RealID.

This will be a big post. Like, really big. Because it's a big issue, and it's one that the privacy brigade -- the "Hockey moms" and the Daily Mail readers -- have all wrong. But, frankly, when do they stop to apply their walnut brains?

(If you're offended by the outset without even looking at the content I'm about to pour out, you have proven my first point. Congratulations for being a walking foil for my cynicism. It's all right. I won't force you to strain your least-exercised muscle. I do hope you feel small in the process of clicking the X in the corner, though.)

So, RealID: Blizzard's new pet that it is rolling out throughout the new Battle.net system. This post is going to be one huge counter-rant against all the people I mention in the first paragraph. To give it some structure, I will be working through this Wowhead blog post on the subject. I'll pick out the quotes that capture the essence of the arguments against this system, and will comprehensively destroy them in order of importance and distance from the central point (i.e., the points that cause me to go on tangents will be placed later on in the article).

But, first, if you genuinely don't already know what I'm on about, here's the essentials: Blizzard, having created a "RealID" friends list (which, it turns out, does not require you to know more than one friend's e-mail address, since you can then pull the other people off their friends-of-friends list -- so, well done, guys, your security is actually not at all affected there either), is changing the official forum structure. When the new Battle.net system is rolled out, alongside Starcraft II, all official forum posts will use RealID instead of character aliases for the cognomines (that's the correct plural of cognomen, by the way) of those who post there.

People who were up-in-arms about RealID friends lists are, of course, up-in-arms about this, waving around the same old, tired arguments. So, let me set the scene further by pointing out the benefit that no sane person can deny: Real accountability. No level 1 alts clogging up the system with purely retarded posts. Actual names with actual recognition will cause this to be a thing of the past. People will still post stupid shit, and people will still troll, but they will have to consider that it is their real name being displayed when they do it.
This works the other way, too: people who have written guides and who are very proud of their positive contributions to the official forums will now get proper recognition. I do not at all suggest that they're going to be winning Nobel Prizes for literature with their fanfics, or whatever, but, if they have any sense of self, they will enjoy seeing their name there. It helps one's ego, even just a fraction of a fraction, when one encounters someone else who recognises their alias -- so how about someone recognising their name?

This is summed up perfectly by this post by ceto:

I think this is bound to increase the quality of discussion on the forums. Posts actually mean something when you sign your name at the bottom. Likewise when you're replying to someone with a name. You might feel no qualms telling Omgbeefeater, Level 3 Tauren Druid, that he's full of fail and should kill himself. Now you're , telling the same thing to David Anderson. Maybe the conversation just got a little more civil. Or maybe you just stopped posting to the forums. Either way, quality won.

This is the best thing that could happen to the crowded, noisy World of Warcraft forums.

So, let's delve into the realms of pucks and racism.

Compromised Security

This is the main thrust of the nay-sayers' argument. They claim that, because information based on one's legal name is publicly available, they open themselves up to all kinds of attacks and fraud just by posting on the official forums. That, regardless of their post's content, they will be targeted.

Random targeting

That bit in italics will be my first counter-question: Why would someone target you when the only thing you did was post on the forums? Assuming the mark had nothing to do with the content you posted, it can only have been random. Newsflash: randomised targeting of people to exploit is not a new thing. It has been around for hundreds -- hell, fucking thousands -- of years. Since the dawn of time, one dishonest man has stolen from another whom he targeted semi-, if not completely, randomly. You can be targeted at any time by anyone. If you're seriously worried about this on the WoW forums, you must live in fear, surely? You must be aware of the dangers of, y'know, existing on this planet? How on Earth do you cope with crossing the road ten times a day?

I'll stop the silly rhetorical questions and ask the main one behind this point: How is it that you are going to be targeted, randomly, through the WoW forums, in a way that you could not be targeted by any other person in any other medium? Answer: you're not. Yes, I guess it must suck that, until now, the WoW forums had been a cocoon for you in which you felt that nothing could harm you. If you did feel that the WoW forums were safe before RealID then you are blind or stupid. Nowhere on the internet is safe -- it's the same level of danger as crossing the road (i.e., low-level), but not completely safe.

Malicious targeting

So, we can discredit randomised targeting as a valid reason for disliking RealID -- or, at least, a valid reason for disliking RealID more than, say, signing up for a mobile phone contract and ticking the "Do not share my information with third parties" box. We now turn to malicious targeting. In other words, targeting which has been caused by the direct or indirect result of the actual content that a user has posted.

So I'll get the short one out of the way: if you're posting stupid shit at the present time on the WoW Forums, I would recommend that you stop posting, since, yes, by some degree of logic people could maliciously target you for posting stupid shit. I will go on to explain how even the fear of that is unfounded (using a degree of logic much more advanced than the one mentioned in the previous sentence), but, if you want to play it safe, you can do us all a favour and take your ball home with you. As shown in the quote earlier, the prospective improvement of post quality in the WoW Forums, as a result of RealID, is a good thing.

Now, some slightly longer, more advanced arguments:

The likelihood of being targeted effectively is incredibly small.

I entered that Wowhead thread at this point.

Xaratherus: Give me your name and two hours. I'll give you a call.
Sinespe: Chris de Lacy. Go for it.

Over the course of the next two pages, Xaratherus showed me the following.
1) Three links (Gone Blogal, Twitter and Facebook) that I knew were in the public domain. Look -- I've even linked them here, too!
2) One link (192.com) which garnered no information that he could use. It wasn't even that 192.com did have the correct information and that it would yield it for a fee. The information it had was completely wrong, and the only places where it even came close to the mark was three years out of date.
3) That he is a retarded 11-year-old.

Xaratherus: If I had the desire, and financial resources, to dig a bit deeper, I could find more.
Sinespe: Except, you couldn't, because that second link sees only one Chris de Lacy in Exeter, and it has the age range completely wrong -- yet, my age, I'm pretty sure, is publicly accessible somewhere too. "I could if I wanted to" is not valid argument ... It's 11-year-old logic, at most. So, please, come back with something more substantial. I'm waiting for my phone-call.
[...]
Xaratherus: When exactly did I say that I would restrict my search to the public domain?
Sinespe: Quite a few times. Because you "don't have/want to use the resources to search deeper". You're just making wild assumptions now about whether I can or cannot be located. All you have done is claimed you can find me and then backed away from it, falling back on "Well, I could if I wanted to!". It invalidates your argument utterly. In short, I've called your bluff. So, please, stop talking. And, in future, maybe you'll learn not to make grandiose claims before checking whether you can actually live up to the bluff. It'll make you look less stupid. You do feel stupid, I hope? Doesn't matter if you're behind an alias -- anonymity doesn't protect you from that.

(I'm done, by the way. I've proven my point; you haven't proven yours, nor do you intend to.)

I will return to Xaratherus later, because he is an incredibly amusing hypocrite on another issue of security which is a mirror-image of this one. That is something of a tangent, though, so I will stick to my point here.

I cannot be located in any meaningful way using a Google search. I do not deny that, if someone had a lot of time and a lot of contacts, that person could find out whatever they liked about me ... But that returns to my random targeting point: That could happen at any point and for any/no reason. Why is RealID, specifically, going to be the catalyst that causes me to become the subject of fraud or stalking? Answer: It's not. The information I have made publicly available has been done so by my own hand, with my own knowledge. I have control over it. Oh, speaking of which:

Stalking

If someone knows where I live, they can stalk me. There you go: I said it. 1-0 to the Daily Mail? Not so fast! There are a number of reasons why I don't care; and, moreover, why no one is going to stalk me.

1) I can, and will, call the police. They can, and will, deal with it. Ironically, the reason why they are likely to deal with it is exactly because of Daily Mail scare stories. That is, I will admit, the advantage of the tabloid press: they do make people aware of the dangers of the modern world. The problem with the them is that they exaggerate everything. (In the Daily Mail's case, everything gives you cancer. No, seriously, I mean it.)

2) I am a nobody, frankly. And, further frankly, so are all of you; paranoia is one of the highest forms of arrogance. And, damn, am I ever arrogant. I do not run my own company, I have very little money to my name, I am not famous in any way. I'm reasonably good-looking, I'm informed, but someone is more likely to stalk me for that reason outside of WoW than as a consequence of posting on the WoW forums. Even if you are notorious in a WoW context, you aren't going to be stalked. So get over yourself.

But enough about me. What about other people's concerns that they will be stalked or e-stalked? Well, let's see the arguments:

1) Female gamers (such as myself) who do not wish to be "targeted", either in game or offline.

So, apparently there is a third potential target criterion: being female in a male-dominated environment (which WoW is: 84% of its population is male). Fair enough; you could be targeted just because you're female. But, again, I'd have to ask the question: who on earth is going to do that? It'd have to be a really dedicated kind of crazy to go to all the trouble of stalking someone from a WoW forum, when (and I'm almost sorry to be crude, but this is criminal logic) there are far more accessible, immediate targets in the real world. The "female gamer" angle can only be spun from a purely sexual perspective, so, by its very nature, it falls flat on its face.

2) I have already covered.

3) Users getting fired or disciplined at work for posting on Blizzard forums.
5) Exploitation of children who must now either post under their real name, or not be allowed to post at all.

Apparently it is Blizzard's fault that you're slacking off at work. Nice scapegoating tactic, there. You might as well also blame YouTube. Hell, why not go the whole hog and blame Google? WoW has been used as a scapegoat throughout that Wowhead thread for bad parenting and bad self-discipline. Sorry, but those arguments are incredibly old and incredibly tired. They have no weight behind them; they never did. Oh no, children are going to be forbidden from posting on the WoW forums. What a huge loss to the community. (I'll be coming onto community later, too.)

4) Users being discriminated against by potential employers, friends, romantic partners based on easily searched gaming habits.

a) Employers. Illegal. You can sue. Well, if you can prove that i) that was the reason you weren't chosen for the post, ii) that reason was not sufficient grounds for refusal, and iii) that you were otherwise the most qualified and capable person for the post. And, frankly, any employer who does that much of a background check on you before you even get hired is very likely to fire you six months down the line for whatever s/he can. Lack of trust does not make for good business arrangements in 90% of circumstances.

b) All of my friends know that I play WoW. Know why they're friends? Because they accept it as part of who I am. Get new friends, frankly. Don't bother with people who don't want to bother with you. This logic extends to c). I don't understand why you would want to be with someone who dislikes something that you do on a regular basis, if you personally like that regular thing and have no desire, now or in the future, to stop it. It is just going to cause more hassle than it could ever be worth. I can understand compromise, but that is not what is being implied in c). What is being implied in c) is someone who, upon hearing that you play WoW, either tries to make you stop altogether or just doesn't want to see you any more as a result. Again, why bother with someone like that who cannot accept you for who you are?

I think I've covered the main points of the whole "I'm going to get stalked/have my identity stolen" brigade now, so I will just finish with my Xaratherus-based tangent.

Authenticators

I could be wrong, but I'm fairly sure that Xaratherus has locked horns with me before. If it was not him, then I apologise, but I'm going to forge ahead anyway and claim it was him because I am 90% sure it was.

I am an authenticator-denier. By that, I mean I do not subscribe at all to the theory that, if you have an authenticator, you're not going to get hacked. We know that's not true, and I've had it demonstrated to me how it can be done. Yes, it is more elaborate than a simple keylogger, but it's enough to make you realise that you don't want to lax on security.

Xaratherus's argument is that Man in the Middle attacks are too elaborate to be considered a viable threat. Yet, this is the same Xaratherus who claims that just by giving him my name he can find out everything about me. Do you see the double-standard? It's pretty subtle, so I'll use an analogue.

Man in the Middle attacks : Deep Privacy Searches :: Keyloggers : Google searches.

See what I mean? The person who claims that an authenticator will provide nigh-on immunity from being attacked is the same person allowing himself to react in a knee-jerk fashion to the idea that people's real names can be googled. Just as Man in the Middle attacks require more set-up than a simple keylogger, so too do deep privacy searches than Googling. There are already so many other reasons why someone would want to perform an MitM attack (a deep privacy search): a WoW account (a real name on a WoW forum) is not going to be high up the list.

Business sense

People seem to think that this is a bad idea because it will lose Blizzard money due to its unpopularity. People also seem to think that this decision was made because the only thing that Blizzard cares about is money. Sorry, what? How does that work, exactly? Either it will gain them money or lose them money. You can't claim that it is unpopular but that it will make them money.

I can assure you all that Blizzard is going to profit off of this; or, if not profit, it is not going to lose money. Know why? Because Blizzard is a business, and it has been a business for over ten years. It knows about market research, and that you don't take any action without first carrying out market research. They are big boys now. They can look after themselves. Whatever changes you might perceive as being crackpot ideas have actually been considered from a business and practicality perspective. In short: Blizzard> You.

Community

This post sickened me.

Krypter: That's going to kill their forums quite a bit. People are going to be too scared to post things since the great thing about forum communities is the sense of anonymity. Now you have to worry about your idea or post being taken the wrong way, and someone finding you on Facebook and making your life miserable. No thanks.

"The great thing about forum communities is the sense of anonymity"? What? No... Sorry, I think you must have misspoke. You aren't anonymous in a forum community unless that forum "community" is /b/. Remind me: Why is that community "great", again? Do you really want to put forward /b/ as an argument in favour of anonymity?

No, what you meant to say was that forum communities give you an alias. You are still known by a name -- it's just not your real name. Your alias can still be brought into disrepute. Your alias will still carry with it the mark of whatever you choose to post. Your alias will be branded in people's minds as "Helpful" or "Unhelpful". If "Unhelpful", at some point, you're still going to have to leave that community owing to everyone eventually ignoring you, after your constant asstardery.

Opt-in & "The majority of people do not want this"

It just is an opt-in. The forums are not the game. I'm pretty sure that the majority of people do not even know that the forums exist, let alone post on them. At the end of the day, WoW is a game, and there are other avenues to give your feedback. Hell, you can post on the Wowhead forums to give your feedback: Blizzard does read those. Nothing has actually been lost in this respect, because your views will still get across if you publicise them in equally notable venues.

_________

And, with that, I think I'm done. There's a whole slew of other stuff about this issue that I think I wanted to say, but which I simply can't remember at the moment. Oh well. I think 3.3k words is long enough for one night.