WoW Real ID privacy issues

[msss]

If you play World of Warcraft, check out the Real ID coverage and make sure that you're not publishing your real name inadvertently. There are reports of add-ons revealing your real name to anyone using the same add-on, as well as the obvious issues with public "Friends of Friends" lists and selling your WoW data to Facebook. As was the case with

Comments

[msss]

Sure, I get the "don't panic" thing. I'm not cancelling my account. Yet.

I never intend to post on the forums. So there are two parts to my concerns - the first is that Real ID was turned on in-game by default, which led to the problems with add-on security holes. So Blizzard has effectively been broadcasting my name all over the place without telling me about it, when they claimed that they would never hand out my personal information. If they had made it truly opt-in, I wouldn't have an issue. Even Google Buzz had a splash page that was (slightly) more informative.

The second part is that they put your real name on a friends of friends list. Seriously? Just because you trust one person to know your real name, you automatically trust everyone else on their friends list too?

I'm not even going to touch on the issue with the Facebook information exchange, because we just don't know enough about it yet.

[msss]

Since my name is closely correlated with my main email address (and a number of secondary ones) and publicly on the web for my job, I'm not entirely sure that this is much consolation.

[deathpixie]

I have three friends who play WoW who have already cancelled their accounts over this - one is a domestic violence survivor whose ex as a habit of online stalking her and she doesn't want her real name attached to any of her online hobbies for fear he'll track her down again. So yeah, there are real privacy concerns already with the forum issue, and if they intend to link things to Facebook which has apps out the wazoo... oy vey.