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

[HiThere]

As much as I love FFXIV, this game has a huge stalking / harassment / privacy issue that SE absolutely refuses to address. This stems from the fact that your character's profile is always set to public via the Lodestone even if you don't want it to be. Although you can change your achievements and other minutia to private, your character will always be accessible to anyone who knows your unique "character ID."

For those who are unaware, this means that so long as you know a person's character ID, you can simply type it into the URL (e.g., na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/[CHARACTER ID]/) and know what their current character name and location is. So even if you pay SE to change your character name and transfer to a different world/server, if someone has been harassing you, they can just go type in your unique character ID and immediately find you again. Alternatively, if someone ever participated in a past event (e.g., Ishgard rankings), you can just find them on there and click on their character, and it takes you to their Lodestone profile, which states their current character name, server, etc.

Although SE will ban people who openly harass you in-game, this is not a quick process, and if someone is intent on harassing you they can always just create a new account and come after you again. Alternatively, they can engage in activity that seems harmless (e.g., just showing up near you but not actually doing/saying anything, even though it's equivalent to someone standing in the street and staring into your house), and SE won't do anything about it.

For those of us who have dealt with such stalking issues, it is extremely disappointing that SE has refused to take any steps towards allowing users to change their character ID (or at least set their Lodestone profile to private). It would be great if they would do something to help protect players in this regard, other than just telling them to "create a new character" (especially as many achievements and other items are no longer obtainable and doing so would mean losing out on those, which is akin to punishing the victim instead of the perpetrator).

[Canadane]

Just showing up near you and other stalking activities and such has actually been addressed in the recent clarification and update of the terms of service.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Didn't they update the TOS to have a harder stance against stalking and improper following just yesterday?

[Rokke]

Didn't they update the TOS to have a harder stance against stalking and improper following just yesterday?

Yes, but they didn’t change the means used to stalk someone. The lodestone is public and once someone has your lodestone ID they can follow you anywhere.

[Xaruko_Nexume]

Yes, but they didn’t change the means used to stalk someone. The lodestone is public and once someone has your lodestone ID they can follow you anywhere.

That sucks, but definitely report the person. It sounds like they are taking a hard stance on that sort of thing now, which they certainly should.

[Rokke]

That sucks, but definitely report the person. It sounds like they are taking a hard stance on that sort of thing now, which they certainly should.

For sure, I just hope that one day they give us the option to private our lodestone page entirely. It’s not an end all stalking forever kind of fix, but it'd make it at least a little harder to keep tabs on someone.

Years ago a friend of mine was stalked in game by an ex. She eventually had to start over on a new character because he could follow her across name changes and sever transfers, there was no escaping him otherwise :/

[Lunalepsy]

Although SE will ban people who openly harass you in-game, this is not a quick process, and if someone is intent on harassing you they can always just create a new account and come after you again. Alternatively, they can engage in activity that seems harmless (e.g., just showing up near you but not actually doing/saying anything, even though it's equivalent to someone standing in the street and staring into your house), and SE won't do anything about it.

This! I've had many stalkers who simply stare at me for hours or stay a few meters away, pretending they're not there or that they're "doing" content. It's annoying when some ppl bypass the rules and never get punished for it, but if you voice your concerns, you immediately get punished for your actions.

[Iscah]

...but if you voice your concerns, you immediately get punished for your actions.

Voice your concerns how, and to whom?

[LittleImp]

Voice your concerns how, and to whom?

People who have pattern of stalking and other obsessive behavior are often adept at toeing the line of the rules, all the while inflicting long-term psychological damage on their prey. It's really common for someone who is he victim of this kind of behavior to finally crack under the abuse and have an outburst, which the stalker then reports in order to further harm their target. I've actually heard of a few cases of something like this happening on FFXIV, usually involving someone saying something like "F*ck off" to their stalker.

[SturmChurro]

People who have pattern of stalking and other obsessive behavior are often adept at toeing the line of the rules, all the while inflicting long-term psychological damage on their prey. It's really common for someone who is he victim of this kind of behavior to finally crack under the abuse and have an outburst, which the stalker then reports in order to further harm their target. I've actually heard of a few cases of something like this happening on FFXIV, usually involving someone saying something like [...] to their stalker.

My God. People need to think of the children, before typing in that kind of language in-game!