CorpseCamp.Us

This Real ID fiasco just keeps getting better and better. The ESRB replying to the 1000+ emails complaining about Blizzard’s Real ID informing them Blizzard had recanted unintentionally used the “reply all” feature.  This effectively shared the 1000+ email addresses with all 1000+ people who had complained.

The deepest irony here is the last paragraph of the letter ( you can read it in its entirety at WoW.com):

ESRB, through its Privacy Online program, helps companies develop practices to safeguard users’ personal information online while still providing a safe and enjoyable video game experience for all. We appreciate your taking the time to contact us with your concerns, and please feel free to direct any future inquiries you may have regarding online privacy to our attention.

So…if you haven’t drawn the connections yet… 1000+ people complaining about Blizzard sharing their personal information had their email address shared to 1000+ strangers. Nice.

The ESRB of course was mortified one of their employees had done this and profusely apologized.

I couldn’t help but share this link with you from the whole Blizzard Real ID fiasco.

This is a hilarious youtube video of a foreign film with subtitles. This will give you a good few minutes of Laugh Out Loud fun.

All links open in a new window.

Sadly, that’s the joke. It hasn’t been. Big news from Blizzard you can see here.  Basically, they’ll be publicly posting the REAL NAMES (including last names) of all posters in an attempt to curb flaming and trolling.  How does this bit of news fit into CorpseCamp.Us? Well, you can’t get much more absurd than that! Agreed, something should be done about the rampant anonymity problem. But publicly posting any one of millions of real names who dare post on their forums to the rest of the web? That’s got to be a serious privacy issue.

Public posting of personal information is something you expect out of hackers or gold sellers. Mandatory advertising of people’s last name is just inviting identity theft. How can you trust a company that’s forcing its customers to do something Internet safety experts have been warning against doing for over a decade? This is going to be an interesting firestorm to watch!

~ The Camper