Re: Regarding the Use of Third-Party Programs and Player Safety

[Araxes]

So the game shares an internal account ID with the client. If this is not supposed to be seen, that seems like the root problem to me.

• Is this issue going to be fixed?
  
• When can we expect this to be fixed?
  

No one is going to take Mr. Yoshidas Statement seriously until they start banning third party users. If they continue to never enforce their own rules, they may as well be suggestions.

[tank2fish]

No one is going to take Mr. Yoshidas Statement seriously until they start banning third party users. If they continue to never enforce their own rules, they may as well be suggestions.

Again, you are missing the point because you're so fixated on third party plugins. Banning and removing all people who use third party tools will not prevent nor fix this issue from happening again in the future.

[Araxes]

Banning and removing all people who use third party tools will not prevent nor fix this issue from happening again in the future.

Of course it will. When people realize that using third party Software gets actually punished they will stop using it.

[SongOfTheWind]

Of course it will. When people realize that using third party Software gets actually punished they will stop using it.

Damn, I envy your worldview. It is so innocent and pure.

[Clockworks]

Of course it will. When people realize that using third party Software gets actually punished they will stop using it.

It quite literally wont.

[tank2fish]

Of course it will. When people realize that using third party Software gets actually punished they will stop using it.

You are absolving the developers of their mistake, and you need to not do that. They went live with a system that is inherently vulnerable. They have double downed in saying that it's not vulnerable. And you are blaming something else that is unrelated to the core issue.

There will always be bad actors out there, but it is on developers to not provide them with an open door for them to simply walk through. You, and everyone else suggesting banning third party use, are completely focused and fixated on punishing people for walking into the house, and not addressing the door held open.

And that is an issue because that gives the devs something to hide behind. Instead of admitting any fault or mistakes, they're blaming third party use. They are not taking responsibility. They are not acknowledging there's any problem. People are confused about the entire issue, because people like you are so focused on the wrong thing.

[Clockworks]

No one is going to take Mr. Yoshidas Statement seriously until they start banning third party users. If they continue to never enforce their own rules, they may as well be suggestions.

Or perhaps they should fix the actual issue and remove the new blacklist by reverting to the old one, your suggestion has nothing to do with the actual problem with that specific thing.

Yall are absolutely missing the point, instead of focusing on the new blacklist and its flaws, you focus on third party usage as if somehow because you fix third party it'll fix the flaw of the blacklist system.

[Kahnha]

they can't guys spaghetti code and not enough devs to work on it

[selmon]

I haven't used this forum in roughly 4 years, but I read Yoshi-P's statement today, and it felt so incredibly tone-deaf to me that I really want to state my opinion here:

1.) Plugins are not the problem. The amateurish and inherently insecure implementation by Square Enix is. I have been working as a developer for more than 10 years and just the idea of sending out the account ID tying EVERY character to one account is such a rookie-ish mistake, I am very surprised this passed or happened. You can read this ID with anything, also with things that are not plugins.

2.) Banning the plugin will not fix this. The code has been out for weeks or months - I read through the sourcecode of the plugin and before it was taken down it already had 11 forks just on Github. A fork is basically a copy of the code. And that's just the number we know of. This Github repository with the code being down does NOTHING to prevent this plugin still circulating. It does NOT undo the damage already done. I read the source code. It accumulates the data on a specific server. This data is already out there. Big damage is already done. And this is your fault. This is the equivalent of your banking website not using https for your bank account and then saying in order to fix this they will maybe try to get one hacker to court who simply read your password and login (cookie) from the network traffic. This implementation is the same level of amateurish and I am still flabbergasted this passed. The only thing you can do for damage control is to immediately revert the blacklist feature and then potentially implement it server side. As it stands it does a lot more harm than good.

[selmon]

3.) Stalking is a huge problem in this game. I have witnessed cases of sexual abuse, domestic violence, illegal weapon ownership and threats with selfsame, multiple cases of attempted sexual assault - all in real life between people who met ingame first, a couple with police cases attached to them, all with members of this game's community. I have seen people having to get new phone numbers, new email addresses and new online identities due to insane amount of stalking attempts from very special individuals in this game. I have experienced stalking myself as well. This community is huge. This community is very social. A lot of this community is extremely lovely and nice. But a good chunk (just due to its sheer size) of the community is also batshit crazy, abusive, stalky, and violent. And SE in general does NOTHING to prevent this or even stop it when it unfolds ingame. And this community does not only consist of raiders. I have seen cases of people doxing the entire name and addressess of other people in shout chat due to some feud. Would you really want individuals like that to know every one of your alts, every place you have been ingame? There are SO MANY ways to stalk people by now in this game but this is one of the gravest, since it means you basically can't play this game anymore if you ever get stalked. All of your characters are instantly known. Characters you potentially worked for months on are now doxxed and viewable to anyone "interested in you". And yes, of course those people are at fault for doing all those things. But it's SE who really does not give any thought to this at all, who does implement this in the most amateurish and irresponsible way ever. I still... I can't believe anyone REALLY thought this implementation was a good idea.