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

[WetShoelace]

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 matter how you look at it, the situation is bad and Square Enix has handled it in a mediocre and disappointing way. People make the argument that if you have nothing to hide, there shouldn't be a problem at all. And that is simply not the case for the many people that use social media, go to real life events or want to find people to play with. Having nothing to hide doesn't mean anyone should be able to access your private information. The fact that the game easily facilitates this information makes Square Enix liable for legal action taken against them more than the users who are simply making a tool to scrape the available data.

This problem devalues the community as a pillar of the game even more than Naoki Yoshida and Creative Studio 3 already devalued it with their design blunders. The only way to safely play the game would be completely as an anonymous individual.

Ok, so let's be clear about the situation. The leaked data is already leaked and NO MATTER WHAT, people's information is already indexed in databases. If you have logged in at any point in the past month, they have all of your alts scraped into a database. Legal action does nothing, another repository is created and another discord is created. It does nothing at all.

What are the steps forward to 'fix' the problem?

As user, if Square Enix hides account ID values from now on:
* Abandon your account entirely
* Buy the game again on a new account
* Forbid yourself from saying you play the game at all
* Never go to Fanfests again
* Absolutely never ever mention the name of one of your characters in social media
* Cover all your traces and never link your in-game characters to your personal identity

What can Square Enix do realistically?

Hiding this account ID once more would prevent future data leaks. However, it doesn't help any user whose data has already been leaked.

Square Enix could, after fixing the problem, in theory, do a good thing for their users, and re-shuffle every existing user's account ID value. It would be a pain, but the type of pain that would keep users around. This method also wouldn't truly fix the problem as it would need players to take the regular measures(which are still ridiculous) to preserve their privacy and avoid stalkers in case they need it. But at least this way they get to be relatively as unknown as it was before the blacklist change. Another thing is, even if CS3 took the time to look at these private, crowdsourced databases to attempt and help affected players individually, it's impossible to know what other databases holding leaked data exist.

They should also really stop censoring their Japanese forums, it doesn't look good.

Yoshida says he approves all of the decisions that happen to this live service. So I hope He does the right thing and takes responsibility.