Quote Originally Posted by Chie_M View Post
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.