Is spreading someones real life name around in general chat wrong?

I will give context to this. I give my real life name out to no one and i mean absolutely no one in relation to this game. I am very confident that there should be 0 people on my server who knows my real name. I was standing in limsa earlier talking to friends and these people come up and hang out with us so i figured okay why not then randomly one of the guys who said something to me included my name into what he said and i know it was no coincidence he knew my name. Now i know this may sound like no big deal to some who don't care about that type of thing or maybe they are more public types of people, however i am a very private person and never give my real name to anyone especially in game. So i am hoping some of you can understand why i was a little more than creeped out by this. I have no clue however if this is a just block them and move on situation or if i should contact a GM about it. Because i think a persons name can be considered private information? And isn't spreading someones private information around in general chat somehow against ToS? I have no clue so i am posting this here in hopes that someone can tell me if i should just shrug this off or if i should seek help with a GM. I am too creeped out to not ask around i need guidence. Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

How'd they find out your name if you never told them? That's something only you can prevent.

They clearly found out somehow. If it was by illegal means I'm not sure how it was managed unless your account was hacked or something. If it was through other means there's someone in-game you clearly can't trust with such information. Regardless, if you don't have an authenticator I would suggest using one. Physical is better, imo.

Yes, doc dropping (or doxxing) someone is wrong in my opinion.

No, someone saying your real name is not against ToS, jfc.

I mean, was it just first name, or was it full name? I believe this is important. Otherwise, if you had never told this person your name, how do you know they were talking about/to you, and not someone else?

How can anyone prove that your real name is what they are telling? You can always say it's not your real name and that's the end of it.

Are you playing on PS4?

Then every other PS4 player can see your PSN name.

And when your privacy settings on your PSN account are messed up, everyone can see your real name when he searches for your PSN name.

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Originally Posted by Tint

Are you playing on PS4?

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was about to mention this. its possible, i think default is "show friends." Could also be other services, like if you link an instagram account in game in your sea comment, and it has links to twitter or whatever and down the chain something has your real name displayed. it's best to do a privacy checkup on anything you link to or mention in ffxiv. I mean I think some people even use facebook groups for servers or something.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tint

Are you playing on PS4?

Then every other PS4 player can see your PSN name.

And when your privacy settings on your PSN account are messed up, everyone can see your real name when he searches for your PSN name.

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I actually had this problem on my PS4 once. Had someone message me through PSN and had no idea who they were. They knew my name though. Ended up telling them to go away, blocked them and then later found out why. Only the couple people on my friends list have such information now.

Also, I’d have to wonder if you didn’t mention your in-game name/info to someone in rl who later recognized you in-game.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tint

Are you playing on PS4?

Then every other PS4 player can see your PSN name.

And when your privacy settings on your PSN account are messed up, everyone can see your real name when he searches for your PSN name.

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I checked my ps4 settings and everything is set to either No One, or Friends Only and i don't use or connect any other profiles from sites or anything to my psn or ffxiv so that's definitely not the issue atleast. I contacted a GM about it and was told they would investigate on their end and that if the person proceeds to harass me or enable others to harass me in real life that i should contact my local police. I won't go as far to do that as the only thing so far is that they were saying my real full name in /say. I am just hoping i don't end up with a bunch of spam on my ps4 or irl in some way and hoping that this was just someone being a troll because it freaked me out quite a bit.

As a general rule of thumb, if I know someone's irl name in game, I always use their in-game name. Unless I am talking to someone who already knows this person irl anyway, and I wouldn't say it in a public chat. (For example, my FC is group of friends who know each other's irl names, have known each other for years, so sometimes a person's first name would be mentioned).

Otherwise, it's a bit of a d*ck move to mention people's irl names to a bunch of randoms.
A potentially dangerous move, also.

It's a sticky situation, but I personally don't give out my real name to randos. But on flip side when I am playing with family and close friends I don't mind. If they happen to slip up and use it with people we don't know it's not as bad for me since I have a super common name.

This is why I name all my character names by my real name, Thessayn. It's so off the wall no one suspects.

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Originally Posted by Mizunoko

I will give context to this. I give my real life name out to no one and i mean absolutely no one in relation to this game. I am very confident that there should be 0 people on my server who knows my real name.

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As someone pointed out earlier, it's likely the PS4, however there's also the possibility if you have -ever- streamed the game that they just happened to find you on whatever you streamed it from.

It's incredibly easy to narrow things down during streams because streams aren't typically behind by more than a few minutes, and because of cross-server mechanics now, one only needs to be in the same data center to really be able to find you. But as for your real name, that seems like if it wasn't a PII leak from the PS4, then it's likely something else you use your character name on (eg skype, slack, discord, etc)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tint

Are you playing on PS4?

Then every other PS4 player can see your PSN name.

And when your privacy settings on your PSN account are messed up, everyone can see your real name when he searches for your PSN name.

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Even without messing with the defaults no one can see your real name on the PS4 unless they sent you a real-name request that you accepted. But your PSN id might be a good way to start digging, esp. if you reused that name for other services where your real name wasn't as protected.
What worries me is that someone took all the effort to do this.

This is why I use fake names on all the sites I use. I never use my actual name on anything.. not even facebook. Tho if it's on the net it's going to be found if someone wants it found. Still, if you told noone then most likely they found you thru a stream or PS4. .which again.. fake names :D

Do you use real name on any past or present social media cause one could google search or twitter search etc to find those that have that name & then look for ones with stuff regarding Gaming/XIV.

Though as to topic I don't think it's against rules unless using it to be toxic/harassing with it. If just using it as replacement for your username in a normal way then not much you or gms can do except BL/ ask them nicely not use real name over your username.

Regardless of how the name was found, in EA games, the account would be banned, and Im pretty sure it would be here if you reported it.
This sort of stuff makes the legal dept very nervous and they like to squash nervous.

Question asside how they found your name in the first place and to answer the origianl one of "is this wrong": While the ToS for the forums forbide you to share any personal information about yourself, I couldnt find anything in the ToS for the game (yes, there are two different ones...).

Now, in this case I would have two questions:
1) Did they use your full name - aka: first and last name? Or just your first name?
2) What was their intend?

While I personally wouldnt use anyones real name in a public chat, my question here would be wether or not they did it with an ill intend - if they didnt and thought it was okay to use your name (they must have found out somehow and depending on how they went about it probably wasnt clear that you are a very private person. I found out the real name of a guy from the game through his Skype-account, when we exchanged details, because it was written there. My Skype has a fake name instead, so in that case my guess would have been "Oh, he doesnt mind me knowing his real name" - and he didnt btw).
So even if you're hidding your name in most places, maybe they only stumbled over that one that gave them such easy access that they went "Oh, must be okay for us to know the name!"
So, the question would be in what context was that name used - just a casual conversation where it dropped at a certain point without it appearing as if they wanted to shine a big fat light on it? Or was it used more in a harrassing context - either outright harrassment of any kind or you getting the vibe of them going that way?

If they were clearly using the knowledge of your name to harrass you or make you feel uncomfortable - report them.
If it seemed more like they had no ill intend and simply used the name because they go about those things differently than you and I, with not having trouble to use real names, I'd ask them to please adress you as your characters name in the future (without mentioning that your real name makes you uncomfortable, you dont need to give them a reason - just "Hey, please call me Fox here!") and then shrug it off. Specially if they were just using your first name - as much as it might feel different: Unless you have a super special first name, thats not to much private information. I eventually shared my first name with some friends ingame, because I realised that I was totally willing to share it with the 30 strangers in my uni-class, who could even follow me home, if they really wanted - but I was to worried about letting someone, who I've known for years and who has only a vague idea of where I live, know my first name only? ...I've still asked them to use my ingame name instead - for once because they can actually prounce that correctly and because I like it better (so much, that I was thinking of introducing myself in real life as "Vidu", rather than with my real name)

A friend probably dropped your name to make you paranoid. But then again, like some mentioned, Real Name request could be in play here, change your "real name" to something else and see if that person react to it and if they do, narrow it down to who has the real name request on your list that also play FF14.

Outside of that, you said all your info were No one or friends only, so i don't see much in there that could make you vulnerable. Cause i had an idea that you had the options of "Who can see my real name" Set to friends of friends too. Which could show up in PSN ID search or on other people's search of "Who you may also know".

my real name on PSN is sony walkman :D

I was wondering how could someone possible know your name, but as people have mentioned if you play on PS4 other PS4 players (not Windows) players can see your PSN name and doing that they can look it up. Perhaps they added you this way and found your name through that means (especially if you link your face book and use that close friend option that reveals names). Aside from this it would only be illegal ways such as hacking your account, that I can think of. The likelihood of someone hacking your account just for a name I think are a bit low.

Yes. This is a major breach in privacy if the person in question has not authorized it.

I absolutely think you should report them or if you know them personally have a talk with them. no one should give out any sort of personal information for any reason in game unless in a private setting between friends.

Well, my real life name would never be exposed in the game because when I play the game, the RL me, like a setting sun in the horizon, is completely done with every day BS.

When I am logged on, I am Gemina Lunarian. WoL. Female Midlander and ambassador to Gridania and loyal member of the Scions. It might be just me, but I keep my personal crap completely out of this game. I deal with it enough as is in RL.

So to answer the initial question, exposing any personal information without the consent of who it belongs to is not only wrong, it's unethical, and in some countries (like here in the United States) is a punishable offense.