Character name can't be hidden.

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Originally Posted by Kraggy

Unoriginal, and as always wrong.

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Originality is overrated.

And why is it wrong?

Oh no, you're going to be identified... on an FFXI message board... by your FFXI account... such a dastardly and horrible concept. how dare they take away your anonymity on this... community-specific exclusive forum. I mean it's not like every single person posting here doesn't have an FFXI account (active or inactive, w/e).

If you don't want your forum posts to be linked to your character's name, that means you either A. deliberately post dumb *** on the forum to rile people up and thus don't want that linked to your character (something to hide), or B. live some freaky double-life of.. I don't even know where I'm going with this but in any case, it's pretty much A.

The folks who would troll, they generally like their fame that comes with it. They don't have a reason to hide. They want to push just far enough to have their fun without getting banned and all but brag at how much they get away with. It is truly amazing how much one person can drive a userbase crazy without actually breaking a rule. I can't see there being an impact on that sort of personality. It is the more timid members, or people like me (and I realize my situation is such a tiny statistic) not the aggressive or troll posters who would be shying away from this feature. They aren't embarrassed by those posts, they are proud. So accountability my foot guys.


Ffxiah allows you to use a 2nd account to put the mule on and has options to hide your character stats. You just use the mule account for posting and so long as that the only account you post from, you aren't sock puppeting so site staff is ok with it.

If we can use a mule (so far looks like we can) then so long as they don't display my entire character roster I won't have a problem but I can understand people being concerned about their privacy because of what I went through which also causes the comments saying people have something to hide or are ashamed etc to bother me.

I never did anything wrong and I've learned learned to keep my display names on websites separate and never connect them by saying things like "I'm <name here> over at <website>" as well as never divulge any real life information to anyone who isn't site staff and absolutely required. For example I won't use hulu+ because they display your real life name on your profile where any stranger can click you and see it (you can get away with a fake name on the free hulu, but I'm not giving them my money while they have that policy). Hulu used to display your address also.

I understand how paranoid this all may seem and I'm not saying this feature will cause that sorta thing. I know SE isn't showing anything directly personally identifiable I just want you to understand why I'm uneasy giving even a tiny part of an inch in the direction of any online identities I may have. Before I used to have the same user name everywhere, shared my instant messenger IDs and email in my forum contact details etc. Now, its a safety measure to me just like not using the same password everywhere. One of my 1st posts here was asking to have a separate forum password from my game password.



Going offtopic here but someone mentioned social networking. Advertisers used to have to pay good money for that kind of information and stalkers had to work for it. Now its all there being given away to anyone that can view twitter or facebook. You can literally see some people telling the world where they are at and what they are doing daily sometimes with multiple updates per hour. Who needs surveillance, just check their twitter page...Most people are simply not concerned with their online privacy lately.

Privacy toggle sils vous plait.

Been stalked, have had friends stalked, and basically don't wish any of that on anyone. Even as just a stepping stone for in-game harassment, the best I've ever seen the GMs put out was to blacklist the offender, who'd then just make a new mule to page spam or follow you around if persistent enough, and of course just get told the same if you made another call about it.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

FFXIAH has been doing this for years now, and it really has no direct impact on your gaming experience. People really do not care about posts on the forum that much. Hell only a very small portion of the FFXI Community even uses forums.

I don't think this will cause as much of a problem as people think is all.

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Actually, we think either the information displayed on FFXIAH or the LS site likely made people stronger targets for hacking years back. I only displayed my info in two places back before I lost all my AH-able BLM gears--FFXIAH and SE's LS site. I had the Admins dump my info from their site and pulled everything off of SE's while they tried to restore my account. It's also why I stopped browsing on my computer, just the laptop.

I don't even like the fact we have to link our game accounts and use those credential to post on the forum in the first place. It opens up an attack vector for people to gather partial login information again, just like what was happening with the ad banners on other sites a while back. Now they will make us display a portion of that character information as well, which may just make some players more attractive targets--especially those who don't have a low level alternate to link.

People will just use level 1 mules to link themselves on the forum if all they intend to do is troll, the same thing happens on the WoW forums. People hide behind their level 1 alts to troll the forums all day long.

Everyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to put their home address on an index card and affix it to every dollar they give to a homeless person.

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Originally Posted by RAIST

Actually, we think either the information displayed on FFXIAH or the LS site likely made people stronger targets for hacking years back. I only displayed my info in two places back before I lost all my AH-able BLM gears--FFXIAH and SE's LS site. I had the Admins dump my info from their site and pulled everything off of SE's while they tried to restore my account. It's also why I stopped browsing on my computer, just the laptop.

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Then I think you're thinking wrong. I really must ask for proof that Linking your FFXI Account to FFXIAH makes you more likely to be hacked. I'm really don't know much about hacking, but to my latest understanding the RMT weren't "Chosing" who they hack. Their hacking involved placing a virus on a computer and using it to get information (for the most part...), When RMT did hacks years back they just virus'd a bunch of FFXI websites and hoped to get hits, they just blindly try to hack people, they can't "Target" individuals, thats now how their program worked.

Unless of course you go around handing out all your computers information/IP Address wherever you go.

The only reason people get hacked is because they don't protect themselves. it has 0 to do with how "known" their character is. Back when RMT were hacking they hacked without caring who they were hacking. They hacked who they could (basically anyone without protection). Of course I won't deny if you piss off the wrong people your account specifically could be targeted, but at the same time, I've only witnessed this a few times, and its always been over something in game.

Players who own a Token, use protective tools like NoScript, Addblock, etc to browse safely on forums will have very very little to worry about, as it will be too much trouble for the average hacker to bother with. with a Token you're really only in danger of a real-time hack, which only happens if you absolutely take no precautions when browsing the internet.

And really, If you don't own a Token and use common internet virus protection programs, you have no right to complain about the "insecurities" these will (not) bring. Because you're not even taking basic steps to protect your account.

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Originally Posted by Dallas

Everyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to put their home address on an index card and affix it to every dollar they give to a homeless person.

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I'm sorry but that is the most misused horrible comparison i have ever seen used on a forum. This "Update" is more akin to handing them a Dollar saying "From Dave". Your FFXIAH isn't anything remotely related to the level of personal information as a home address, more like your name, Your first name.

Your Playonline ID would be like giving them your Home Address, and your Password would be the keys to the house.

You're at no greater risk of being hacked from linking your account to here at all. Want to know why? Every time you log in you enter your SE ID/Password, These are linked to your accounts. If they wanted to hack you, guess what? They already have the information they need.

Point tally: I knew 2 homeless guys (one was killed last year), I still haven't wanted to know anyone who posts on FFXI forums.

Let's not keep in touch.

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Originally Posted by Dallas

Point tally: I knew 2 homeless guys (one was killed last year), I still haven't wanted to know anyone who posts on FFXI forums.

Let's not keep in touch.

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I can see why you might be worried if people know your in game name. You're incredibly arrogant and your posts make no sense.

Well, it was highly suspicious that only my BLM gears were stolen when I logged out on WHM, and my FFXIAH profile hadn't been updated to reflect that change the next moring and my toon had been moved. They didn't touch my SH +1 and such...it was all still in my mogsafe....with my other 6 HQ staves and such, which had been swiped. Didn't even take the Royal Cloak that was in my inventory, but they took my black cloak that was in the safe also. It had the appearence of them seeing specific gear they wanted and that's all they took. Whether they saw that before hand, or just when they logged on during the 6 hours I was logged off can be debated. Regardless....showing that info can simply lead to more problems than it may help. Thankfully, this sytem won't be going so far to show gears and such, but it might evolve into that eventually--who knows. I'm simply not confortable with having no say in showing any of my character's information. It's also why I contacted the admins and had them purge my info from the data base after I unlinked from the LS site. Eventually, old data got restored when the site had a meltdown and they had to extract old data to recover it so it has ancient stats showing.