Petition for Hacker's characters name release.

I'll just post my reply to Gaile Gray direct from the 'About Account Security' thread. Its all pretty self explanatory. If you want to join the petition, please reply stating your support to this thread itself, one post per person is more than adequate. Thank you PS: I will be thinking of ideas for appropriate action to be taken should ANet not do anything in the case of support reaching a sufficient level... but I welcome any and all arm twisting tactics the community can come up with.

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I'm personally starting a petition to get the names of these hacker's released. There is no definable justified reason to keep their names from the community. All you say is "a bad idea", Gaile. Forgive me if that doesn't quite cut the mustard...

Releasing their own account names, or preferably (since their account names are not of interest to me, or non-hacker scum that proliferates the rest of the community currently interested in this topic and the issues relating to it) their character names, would have many benefits but i'm just going to list a couple for your perusal before I get the ball rolling :

1) Firstly, there is the question of morality. How dare you assume you have the right to keep the names of these £"$%&!$*'s who are doing this from a) the people whose accounts, time, and sense of security in playing GW have been stolen from. Quite astounding. B) secondly, throwing an undeserved veil of anonymity around them from all the people in the GW community who, though not violated themselves personally yet, run the risk and take the chance every day they hold a GW or PlayNC account of having their hard-earned items and possibly even their long-laboured characters' taken from them.

I think you are a little outnumbered in regards to the amount of people playing GW that are at risk, juxtaposed with the few numbers of people in the ArenaNet organization who are charged with making these decisions. Far far outnumbered. Also, it stands to reason that no member of ArenaNet themselves (that play GW, for any particular reason) have had 'their' account stolen... so, furthermore, one might surmise that noone in ArenaNet has the right to even contribute to the decision making process of whether or not these person's names are wrongly withheld, or otherwise.


2) Secondly, there is the matter of prevention. Yes, it is required and right (not particularly 'good', as some have stated) that you fix this problem from a technical and logistical standpoint. After all, people who feel little security when playing a game in regards to the acheivements, equipment, and progress that playing it earns them, aren't going to be particularly encouraged to hand over more money to NCSoft for the right to experience new chapters. However, have you ever head of something called a "deterrent"? Incase you don't, let me paste a synonymous defintion for you Gaile :

- A retaliatory means of discouraging enemy attack."

Anyone with a brain cell can probably see where i'm going with this... if the names of these hacker's (if they even have the skills to earn that designation) own character names were revealed to the community, the 'deterring' effects of widespread rejection from groups, trading channels, and most likely the deserved emotional backlash they would reap would be immediate, unmitigated, and of which we are damn sure : effective.

Basically, this keeps happening because you keep it under wraps, unfairly. You say "people are being dealt with", but other than your word (which to be honest, by itself, is vague... and non-committal) we have no idea what kind of justice or penance they will be required to give to make amends. For all we know, they get a 2 week to 1 month ban, or something equally impotent, just to make sure you don't lose a valued customer for the next expansion. Noone is being made an example of, publicly, which in my opinion... and the opinion of many other's, is one of the main -contributing factors- to account orientated misdemeanors being so proliferant. I mean, come on... this thread had like probably 30 different people post in it, and at least 5 of those 30 that bothered to respond were victims of such account violation.

As such, I shall soon be starting a petition if I perceive enough support (with appropriate consequences should inaction be favored despite sufficient numbers of supporters who desire some real, tangible, and transparent consequences for this sort of behaviour), for some real action to be taken, action that will have some real effect, and send a real, papable and obvious message to any other currently active account hacker's in the community, and to any people currently having 'ideas' about following in such steps.


- Tremere

Before it gets locked...

Lets just say, from a company stand point, releasing their names makes no sense.

With my "hackers" name, there was no character name to release, they got in from my PlayNC account. You could release their IP, but I'm pretty sure that would be unlawful... and well, what about the falsely accused?

Think about it kid,
Do you think it would be good Business if there was a Link on the home page for Guild Wars titled "LIST OF HACKERS" with a page full of character names?
Wouldnt it just be easier to ban "hackers", rather then leave them unbanned?
Does Arenanet even Care? When my account got hacked i had to go through hell to get my account back, and to make things worse, the hacker PM'ed me a few days later taunting and teasing me, ADMITING he had accessed my account and deleted my characters and cleaned out the bank, Took SS, sent in to ANET and what do ya know "We are investigating" 2 months later, the kids still playing o_O

One big flaw of this, who's to say that the hacker's account isn't a hacked one and belongs to someone legit? In this case, naming that account does nothing to the hacker himself since all he has to do is discard that account and viola! Problem solved. On the other hand the legit owner of that account is now screwed. Knowing the hacker's account/character names in this case does little to no use and could be hurtful to legit account owners who were hacked. Would suck majorly to get back a hacked account only to find that it is now a named hacker's account.

I agree with this bit, how would it look to a new player or someone considering playing to see this big old list of hackers? It would give many pause about playing the game for fear that they'd be hacked. I really think it's better we let ANet deal with them quietly.

-- Again, you are not reading what im saying. We do not care what is in the interests of ANet, ANet will take care of its interests more than enough for itself, its a corporation after all. This is a thread for the interests of the community... and that INCLUDES those new players... which have a right to know if there is such a bunch of hacker's who have been able to compromise security on GW.

You all are just basically reinforcing all my previously stated arguments.

So for that, at least, I thank you


- Tremere

Name and Shame might be a way of deterring, but it has HUGE legal implications which makes it unworkable.

If Guru allowed them to be posted, in some countries they would be liable for any damages from any libel or defamation case that was bought before them. I doubt guru has the resources to fight just one of these cases so as objectionable as it is keeping them off the public forums is for the best,

Now if someone else wants to set up a name and shame site then good luck, but be prepared to fight or stave off several legal threats a year..

Same goes for Anet. Do they want to stave off legal action or use the money they would spend on lawyers on the game.

The days when any website can publish any information they like without fear of legal reprisal are long gone.

Think about it. AN publishes a list of names, we've seen they can make mistakes(banning the wrong people etc) and puts a name up.

Said person reads list, knows it's defamatory and libellous and files an action(maybe class action) against AN. AN would have to either take the name down and offer reperations(thus leaving the door wide open for more) or go to court and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting it.

Tremere,

It doesn't make sense that they would have the hackers characters name. They don't hack using their character names (which can be deleted, and thus reused, causing even more problems), the only knowledge Anet has of these hackers is an IP. Because the common hacker steals many accounts, it would be almost impossible for arenanet to tell which account is that of the actual hacker.

We are talking about in the case of there being adequate proof to support any such name's being published. As for the money they would spend, I really don't care.


- Tremere

As it is if its hacked into via plaync they DO give you the IP... When someone tried to hack my husbands account over and over they did give the IP each time the attempt was tried (9 times to be exact). What I wish they WOULD do is when you contact them that these were unlawful hacking attempts that they would ban the IP or at least try to look into it rather than telling you your password isn't good enough.

Here here

Corporate self-interest at its finest :P

Seriously, as stated anyone caught of doing this will have their account banned. Therefore, having their character name won't do you any good. They'll be unable to login to face your wrath.

I've reported people for scamming and then 2 days later logged in and typed their name into my friends list to see if they ever logged in again. Surprisingly I was unable to do so because their character name did not exist. If people get perma banned for scamming I think stealing accounts might at the very least merit the same result.

At the very least I think Anet should take legal action against anyone found doing this. They can then pay out the reparations won (if any) from such action.

Honestly, it could be solved really simple:
Treat it like every other online thing ever.

Want to reset your password? Sure, we'll send you an email. Please confirm it, and we'll let you. Or heck, we'll send you a temporary password in your email.

It's all well and good releasing the names of these people, but in doing so, it crosses a line. Once that privacy has been shattered, where do you draw the line? Say someone scammed someone else, their name could be put up there. Then say someone made an honest mistake and managed to grab something supposably very expensive for a few gold and was reported as a scammer.

These are some basic examples, but nothing is purely black and white.

Define adequate? Had my name been up there I would want a court to decide what was adequate or not

I care where AN spends their money. I would much rather it go on the game than on lawyers(apologies to any lawyers here)

Of much more concern is the no restoration of accounts policy. Now that is an additon to the store I would welcome. Pay say $50 and it buys you insurance against deletion, add in a character lock feature where to delete it requires an email auth. These are all simple changes, that combined with user vigilence would make GW a much safer place.

Back to the topic in hand. An will never release names as
1. The Legal exposire is too great
2. It would contravene several countries data protection laws
3. They would rather put resourses into game development than legalese.

Firstly, you cannot add someone to friends if they are not online. So that doesn't necessarily mean their account has been banned or deleted. Secondly, if you yourself have been put on ignore by them (a common tactic) then they will appear offline to you, and consequently, i doubt you'll be able to add them to a Friend's List either.

As for your second part :

"At the very least I think Anet should take legal action against anyone found doing this. They can then pay out the reparations won (if any) from such action."

I fully agree with everything you have said. Now we are getting somewhere people


- Tremere

You can add people to friend's when they're offline.

Pretty much, and any user engaging in unsavory activities knows how to hide IPs. Hell, I change my IP daily just by restarting the cable modem.

I don't understand what any of this accomplishes anyway. It's just a useless list of names to throw people a bone?

Any honest gamer would of tried to rectify such a mistake in short order, and therefore could prove (or the accusing party consequently 'couldn't prove otherwise) their innocence. Accident's happen all the time, but i think you people are exaggerating the issue of how often it is hard to judge the difference between an honest mistake and a real crime. I pick up ecto's in UW by accident, honest mistake... while doing 50/50. You know what? I drop the extra ones if i've taken too many. People understand that, and I don't get reported do I. That happens to everyone, all of the time. This really has nothing at all to do with the issue being discussed.


- Tremere

Actually you can I just logged in and added someone who wasn't online. And I have added people in the past that have had me on ignore. So........