Patch 7.2's Account ID protection measures have already been circumvented

[Eraden]

As long as you don't click on every link you see, open random steam gift websites, click on cutekitty.jpg.exe in your emails: probably yes :P

Oks. Mao calmings down now. Mao knows enough nots to click on suspicious links. Mao thankings Nonoko for advice.

[Jeeqbit]

Oks. Mao gettings scared here. Mao nots know much abouts computers. Is Mao account and character safe?

It is not a risk to your account or anything like that.

It is purey, and only, a concern for people who have a "secret" alt character they don't want others to know about. For example, people on these forums often hide behind an alt. All this does is (potentially) makes it possible to identify their main, if they have logged into both since 7.0.

It is also a privacy risk because, if an alt character has a character name that is rather unique and is used in other online spaces, it potentially links their characters to their long internet history.

So, in practice, this is probably not going to affect most people. But often people are paranoid anyway and want to keep to themselves, and don't want their alts listed somewhere.

The biggest concern is for people actively experiencing stalking, who may have used alts to help shield themselves from this. For SE not to design this correctly is a just a "facepalm" moment for anyone that understands basic coding.

[Larirawiel]

I hope, they did not use ROT13 or something similar. xD


Cheers

[AshtonCrowe]

Can't wait for SE to make it worse by somehow enabling them to remotely access your desktop if you're in vicinity

[AshtonCrowe]

It is not a risk to your account or anything like that.

It is purey, and only, a concern for people who have a "secret" alt character they don't want others to know about. For example, people on these forums often hide behind an alt. All this does is (potentially) makes it possible to identify their main, if they have logged into both since 7.0.

It is also a privacy risk because, if an alt character has a character name that is rather unique and is used in other online spaces, it potentially links their characters to their long internet history.

So, in practice, this is probably not going to affect most people. But often people are paranoid anyway and want to keep to themselves, and don't want their alts listed somewhere.

The biggest concern is for people actively experiencing stalking, who may have used alts to help shield themselves from this. For SE not to design this correctly is a just a "facepalm" moment for anyone that understands basic coding.

Then there's me who can't change to new character cause everytime i've tried the site refuses to update . . So character i haven't touched since 2023 is my face :P

[Rithy255]

Not surprised.

[Kazuke_Miso]

It is not a risk to your account or anything like that.

It is purey, and only, a concern for people who have a "secret" alt character they don't want others to know about. For example, people on these forums often hide behind an alt. All this does is (potentially) makes it possible to identify their main, if they have logged into both since 7.0.

It is also a privacy risk because, if an alt character has a character name that is rather unique and is used in other online spaces, it potentially links their characters to their long internet history.

So, in practice, this is probably not going to affect most people. But often people are paranoid anyway and want to keep to themselves, and don't want their alts listed somewhere.

The biggest concern is for people actively experiencing stalking, who may have used alts to help shield themselves from this. For SE not to design this correctly is a just a "facepalm" moment for anyone that understands basic coding.

To be fair, even though this doesn't affect most people, most people on Earth also don't get murdered. This issue is more important than to fix the issue for people actively experiencing stalking. Arguably the more important point is that Square Enix takes a strong stance on this to dissuade would-be stalkers. There is no deterrence.

The thing with FF14 over the years is that people used to be afraid of botting, afraid of cheating, afraid of RMT because early on they did mass bans and had a strict enforcement policy. Remember in Stormblood and Shadowbringers when everyone thought

"Guys, stop doing this stupid thing [X]!! If you keep pulling this shit Square Enix is eventually going to put the ban hammer down on us all!"

Oh, but that hammer never came. Or at least, it only comes when JP raises enough of a stink to force the devs to respond (e.g. illegal waymark, raiders using overlay getting mass reported, etc., all of which were basically JP witch hunts).

Now FF14 is infested with a culture where people outright do not fear cheating, botting, RMTing, ERPing, modding, stalking, even doing outright illegal things. Because there's no fear anymore, since SE by their own actions has shown that they do not care to enforce their ToS in any significant degree, and put the least effort possible to address ToS violations. People no longer believe that Square Enix will actually put the ban hammer down. So the cheats, mods, and bots have gotten more and more extreme over the years, and now it seems that we can add stalking plugins to the mix of the degenerate culture this game has, a culture that will never be broken or erased because SE does not deign to do anything about it.

Something the "if you do anticheat, all you'll do is create an endless race between devs and cheat creators" crowd don't get is that while that's true, the anti-cheat maneuvers/detection increase, dramatically, the cost of maintaining those cheats, at least if done properly. If players have even a minor chance of getting banned for cheating, or botting, or stalking, A LOT will stop doing it because the cost is just too high. If bot creators have to scramble to fix their bot every patch and spend a significant amount of effort running around the detection and/or anti-cheat, they have less time to spend on innovating and developing new features, and it's also less profitable for them to even maintain such a bot. So what you see with this sort of race is the existence of bots/cheats, but lower than what would have been if there were no detection and enforcement at all. At the end of the day a huge component of this effect is indirect deterrence, not outright patching every hole.

I know I've stopped parsing completely on Lost Ark the moment they started bringing down the banhammers and started a banwave. Have they actually fixed the issue? No, parsing is still possible. But have they made a lot of would-be parsers stop doing it altogether? Yes, 100%.

Meanwhile, since SE doesn't seem to care, the thought that one might get banned or get some sort of consequence, or even that the stalking plugin might get patched out one day... all of these don't even flicker for a single nanosecond across the stalker's mind. That's the pathetic state of this game.

Also, SE's apathy just pushes more and more people into cheating themselves. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It's kinda sad, but I know a few legit, honest crafters just automating undercutting eventually since they can't sell anything without using that.

[Wired-Lain]

It is not a risk to your account or anything like that.

It is purey, and only, a concern for people who have a "secret" alt character they don't want others to know about. For example, people on these forums often hide behind an alt. All this does is (potentially) makes it possible to identify their main, if they have logged into both since 7.0.

It is also a privacy risk because, if an alt character has a character name that is rather unique and is used in other online spaces, it potentially links their characters to their long internet history.

So, in practice, this is probably not going to affect most people. But often people are paranoid anyway and want to keep to themselves, and don't want their alts listed somewhere.

The biggest concern is for people actively experiencing stalking, who may have used alts to help shield themselves from this. For SE not to design this correctly is a just a "facepalm" moment for anyone that understands basic coding.

I haven't experienced stalking in XIV, though I know it happens. But I did for around 4 years elsewhere and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Its easy for people disregard it "its just le game xD log off??" but its an increasingly frustrating and exhausting experience. This kind of security breach would be my worst nightmare if I was still going through that.

[Auro_Seldaris]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_FrQnQv0Vw

This. I was going to post a gif from this, but just... this situation is so ridiculous, just... the whole thing, is my feelings about it.

Right down to "selling their F***KING flayed skin as a sleeping bag to a normal person."

All you have to do is change "massive irretreivable data loss" with "massive player data breach".

[Godzillaxpowerrangers]

Here before they delete this so they hide it happened