It's almost like SE encourages stalking in this game...

[Conundrum]

I've heard that there is an addon that lets you select a character and make them disappear from your screen. Of course it's no help for console players.

That would be the "Visibility" plugin for the XIVLauncher.

But I don't think you can target it that specifically. As I recall its "Everyone", "Everyone but alliance", "Everyone but party". But I may be mis-remembering. Also can be targeted to minions and companions I think.

[Commander_Justitia]

I don't worry about stalking. I don't have anxiety over it. Most people don't. That doesn't mean that SE shouldn't have things in place that makes it harder to actually stalk people. Stalkers DO exist. It's a reasonable request to not have character ID numbers public in Lodestone.

I probably feel the same about it.

But it feels like many online services ignore the demand for privacy. Especially PSN service seems to be very flawed, they have the "Appear Offline" function, even if you use it, all your friends can still see you as online if they have online games installed that show your friendlist ingame.

Anyway for FFXIV the first thing should be that, when you delete someone from the friendlist, they should be removed from their friendlist too. Because many additional functions are tied to that.

For the lodestone profile thing: "All aspects of the Game (including but not limited to the Game computer code, updates, patches, expansion packs, characters, character names, character data, virtual items, character profile information, (non-personal) account information, chat transcripts, artwork, plot, dialogue, locations, sounds and music) are owned by Square Enix or its licensors."

So your profile data doesn't belong to you but to SE, so they can do what they want with it. As the case with many video games.
You can set things to private so at least your online activity isn't visible to friends or even public, which is kinda personal information if you ask me. You can now ask why services like fflogs do not have that protection, even if you are not registered on that platform you will have a profile, which could be used to track your online activity and the only way to opt out of that is to give them more personal information about you so you get access to your account. I guess if it would be "opt in" by default, they would have never gotten so many clicks on their site.

[Snorky]

The internet is so crazy, some people advocate to link people's real names to social media accounts some people want anomity. Privacy is important because of the crazy people out there and there are crazy people. People take things too far and some just don't know when to quit. We should have control over how much is revealed on lodestone because of the people who do take it too far.

[RecoveryPotion]

I am also on board with allowing us to set our character information private, the fact it even shows what FC you're in bothers me. But also why when you unadd people, square doesn't automatically unadd you from the same player? It's so awkward sometimes because I'll run into people I un-added but they'll still wave or hug me like we're still friends and I know it's just because they see my orange name pop up.

[Edewen]

Im still at a loss of why this is an issue. if someone wants to follow you around in game they can look you up with player search, find your location, and do just that. What exactly does the lodestone give someone that people are made so uncomfortable?

I get there are creepers online and many deserve blocks and bans for harassment but this seems like reaching.

[Kolsykol]

Not doing as good of a job as they could banning people doesn't mean that they're '' encouraging '' it lol.
That's not what that word means.

[LianaThorne]

Im still at a loss of why this is an issue. if someone wants to follow you around in game they can look you up with player search, find your location, and do just that. What exactly does the lodestone give someone that people are made so uncomfortable?

I get there are creepers online and many deserve blocks and bans for harassment but this seems like reaching.

The issue is character ID. Say you have a stalker and you name change to try to dodge them. Your name may change but the character ID that labels you in the lodestone does not. Therefore, even if you make attempts to try to hide from the person, (reporting, server switches, etc.) they can still track you down via the character ID on the lodestone. The issue is you're never truly hidden.

[Darthgummibear]

I am also on board with allowing us to set our character information private, the fact it even shows what FC you're in bothers me. But also why when you unadd people, square doesn't automatically unadd you from the same player? It's so awkward sometimes because I'll run into people I un-added but they'll still wave or hug me like we're still friends and I know it's just because they see my orange name pop up.

When I originally found out about this I was genuinely blown away. This is the first online platform I've used in my entire life that treats friends-list removal as a one-way operation. There's countless reasons why you might remove someone from your list, and having removal be one sided has the potential to make things extremely awkward and uncomfortable.

[IdowhatIwant]

It is against the ToS. So I doubt they encourage it.

[Sacred-Oblivion]

Send all of your stalkers to me and I will put them in their place *cracks knuckles*