SE Please start caring about your players privacy.

[LibitIncarne]

I think Square Enix is ​​not unaware of this problem, but is intentionally ignoring it. The deletion by administrators on the jp forum is proof that Square Enix is ​​aware of the problem.
Why are they ignoring it? I'm worried.
Maybe they don't want to spend time or money on solving the problem?
Even if they have the will, don't they have enough capacity?

They aren't going to solve it because it would involve reworking the Blacklist system and Account IDs again. Ignoring the fact that this wouldn't get rid of all of the data that has already been obtained, they would have to make Account IDs invisible to the client and use a different system for Blacklisting which is more resource intensive on the server.
They would also have to re-fix Free Trial Accounts not being able to have mail sent to them after each Maintenance ends (Or preferably make it possible to send care packages to your free trial friends legit...) since Trial Status was linked to Account ID in Dawntrail.

And if they do make it that people you've blacklisted can't see you, like Sugar reccomended them to do, that still won't stop people from being able to see their presence in the world with third party tools. Because that already happens now, if you have someone blacklisted they still show up in a popular glamouring tool's player radar.

Your Account ID cannot be linked back to you in any way. The only way that your characters can be linked back to your personal identity is if you have already posted them online in a way that is tied to your IRL identity.

[Archmortal]

snip

Nothing you've said is a good enough reason for them to NOT acknowledge the problem and at minimum fix the ID's vulnerability on the client-side. They SHOULD do more than absolutely nothing. Because whether it solves the problem entirely or not, doing more than nothing is what's going to make a lot of people feel a lot safer about it.

Fixing the blacklist's current problem won't undo the scraped data, but it's the first necessary step so people can manage any other steps they feel they should take for their own safety afterward. It would also prevent a copy-cat plugin that DOESN'T have any way to opt out or hide your account (assuming that little trick a few posts back works) from causing this same garbage.

[Rehayem]

They aren't going to solve it because it would involve reworking the Blacklist system and Account IDs again. Ignoring the fact that this wouldn't get rid of all of the data that has already been obtained, they would have to make Account IDs invisible to the client and use a different system for Blacklisting which is more resource intensive on the server.
They would also have to re-fix Free Trial Accounts not being able to have mail sent to them after each Maintenance ends (Or preferably make it possible to send care packages to your free trial friends legit...) since Trial Status was linked to Account ID in Dawntrail.

And if they do make it that people you've blacklisted can't see you, like Sugar reccomended them to do, that still won't stop people from being able to see their presence in the world with third party tools. Because that already happens now, if you have someone blacklisted they still show up in a popular glamouring tool's player radar.

Your Account ID cannot be linked back to you in any way. The only way that your characters can be linked back to your personal identity is if you have already posted them online in a way that is tied to your IRL identity.

I don't think you understand the severity of this issue at all. There's plenty of solutions they can make, for one, they'd need to revert the blacklist changes and remove the unique identifiers from all accounts. They placed them, they can remove them.

Secondly, this tool can see all your characters, retainers, exact location, login/logout times, character creation date and much more, without you even being aware of it.

Just because your account ID cannot be linked to you yet, doesn't mean it's not a ticking bomb ready to happen. If a man in Tokyo was able to stalk a woman in FFXIV first, then in IRL, surely you understand that this tool basically allows you to skip hoops in figuring out who's behind the screen. It will happen eventually, and someone will get hurt.

[Rueby]

I don't think you understand the severity of this issue at all. There's plenty of solutions they can make, for one, they'd need to revert the blacklist changes and remove the unique identifiers from all accounts. They placed them, they can remove them.

Secondly, this tool can see all your characters, retainers, exact location, login/logout times, character creation date and much more, without you even being aware of it.

Just because your account ID cannot be linked to you yet, doesn't mean it's not a ticking bomb ready to happen. If a man in Tokyo was able to stalk a woman in FFXIV first, then in IRL, surely you understand that this tool basically allows you to skip hoops in figuring out who's behind the screen. It will happen eventually, and someone will get hurt.

Man don't push for reverting the blacklist??? The connections made with our chars and accountIDs won't be erased even if they 'fix' the blacklist. No thanks. Holy.
The information is out there, the damage has been done. Stop trying to strip any kind of protection this game has from people. I'm being realistic. I'm done coping that SE can change this.

Imagine someone knows all the info about you and they can freely make alts on their main accs to harass you, now you gotta wait for GM to act instead of being able to blacklist the entire account.

SE doesn't care unless they look racist/-phobic. They won't make an announcement throwing themselves under the bus. What they've been doing is damage control.

[Sad-Panda]

Man don't push for reverting the blacklist??? The connections made with our chars and accountIDs won't be erased even if they 'fix' the blacklist. No thanks. Holy.
The information is out there, the damage has been done. Stop trying to strip any kind of protection this game has from people. I'm being realistic. I'm done coping that SE can change this.

Imagine someone knows all the info about you and they can freely make alts on their main accs to harass you, now you gotta wait for GM to act instead of being able to blacklist the entire account.

SE doesn't care unless they look racist/-phobic. They won't make an announcement throwing themselves under the bus. What they've been doing is damage control.

That’s a pretty shortsighted view. At the moment there is no escape from a stalker aside from starting a new service account. At least if they fix it so the accountid is hidden, then it would be possible to start new alts without them being tied to the info thats already out there.

[Daralii]

I don't think you understand the severity of this issue at all. There's plenty of solutions they can make, for one, they'd need to revert the blacklist changes and remove the unique identifiers from all accounts. They placed them, they can remove them.

Secondly, this tool can see all your characters, retainers, exact location, login/logout times, character creation date and much more, without you even being aware of it.

Just because your account ID cannot be linked to you yet, doesn't mean it's not a ticking bomb ready to happen. If a man in Tokyo was able to stalk a woman in FFXIV first, then in IRL, surely you understand that this tool basically allows you to skip hoops in figuring out who's behind the screen. It will happen eventually, and someone will get hurt.

It's definitely very easy for people that use the same name in multiple places. There are plenty of people with 15+ years of internet history tied to the same name, and if they used that name for XIV or anything that connects to their character(the forums or Discord, for example), one crazy person can and will trawl through everything they can find to locate one slipup. Something extreme like scrambling every identifier ID and mandating name changes would be a pain in the ass for everyone from the developers to the players, but I can't think of another way to mitigate it at this point, and it's only going to get harder the longer they leave it unaddressed.

[ZXN]

On the surface, obviously, they say "3rd party programs bad, don't use them", but absolutely know a ton of people use them [Just look on twitter for like 2 seconds to all the mods people use with characters and QOL features] along with several using things for battle content and whatnot. So it's just one of those "Don't show, don't tell" sort of situations. I am not pointing this out not because of the "Grey line", since that is irrelevant with the current conversation. I am pointing this out because, unfortunately, if they do actually acknowledge this massive issue due to the 3rd party program being used to essentially exploit a problem with the blacklist system that they willingly put in, then I am genuinely expecting nothing more from them then their generic PR copy-paste speak of "All 3rd party tools are bad, so please don't use them", and then they move on with their day.

As much as many would love Yoshi-P and the devs/Square Enix to, well, actually care: they most likely won't care as much as people think they should. I'm not going to downplay any issues people have or argue with people who think this is just a giant nothing burger and everyone needs to stop crying about it or whatever, but you have to really look at it from a track-record of how they treat 3rd party programs as a whole and the mindset they might have when addressing things.

All you really can do now is ask yourself: "Will Yoshi-P and the Devs in it's current state fix this in a timely manner and/or address player's concerns about it and acknowledge the issue? Or will Yoshi-P and the Devs just go "Well, we warned you, we told you not to use 3rd party programs" and just shrug their shoulders and leave it at that and just blame the entire thing on outside programs without even attempting to understand the issue that some players are having with this whole thing the first place?"

This entire issue ultimately stems from how they implemented the blacklist due to the changes they made to it, and it is unfortunately completely up to Yoshi-P and the Devs to fix at this point.