How do you all deal with stalkers?

[Toutatis]

Report, block, ignore. Do as if they don’t exist. Answering, stalking them, engaging in any way with them only encourages them to continue. They want reactions and if they don’t get any, they’ll eventually lose interest.

[Boblawblah]

Report, block, ignore. Do as if they don’t exist. Answering, stalking them, engaging in any way with them only encourages them to continue. They want reactions and if they don’t get any, they’ll eventually lose interest.

This, any sort of engagement is a win for them. If they're a part of a group of friends and your friends won't help shut the behavior down, separate completely from the whole group. Don't underestimate crazies.

[Chie_M]

First, of course, I blacklisted. Then, he starting both following me around on his main, and making alt after alt after alt. I took screenshots and reported every instance of in-game stalking. I took screenshots of out-of-game events (ie, he kept adding me on sock puppets on Discord and Steam).

Materia opened, so I moved to Materia. He left his main on Mateus, and continued his army of alts to harass me on Materia. I continued to take screenshots and to report the behaviour, quoting the ever-growing list of prior ticket numbers in my reports.

SE never suspended his account. They very clearly do not take this seriously. So I deleted my main and started over again.

He used a third-party tool to pull my IP address from Discord. He would create sock puppets, join servers that he knew I was in, and then spam my IP address and my (now changed) universal gamer tag. He would threaten to sexually assault me.

As he was now acting outside of the game, I no longer needed to rely on Square Enix. I put all of my screenshots onto a USB and took it to the local police station. The stalking began when he claimed that he was in love with me, so I had his full legal name, city of residence, and several unsolicited pictures from him to aid in my police report.

I never heard from him again. But I still don't post on my main on the forums. I have a new discord account and I don't add people I haven't met IRL. I don't add people to my in-game friends list. And, unfortunately, I don't participate in the action-adventure RP community any more.

Edit: And before anybody tells me I just should have ignored him to make him go away, I did. I never responded to any of it. Real stalkers do not get bored. They get dangerous.

[Jojoya]

Edit: And before anybody tells me I just should have ignored him to make him go away, I did. I never responded to any of it. Real stalkers do not get bored. They get dangerous.

And you're correct, they do. They're also far outside of the scope of what SE is able to handle. You did the right thing by taking it to law enforcement.

[Chie_M]

And you're correct, they do. They're also far outside of the scope of what SE is able to handle. You did the right thing by taking it to law enforcement.

Absolutely - but that in no way absolves SE of their infamous refusal to protect people from stalkers on the most basic level.

[Jojoya]

Absolutely - but that in no way absolves SE of their infamous refusal to protect people from stalkers on the most basic level.

SE is not law enforcement, though. Their job is to provide a game service, not personal protection.

They are obligated not to share personal real life identifying information to others outside what is described within their privacy policy but that's about the limit they can go when it comes to a player being stalked unless presented with some sort of court order instructing them to take other steps. Privacy breeches are generally going to come via other players sharing information without your consent or the player having shared too much information at a time when there was still some sort of trust between the two parties.

Most genuine stalkers are going to be too subtle in their activity to get caught in a clear violation of ToS, limiting what action SE can take. They can't step in to be judge and jury in personal disputes. They can only enforce the ToS through whatever their policy has determined to be prohibited activity. How they define said activity may not be the same as how a player would define that activity.

I agree that SE could improve a few aspects of design - make the friends list 2 way for both adding and removing, randomize character ID# after world transfer, etc. That would put a stop to the immature attention seekers who are annoying but not a genuine threat. But those things still will not stop an actual stalker. A genuine stalker will have other ways of acquiring information.

It's sad that victims are the ones forced to be inconvenienced to escape those trying to terrorize them but that's just as true, if not more true, in real life as it is in a game. Within the game there is at least the opportunity to start over on a new world with a new character and a different name. Unless information about that new character is being shared by you with others and those others somehow share that information with the stalker, they should not be able to find the new character. It's far more difficult to pull that off in real life, which is where your safety truly is in jeopardy.

[Chie_M]

SE is not law enforcement, though. Their job is to provide a game service, not personal protection.

We're in complete agreement, I assure you. 100%. I've been to the police over this, I know it's not SE's problem. I agree with you. SE can only act upon the things that occur within their game.

However, SE needs to step up their game on blacklist functionality.

[Canadane]

"Don't feed the trolls" is some archaic Internet rule that still applies today.
Literally just ignore them. They'll find something better to do.

[Chie_M]

"Don't feed the trolls" is some archaic Internet rule that still applies today.
Literally just ignore them. They'll find something better to do.

Tell me you didn't read the thread without telling me you didn't read the thread.

[Canadane]

Tell me you didn't read the thread without telling me you didn't read the thread.

I answered the question directed to us.