No more anonymous forum trolls?

Miscellaneous babblings from the Wildfire Riders and friends!

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Thiyenn
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Thiyenn » Tue Jul 06, 2010 9:52 pm

oh god my brains

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Lansiron
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Lansiron » Tue Jul 06, 2010 9:53 pm

What? Hell, that'd be incentive.

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Shad
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Shad » Tue Jul 06, 2010 9:59 pm

Illi, I love you. I'm just saying.
I don't know if you know this, but baby bears are precious and soft. --Mylune

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Illithias
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Illithias » Tue Jul 06, 2010 10:37 pm

Shad wrote:Illi, I love you. I'm just saying.


It's a remarkably common condition. Just sayin'.
I am become Illithias, Destroyer of Worlds.

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Itanya_blade
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Itanya_blade » Tue Jul 06, 2010 11:03 pm

I'm with Gryph on this.

Part of the stated reason for this change is to control forum trolling. Of course, what they are also doing is eliminating a number of concerned and helpful posters that do not want their real names exposed. Blithely telling their customers that the forums are optional, when their own employees direct people to the forums is just insulting and crass.

If this does go into effect, I will never post on the forums again. I have been on our realm forums since I joined the realm and I feel I have greatly contributed. I have been on the Guild Relations forum since it was created. I will no longer post there and I suspect that forum will be fairly empty simply for the social stigma and lack of anonymity.

I never had a problem with Real ID when Blizzard made it clear that it was just sharing of names between friends.

Forcing me to use my real name when posting on a forum makes that previous statement a flat out lie.

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Bellesta
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Bellesta » Tue Jul 06, 2010 11:07 pm

Suddenly I feel a lot less secure when I found a search engine that, with my father's name (not mine, lucky lucky), can find all his military records, every address he ever lived at, copies of his birth and death certificates, and more.

My mother has just as much info on there.

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Illithias
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Illithias » Tue Jul 06, 2010 11:12 pm

Actually, I'd be interested to see just how much raw, accurate data can be harvested online from obtaining someone's IRL powerword from a forum. If anyone wants to have a go at me as an example, feel free, and share with us.
I am become Illithias, Destroyer of Worlds.

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Gryphonheart
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Gryphonheart » Wed Jul 07, 2010 12:46 am

Bellesta wrote:Suddenly I feel a lot less secure when I found a search engine that, with my father's name (not mine, lucky lucky), can find all his military records, every address he ever lived at, copies of his birth and death certificates, and more.

My mother has just as much info on there.


Well, to be fair, a lot of that information (such as addresses) is considered public information that is collected by the government and various agencies. The extremely creepy and why-the-hell-isn't-this-illegal-already part about it is that some companies simply aggregate this information and upload it to their private databases to sell to anyone willing to shell out a few bucks for it. It pisses me off that people can so easily profit from other peoples' lives without their consent or even knowing about it.

Additionally, many of the sites that do this kind of stuff have a feature that allows you to opt-out of their databases, but they make it extremely difficult to use and often abuse it to collect even more data about you. For example, one site only allowed (not sure if this is still the case) people to opt out via e-mail, and instead of removing their data, simply added the e-mail address they used to request the removal into the file(s) associated with their names. I get fuzzy on the details after that, but they either A) kept the databases viewable for a while after that and then removed them for a set (short) time, then brought them back up with slightly altered info as a new entry; B) claimed that there was an error in removing the profile and asked for the request to be resent, all while updating it with the e-mail addresses but not removing any data; C) limited the number of files that could be requested to be removed to a per e-mail address basis, and simply broke up peoples' info into multiple files or created multiple files with slight variations (such as First Middle Last, First M Last, First Last, etc. — all with mostly the same info, just categorized as different files) to make it extremely difficult for people to scrub themselves out of the databases completely; or D) combinations of the above.

/endrant
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Ever since I was little, ever since I was little, it looked like fun—And it's no coincidence I've come...And I can die when I'm done

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Bellesta
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Bellesta » Wed Jul 07, 2010 1:40 am

Gryphonheart wrote:
Bellesta wrote:Suddenly I feel a lot less secure when I found a search engine that, with my father's name (not mine, lucky lucky), can find all his military records, every address he ever lived at, copies of his birth and death certificates, and more.

My mother has just as much info on there.


Well, to be fair, a lot of that information (such as addresses) is considered public information that is collected by the government and various agencies. The extremely creepy and why-the-hell-isn't-this-illegal-already part about it is that some companies simply aggregate this information and upload it to their private databases to sell to anyone willing to shell out a few bucks for it. It pisses me off that people can so easily profit from other peoples' lives without their consent or even knowing about it.


Yeah, and family records can be obtained if you go to the right places and whatnot. I suppose what made it real to me was looking at scans of the same documents I have in my file cabinet. I KNOW that the info is there because there are records on file of such things though multiple avenues. Census and such in the US becomes public info, and things like the Yellow Pages being online doesn't exactly make it super hard to find even without search engines like pipl.com

I've noticed, putting several names into that search, it's the older generations that have the more info up- and only my relatives who live in the US. Like you said, public info and all that. It just takes time to circulate. 'My' generation, and I use the term very loosely, have things like facebook and myspace and whatnot, but not entire records and websites offering to do background checks. I don't think we're a generation that'll totally avoid the mass-info-make-public, I think we just haven't had enough time to have those databases build up with our names.

Bricu
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Bricu » Wed Jul 07, 2010 7:46 am

On a regular basis, I google the name of old clients. As a general rule, I limit this search to the kid who wanted to kill me; however, there are times I want see if I can find other clients, or determine if someone was recently arrested. I realized, from day one, that they would be able to do the same to me. With two clicks, kids like Mike could find out a lot about where I live now. If he was really still upset with me--which I doubt--he could spend money and get really accurate information.

If I posted on the forums regularly, it would just be one more thing he could do to me to get "even."


It is terribly easy to find me on the net. For the most part, I'm okay with it. I am not okay with making it even easier to find me. I am not okay with having my choice removed for me. Developing a social network allows one to choose who you want to be social with. I don't want to be social with Ravenhunter. I don't want to be social with Corpsegoat.

I sent an email to Blizz yesterday. I will probably post on it today or tomorrow. I honestly believe that Blizz is going to recognize that they've fucked up. Just keep cool and keep protesting.
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