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

[VerdeLuck]

Anyone suggesting anti-cheat software either does not know or does not care that any information dealing with basic account security should not be left raw and unencrypted and handled purely client side. There's a HUGE host of problems and issues associated with various levels of anti-cheat software, things that you absolutely do not want to consent to having installed on your platform, and yet we have some big brains in this thread who think it's the answer?

SE should be handling sensitive information server side, or at the very least encrypting the information. The fact that some people are suggesting "oh use anti-cheat" instead of acknowledging the actual issue is beyond incomprehensible. Just because you think such a thing would stop SOME people, that still does not deal with the root issue of player safety. Sure, maybe you are weeding out some people who cannot find such a thing easy, but you are still allowing access to sensitive account data. You are not dealing with the core problem, you are suggesting a solution that does nothing to fix the issue.

Again, account information should not be raw, unfiltered, unencrypted, and sent to every client. It has nothing to do with whatever third party tools people are using and it has everything to do with how SE has decided to leave account safety to chance in the wind.

The "sensitive account data" isn't PII, it's a reference number that is useless outside of SE's internal DB. Again this kind of posting is concern trolling to cast doubt because a segment of players really really do not want cheats or plugins like this banned.
But that's 100x harder whenever the game's files are completely insecure, there's no checks on memory being accessed or tampered with, and packets are out in the open. Anticheat is the first step to deal with this and actually get some control on the game and the community from the rampant abuse and cheats that are going around.
You can remove the account ID from the client, but then it just shifts and people will still make programs like this and spread them through dalamud to harass and stalk other players. Cracking down on these plugins will remove them from the hands of the majority of players, a few people will still have them but we won't have a crowdsourced harassment plugin in the hands of a large chunk of the game when it's significantly harder to inject or install it.