ESRB Exposes Emails of Gamers Who Filed Privacy Complaints

simrook writes, "Many people filed privacy complaints with the ESRB over Blizzard's recent (and afterward recanted) move to require the display of users' real life names on Blizzard's official forums. 961 of those complainants had their email addresses exposed in the ESRB's response." The response itself didn't go into the organization's thoughts on Blizzard's plan, but they explained to the Opposable Thumbs blog that anonymity isn't a huge concern to them, as long as users are given the opportunity to opt out. "The role of the ESRB Privacy Online program is to make sure that member websites—those that display our seal on their pages — are compliant with an increasingly complex series of privacy protection laws and are offering a secure space for users to interact and do business online. ... But online privacy protection doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as anonymity. It's about making sure that websites collecting personal information from users are doing so not only in accordance with federal regulations but also with best practices for protecting individuals' personal information online."

Comments

They aren't called BlizTard for nothing.

[lexsird]

Removing the cloak of anonymity from users, (no gaming pun intended) opens up a can of worms like S. Korea has with violence spilling over from inside the games to the streets. Posting people's information only sets up circumstances for some very bad scenarios to play out. The PvP server forums are often full of haters hating full tilt on each other. When is someone unstable going to get pushed too far and end up on someone's doorstep? When some horrible situation plays out on the evening news, BlizTard will end up sued down to foodstamps in a trailer park for liabilities. Not to mention once a politician with an ax to grind will take a look at the clime of these kinds of game and start preaching on a tall soap box how they are so very evil for our kids and basically anyone to be wasting their lives in. About the time someone in the media checks out any trade channel in the game on a Saturday night, they will flip out, and so will their religious buddies. Stuff like this sells.

This is a formula for some crazy people to do something crazy, then the government to step in and take a big bite out of the game industry cash.