebook page, I don't have a myspace page, I don't use IM clients, very rarely do I go on IRC and I use multiple e-mail addresses. And that's the whole point. I value my privacy. And I made damn sure that there is no link between my real life ID and my in-game character. Starting by not giving out my full name. Which is exactly why I don't care about this feed. Nobody is going to ID me from it, no matter how much they stalk my feed.
I would care if personal info was published. But that's not the case. That's where you don't understand my arguments. I very much care about my privacy, contrary to what you think. But my toons' feeds are NOT me, nor are they tied to my real-life ID. I have no reason to be worried about the feed. Keep RL and virtual life separate and you won't care either.
Oh and about your kitty analogy... people would know it's yours. People shouldn't know who your toons belong to. If they do, it's something you should rectify.
You can't argue invasion of privacy when no personal info is given.
OK, you are in fact concerned about your own privacy. But...not about other people's then? ;)
What someone "should or should not" do or how they "should or should not disconnect their characters from themselves" isn't the issue. The issue is the increase in access to a person's actions online. Whether or not personal info is given.
You can't argue invasion of privacy when no personal info is given.
The same argument can be made for placing video cameras on every street corner. Or in public parks. Or heck, wiretaps & a telescreen in everyone's home.
These privacy issues arise in many other online activities; search engines tracking your web browsing, Flash cookies tracking what you do on websites you visit and on and on. But hey, no "personal info" is given, so its OK! No, it often is not. It may be OK for you, but not for others.
Everyone has different thresholds for what amount of privacy they are comfortable in losing when online (or in real life). Some may have different thresholds for themselves vs. what they think other people should be comfortable with.
Basically, increases in ease of access to either personal information, personal behavior or personal activity (or any/all of them)=reductions in privacy. What reductions you are willing to accept may be different from what others are willing to.
The same argument can be made for placing video cameras on every street corner. Or in public parks. Or heck, wiretaps & a telescreen in everyone's home.
These privacy issues arise in many other online activities; search engines tracking your web browsing, Flash cookies tracking what you do on websites you visit and on and on. But hey, no "personal info" is given, so its OK! No, it often is not. It may be OK for you, but not for others.
Everyone has different thresholds for what amount of privacy they are comfortable in losing when online (or in real life). Some may have different thresholds for themselves vs. what they think other people should be comfortable with.
Basically, increases in ease of access to either personal information, personal behavior or personal activity (or any/all of them)=reductions in privacy. What reductions you are willing to accept may be different from what others are willing to.
You just don't see my point... in your examples, your real "self", for lack of a better word, is affected (a camera films you, not a virtual toon...). In the case of the feed, it isn't. It's just a toon that cannot be linked to a real identity (unless the player specifically reveals that info). This is what I'm trying to say that's not getting through. Blizzard is not publishing anything personal. "Privacy" and "invasion of privacy" have a real clear defined meaning that does not apply here, no matter how much you want it to be.
The legal view on this greatly depends on the country you live in (i.e. which law is applied). I'm quite shure (and I have a proper legal education btw) that Blizzards TOU and EULA will get shred to peaces if they ever get looked at by a german court. Blizzards luck is: they will probably never get there.
Germany has a very strict law regarding customer protection and Blizzard violates a lot of that.
Same goes for this RSS feed. European privacy protection laws are very strict compared to the US laws. Data collection is already restricted in a way that Blizzard might not be allowed to even store data about player activity at all, if that data is not absolutely necessary for billing or similar purposes.
Making data about players activity public is an absolute no-go, especially if there is no opt-out. Question is: Is toon activity = player activity? Not if you keep you toons name a absolute secret, so not even (former) familiy members or (former) friends know its name. (Law protects your privacy even in family.) My bets would be that a german court would say that this is a step to far. In a social game you shouldn't have to keep that kind of secret to protect your privacy. But this question might be open to discussion.
But there is another problem involved. Childrens protection goes far beyond. This game is free from age 12. You can't expect children to keep their virtual identity a secret. I'm certain that a court would rule against Blizzard if parents sue because there is no opt-out. They would probably go even further and require an opt-in solution. And no, Blizzard doesn't have the right to refuse contracting with people who don't opt in.
This would be different if the RSS feed would serve a necessary, important purpose. But it obviously doesn't.
It wouldn't help if the data is available by other means as long as these sources are controlled by Blizzard. They would probably only have to close them as well. And I have my strong suspicions whether Blizz is allowed to store some of that data in the first place (login times especially).
All according to german law (and probably european as well).
Blizzard's Armory actually advertises/promotes the link between your game virtual identity and other more easily identifiable ones.
Example: Their promotion on the Armory front page of the integration with Facebook.
Also I find the persistence of some posters to offer an overly restrictive definition of "privacy" very disturbing.
Browser cookies do not normally store your real life identity details but can still make you a target for marketing schemes and are a privacy concern.
The question also remains very simple in its initial form: Is an opt-out feature desirable?
My answer is yes and I haven't found one iota of argument against it.
If you don't care about tracking of your online activities either way you'll never touch it.
For those that do it's there to be used.
If that's just a small % of the subscriber base what do you care?
All title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the Game and all copies thereof (including without limitation any titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialog, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, character inventories, structural or landscape designs, animations, sounds, musical compositions and recordings, audio-visual effects, storylines, character likenesses, methods of operation, moral rights, and any related documentation) are owned or licensed by Blizzard.
All rights and title in and to the Service (including without limitation any user accounts, titles, computer code, themes, objects, characters, character names, stories, dialogue, catch phrases, locations, concepts, artwork, animations, sounds, musical compositions, audio-visual effects, methods of operation, moral rights, any related documentation, "applets" incorporated into the Game Client, transcripts of the chat rooms, character profile information, recordings of games played using the Game Client, and the Game Client and server software) are owned by Blizzard or its licensors.
and:
you may not:
[...]Communicate or post any user's personal information in the Game, or on websites or forums related to the Game, except that a user may communicate his or her own personal information in a private message directed to a single user;
That one is admittedly ironic since it prevents you from posting your toon name on, say, Facebook, yet they encourage you to use the RSS feed for that purpose.
From the Armory:
The data contained herein is proprietary to Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. You are granted a limited license to make personal use of the information contained herein for non-commercial purposes only.
We've all agreed to the EULA and ToS.
It's info owned by Blizzard that they're posting in those feeds.
Blizzard might write into their contracts whatever they want. Even if their TOS and EULA would be valid, privacy is foremost governed by privacy laws and not by TOS and EULA. At least in Germany.
It's not important who owns the information. It's important whether law allows them to use the information the way they want. And this might be quite different in different countries so sooner or later they will have to think about adapting to national laws.
I have seen it. And I believe that 95% of the people who say they quit WoW never really go through with it.
The fact remains (and that goes for what mojosdoj said) that unless you specifically mention it, nobody knows who you are in real-life. I fail to see how your privacy is compromised when someone cannot link a toon's name to a real life identity.
If someone had an unhealthy interest in you, they could already watch your armory profile closely, see your achievements evolve over time, see the statistics change, see your gear evolve... etc. It's pretty easy to see a pattern and figure out when someone raids for example, without the RSS feed. Not to mention websites that track characters on realms...
The fact that this adds the time of the day is just one extra detail. Everyone's acting as if a pile of info has suddenly become public. That's not the case. Only the time is new and it's now provided in the form of a feed for easy integration into feed readers. So great... you don't have to write an armory parser to get the dates for achievements, statistics... etc. Big deal... there are tons of websites tracking achievements, guild progression by checking individual achievements and the like. Did everyone suddenly realize this was out there?
It reminds me of the ilvl situation. Now that it's been made more visible by Blizz, all those GearScore-like addons have come out of the woodwork, even though ilvl isn't a new concept. Same thing here. All they added is the time, the rest was already there and anyone dedicated enough could already know quite a lot about you. Everyone needs to relax and needs to learn to keep their real-life identity separate from their online characters' names. If you don't, you're not being careful enough about security. Your privacy is NOT the same thing as your toon's privacy.
Finally, I still question this concern over the time. People who play when they shouldn't are playing with fire anyway. It's only a matter of time before they got caught anyway, whether they do it at work, or home when they're not supposed to... etc.
What kind of service or added value are you expected to get from this ?
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumIf its concerns about people in real life checking on you (which at the moment I'm guessing it is) then I still don't see the problem, if you shouldn't be on it then the answer is don't be on it or don't tell people your characters name?
If its people like your gf/bf or family, why the hell do they care? Unless your lying to them about being on it and they don't trust you enough to check on your RSS then you have bigger issues to sort out.
All in all I may of missed the reason but I think this all boils down to people doing what they shouldn't be doing AND the modern day attitude that anything that can place you somewhere is EVIL, will be used by governments to keep track off you and is the new anti-christ. None of these concerns hold any credibility 99% of the times there bought up.
So am I missing something?
Edit: sorry missed this somehow
First of its not everybody, its only people who know your character and real life name. My answer to "Do I want everybody to know what I did yesterday between 12 and 2" is I honestly 100% don't care I weren't doing anything I shouldn't off been doing so why should I care?
Edit2: sorry missed the last post date somehow
Just because "you don't see a problem" doesn't mean there isn't one. "Your privacy is NOT the same thing as your toon's privacy." No, actually, it can be.
Blizzard has your name on the account your characters are on. People in the past you have given your real life name to can far more easily look up your goings-on in WoW now. And many (if not all, i.e. griefers/idiots) people playing on non-RP servers play their characters as a representation of themselves. They behave in RL similar to how they do in-game. Along with people getting to know you even better over Ventrilo voice chat, etc..
Those who don't care about privacy will say "so what". Those who do care may be disturbed over the new RSS feeds. A person's desire for privacy should have no effect on your desire not to have any.
Every character has a player behind it. Blizzard should allow an opt-out.
Then don't give out your name. That's a pretty silly thing to do on the internet anyway. I've met some guildies in RL in the past, and they still don't know my last name. Why on earth would I give them that info?
The rest has nothing to do with privacy. So what if they behave online as they do in RL? What are the odds someone will actually recognize you from your voice on vent or actions in game? And if they did, why does it matter? Is it gonna be your boss recognizing you, out of all 11.5 million possible players out there? And do your play when you shouldn't?...
And no, your privacy has nothing to do with your toon's privacy. You need to learn to break the link between the toon and the player and that starts by not giving out your name on the net. Your personality online isn't enough to ID you.
And frankly... what kind of disturbed individual is out there stalking people on the armory? And what are the odds that you're the one being stalked? Before the feed, anyone could have written a script mining someone's achievements and stats from the armory every few hours and they'd have gotten the same result anyway... this thing is being blown out of proportion.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumYeah, it was done some time ago, actually... http://wowgossips.com/
You can pick whoever you want to "stalk" there, and this was well before the RSS feeds on the Armory site.
You need to learn that not everyone shares your disregard for privacy.
If Blizzard allows an opt-out to the Armory RSS feeds for people, how is that going to negatively affect you personally? If you are so obsessed over someone's movements in WoW that it does affect you personally, there are other, more difficult alternatives to looking up someone's activity (as you have brought up).
This is the same straw man argument used by every other supporter of erosion of privacy. "Well, if people want to find out where you have coffee every morning, they could hire a private investigator". The problem with such arguments is that making access to your goings-on easier (as the Armory RSS feeds now do), it very much increases access for others to find out your goings-on.
Increase in ease of finding out information about someone/someone's activities=a corresponding effective reduction in privacy. No matter what the situation; whether its people trying to track your kitty in your house ("my kitty is not me, what do I care") or anything else. If you don't care, cool. Some/many do care.
Again, they should provide an optional opt-out of the RSS feeds.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumSuggestions forum is that way. -->
There is zero point to having this discussion here.
You got me figured out all wrong. I don't Twitter, I don't have a Facebook page, I don't have a myspace page, I don't use IM clients, very rarely do I go on IRC and I use multiple e-mail addresses. And that's the whole point. I value my privacy. And I made damn sure that there is no link between my real life ID and my in-game character. Starting by not giving out my full name. Which is exactly why I don't care about this feed. Nobody is going to ID me from it, no matter how much they stalk my feed.
I would care if personal info was published. But that's not the case. That's where you don't understand my arguments. I very much care about my privacy, contrary to what you think. But my toons' feeds are NOT me, nor are they tied to my real-life ID. I have no reason to be worried about the feed. Keep RL and virtual life separate and you won't care either.
Oh and about your kitty analogy... people would know it's yours. People shouldn't know who your toons belong to. If they do, it's something you should rectify.
You can't argue invasion of privacy when no personal info is given.
What someone "should or should not" do or how they "should or should not disconnect their characters from themselves" isn't the issue. The issue is the increase in access to a person's actions online. Whether or not personal info is given.
The same argument can be made for placing video cameras on every street corner. Or in public parks. Or heck, wiretaps & a telescreen in everyone's home.
These privacy issues arise in many other online activities; search engines tracking your web browsing, Flash cookies tracking what you do on websites you visit and on and on. But hey, no "personal info" is given, so its OK! No, it often is not. It may be OK for you, but not for others.
Everyone has different thresholds for what amount of privacy they are comfortable in losing when online (or in real life). Some may have different thresholds for themselves vs. what they think other people should be comfortable with.
Basically, increases in ease of access to either personal information, personal behavior or personal activity (or any/all of them)=reductions in privacy. What reductions you are willing to accept may be different from what others are willing to.
*scratch head* No... my privacy isn't affected by that feed, and neither is anyone else's. That's what I said.
You just don't see my point... in your examples, your real "self", for lack of a better word, is affected (a camera films you, not a virtual toon...). In the case of the feed, it isn't. It's just a toon that cannot be linked to a real identity (unless the player specifically reveals that info). This is what I'm trying to say that's not getting through. Blizzard is not publishing anything personal. "Privacy" and "invasion of privacy" have a real clear defined meaning that does not apply here, no matter how much you want it to be.
Germany has a very strict law regarding customer protection and Blizzard violates a lot of that.
Same goes for this RSS feed. European privacy protection laws are very strict compared to the US laws. Data collection is already restricted in a way that Blizzard might not be allowed to even store data about player activity at all, if that data is not absolutely necessary for billing or similar purposes.
Making data about players activity public is an absolute no-go, especially if there is no opt-out. Question is: Is toon activity = player activity? Not if you keep you toons name a absolute secret, so not even (former) familiy members or (former) friends know its name. (Law protects your privacy even in family.) My bets would be that a german court would say that this is a step to far. In a social game you shouldn't have to keep that kind of secret to protect your privacy. But this question might be open to discussion.
But there is another problem involved. Childrens protection goes far beyond. This game is free from age 12. You can't expect children to keep their virtual identity a secret. I'm certain that a court would rule against Blizzard if parents sue because there is no opt-out. They would probably go even further and require an opt-in solution. And no, Blizzard doesn't have the right to refuse contracting with people who don't opt in.
This would be different if the RSS feed would serve a necessary, important purpose. But it obviously doesn't.
It wouldn't help if the data is available by other means as long as these sources are controlled by Blizzard. They would probably only have to close them as well. And I have my strong suspicions whether Blizz is allowed to store some of that data in the first place (login times especially).
All according to german law (and probably european as well).
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumExample: Their promotion on the Armory front page of the integration with Facebook.
Also I find the persistence of some posters to offer an overly restrictive definition of "privacy" very disturbing.
Browser cookies do not normally store your real life identity details but can still make you a target for marketing schemes and are a privacy concern.
The question also remains very simple in its initial form:
Is an opt-out feature desirable?
My answer is yes and I haven't found one iota of argument against it.
If you don't care about tracking of your online activities either way you'll never touch it.
For those that do it's there to be used.
If that's just a small % of the subscriber base what do you care?
From the EULA:
Terms of Use:
and:
That one is admittedly ironic since it prevents you from posting your toon name on, say, Facebook, yet they encourage you to use the RSS feed for that purpose.
From the Armory:
We've all agreed to the EULA and ToS.
It's info owned by Blizzard that they're posting in those feeds.
Point being... keep your RL info private.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumBlizzard might write into their contracts whatever they want. Even if their TOS and EULA would be valid, privacy is foremost governed by privacy laws and not by TOS and EULA. At least in Germany.
It's not important who owns the information. It's important whether law allows them to use the information the way they want. And this might be quite different in different countries so sooner or later they will have to think about adapting to national laws.
Opt-out would be the easiest way.