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Apple's Game Center Shares Your Real Name
dotarray writes "Apple's Game Center has just made itself a few enemies through a simple change to their Terms of Service. Now, whenever you send a friend invitation, your real name will be attached as well as your Apple ID."
Apparently they didn't learn from the poor reaction to Blizzard's similar idea.
First thought which came to my mind:
1. Apple has a game center?
2. This will have 0 negative reaction whatsoever. This is Apple people. If apple forced you to sign your name in blood to buy an iPhone, you would.
As far as Apple is aware, I'm Steve Jobs.
either this will go like blizzard or everyone will be all happy cuz apple did it then everyone will follow suit... my hope is towards the same as blizzard
You can add people without sharing your real name in either the World of Warcraft, or through the Battle.net service for Starcraft 2(SC2) and other games. You can choose you share your real name with others, when adding them as a friend, or you can choose not to.
Chances are they know your real name.
Blizzard users objected to needing to use their names on the forums.
I figured Apple's intention is to thwart spammers; if you were able to recognize the real name of your buddy you were more likely accept the invitation rather than someone with a username like "THISISNOTVIAGRASPAM." Playing the whole social angle.
What Blizzard was intending was different. They wanted to put paper trail on all users on a publicly viewable form, in the interest of minimizing trolls and thus improving the quality of posts on their forums - to 'shame' the trolls from posting mindless drivel. Yeah, that didn't work out too well.
to hide nothing....
but this is games we are talking about, if you beat some kiddie in his mothers basement, he's going to take exception to you...
This is serious. I mean everyone knows that using the Apple game centre is tantamount to an admission of being gay.
When Blizzard did it, a bunch of people complained, but then you realise that you're adding friends of your own, it's not like it's broadcasting your email and name across the internet to everyone. Who over the age of 15 these days cares if their supposed "friends" knows their real name?
Anyone I'm sending game invites to already knows my real name. I only care about gaming with people I already know in the real world.
Apple is great at many things. They're just excellent in their core competencies. No debate about it.
But they absolutely suck at social media on a grand scale. Hard to believe how tone-deaf they are when it comes to stuff like Ping and Gamecenter. Does it come from the leadership? Maybe. The company is run by old guys in their 40's and up. Maybe they just don't get it.
Perhaps they can hire back Guy Kawasaki to spearhead their social media wing. He saved Apple's bacon once. Perhaps he'll do it again if they asked him nicely.
I'm surprised they didn't require blood.
Apple needs livers! Soylent iPhones are made of human livers!
I finally bought my girlfriend an iPhone 4, because I could buy it officially unlocked. It did annoy me that I had to install iTunes to get it activated, though.
On the positive side it is a very impressive chunk of technology, and it is fun to play with. Both of us are left handed, and we have not experienced any problems with dropped calls, which are apparently more common with left handers.
Although I am not an Apple fanboy, I can understand how the Apple Inquisition's three main weapons, are: fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Jobs . . . their *four*...no... *Amongst* their weapons . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The thing is that-
1. If your friend already knows your first and last name, you probably know him enough to be able to talk to him about it on another communication channel ("Hey, I'm adding you to my apple game list")
2. If you don't know your friend personally, because you met him in another game, or another community - then you probably don't want him knowing details like that. I play a lot with the same community. In this case they will know me enough to recognise my nickname, but giving them my name and surname will not help them identify me any more than I would want them to.
Kiinda like Liberals cheering for Wikileaks
Ahh, bringing politics into this discussion, and implying governments and corporations should have the same right to privacy as real people (not that legal definition BS with corporate personhood). Fuck you.
The difference between this and Blizzard's RealID is that RealID is a service on tp of the normal friends system in WoW - you can friend someone without giving your name, you just don't get as much info (see what char/server they're on at any time etc). Blizzard marketed it as something to use with people you actually know, not that Death Knight you thought was hot that one evening in Gundrak". That to me made it a lot less objectionable since there was no obligation to use it with all my friends. Apple on the other hand seem to be going with this by default.
Sure, you've probably got perfectly good reasons to hide your real name from the Internet At Large, e.g. ID theft.
But, as I'm a computer-savvy 'retard', could you explain a bit more why I should be hiding my real name from those I send a friend request to? After all, they're my friends, and already know it.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Actually, BS. While the trolls were the first excuse Blizzard thought of, they also gave interviews in which they explicitly stated that they want to get more users out of it. They were hoping you'd basically advertise their cash cow for them, either directly or via the human tendency for mindless conformism. Think, "ooh, Jack and Jill from work and 10 of their facebook 'friends' are playing WoW, let's join them."
Heck, they even tried to spin it as a positive thing that they want your "friends of friends" (read, and anyone from the list of 2000 names someone can't even remember without the list, of someone you added just because there was no other global friend option) to keep messaging you they want you to return and tank for their preciousss epics. That's their #1 way to retain players long past the point where they've seen all quests and got bored with the repetitive raid grind. There must be a million people just in Blizzard's player base who are there just because of some delusion that if they quit a game they got bored with, or even if they skip one raid, they'll be somehow failing their guild and their "friends" who need them. Blizard just wanted to take that to the next level: let those people know who you are, where you are and what are they doing, and basically just help create more peer pressure to keep paying.
Heck, for their own BattleNet the above _still_ is listed as an advantage. That you can see if someone is playing Diablo or StarCraft instead of coming help get your epics, and you can message them to come back.
Basically I doubt that trolls were even a factor there, except as a more palatable excuse.
And in that aspect, I don't think Apple's move is any different. They too hope to use people's names to get more business, and probably give just as little about your privacy if it helps make a quick buck.
And frankly, how is it different from spam anyway? Anyone who knows me well enough to be called a friend, already knows how to contact me and ask me if I want to join in anything. Like, you know, send an email first, or give a call, or even an SMS, or whatever. If an invitation comes out of the blue actually needs something -- name or otherwise -- to convince me it's not random spam, then it _is_ spam. The only difference is that instead of being a batch run, it gives idiots a button to spam all their contacts for Apple's benefit.
And really, how's plastering someone's name on it going to help anyway? If I see my buddy's John Doe' name on an unsolicited email trying to sell me Viagra or wanting me to open a "taxes.xls.exe" file, I will think "Joe Job", not "ooh, it must be genuine". Why would I think if it's an other kind unsolicited ad, and John never bothered telling me about it before, it's any better? And yes, there will be smacktards who fall for it anyway, but then you could give most of those an email from "login.scam@i-pwn-u.ru" and they'd follow it anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Blizzard too wanted to do just that. They backed down on RealID only because of the massive negative reaction -- and the cynics would say probably temporarily, until they manage to find some better excuse.
The original idea for RealID was precisely that it will be on for everyone. Including, yes, that Death Knight who you think has teh hots for you because she boosted you once in the Deadmines, and that healer who must be all over your junk 'cause she was healing you more, and that hunter who probably wants your child because she agreed with you twice on the boards, and whatnot. And everyone who ever posted on the boards, including to ask for some tech support. Why do you think there was that much outrage and some women were scared shitless of stalkers and rapists when that idea came out?
So let's not pretend that Blizzard was so much smarter or better people. Blizzard wanted to rape your privacy twice as hard as Apple for a quick buck, they just had to back down when their idea turned out as popular as free kicks in the crotch for everyone.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
My apple ID is some random rubbish and I can just make up something stupid for my real name! Now no-one will know who I really am!
Summation 2
Care to show how opening government secrets (read: Secrets my employee has from me as his employer) is somehow similar to relaying private secrets of a person to the public?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I believe the Blizzard reaction was justified because RealID was going to be used in their forums. You know... where everyone in the world with a Blizzard forum account will be able to see it. Dumb idea.
This on the other hand, is very different. I didn't RTFA, but from the information in the news post, only friends to whom you send invitations will be sent your real name.
Entertain me here, but I would guess that if you are sending an invitation to someone specifically, you already know them and they probably know your real name anyway. If you are the sort of person who sends invites to people you don't know, then you deserve what you get if unknown_person_a gets your real name along with the invitation and does something bad with it. That's just being Darwin stupid.
At least on the surface, this is FAR different than Blizzard's RealID fiasco.
I invite friends, and my friends know my name. I don't see the problem at all.
Actually, when I tried Game Center some time ago, the fact that I did not know who was "Weird Username Here" who accepted my invitation was kind of awkward. As much as usernames are cool, I also want to know which username is associated to which friend.
This change sounds like a improvement to me.
Animoog.org
And even then cancellation would mean then end of payment, regardless of what the contract says
If my service was canceled and my hardware was taken away from me, I sure as hell wouldn't keep paying the bill.
Gotta make sure it's less than $2000 though. A judge would throw that shit right out. But if Jammie Thomas is any indication, a jury would be stupid enough to hand back a verdict saying you actually owe them the money.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
You do not that everything in a contract is not legally binding, even if you sign it right? This is why there is a clause to the effect that if any part of the contract is found to be invalid, the remaining parts are still binding. A lot gets put in there just so they can convince you that you don't have a leg to stand on, in hopes that the client doesn't know any better, as is quite often the case. I rather doubt that a court would order you to keep paying on the contract, or give up the phone for that matter.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Didn't wikileaks wiki leak the climategate emails..?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The way this works in reality, people send friend requests to complete strangers all the time. Say you've trawled through hundreds of idiots in various online games and you finally meet someone who matches your play style and seems like they'd be fun to play with again. You can either send them a friend request while not really knowing the first thing about them, or you can hope that, over the course of hundreds more games, you will meet them multiple times until you eventually consider them a real friend. Most people go with the former, you wouldn't necessarily want to send that person your name.
Didn't wikileaks wiki leak the climategate emails..?
Obviously you haven't accepted what's written in the handbook. Back to stage one of reintegration for you!
This is getting silly, anti-mac is over the place. Why is this anti-mac? Because is not the same as Blizzard forum.
Apple is sharing your name to your friend that you choosen to be your friend. Blizzard was sharing your Name with
all the thousand forum members.
I don't come for this to /., I will go for this to gizmodo, saaaad
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Using the same system of logic by which you derived this "fact", I can similarly derive the "fact" that you want to destroy all government and authority, and live in complete anarchy, where you can live greedily and without responsibility.
Ahh, partisan politics; there's no substitute for intelligent and rational thought that's more socially accepted.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Except for the fact that nobody said it's a stereotypes about all males. Just that such people do exist.
Frankly, out of the population at large, about 10% are retarded. (So, if you thought there must be a million retards running around on WoW, you were probably actually right.) About 1 in 30 are sociopaths. About 1.5% are schizophrenic. Etc.
You don't even need to do more than stand in Stormwind or Orgrimar or Dalaran to come in contact with several of each of the above. And it's those that most people would rather avoid.
The sample around you on any given server will include everyone from nice-guy to deranged stalker, and from level headed guy to the one who foams at the mouth and spews death threats if you as much as rolled need on the dagger he wanted. And you don't know which is which. Yeah, you're probably going to tell me _you_ aren't the kind anyone should be affraid of, but then so would the guy who sends death threats to the girl who doesn't want to meet him IRL. And you don't know who is who. And most importantly Blizzard didn't propose to vet everyone who'd see those real names first: it's not just you who'd see them, it's also every psychotic and stalker and whatever out there.
But otherwise, yeah, thanks for being the kind of cretin who takes any possible criticism of any particular male or male subset as, verily, a personal attack on males everywhere, and the work of those evil feminists.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That's interesting (because admittedly, I didn't read the contract back when I activated my iPhone). But would clauses like the one you mention keep me from signing up for service with the phone? Honestly, no... probably not. Why? Because any time a company puts unreasonable demands/statements in a contract, they're subject to legal challenge and typically, never really acted upon anyway.
For example, a long time ago, I purchased a copy of the DeLorme "Street Atlas USA" software bundled with one of their "Tripmate" battery powered GPS units that plugged into a computer's serial port. One day, I was bored and took the manual out of the CD jewel case and read the whole EULA. I was amazed to find a portion of it where DeLorme claimed that by purchasing the package, you agreed to ONLY use the GPS device with the INCLUDED SOFTWARE. How enforceable would THAT ever be??
You can put all sorts of insane things in a contract, but that doesn't make them legally binding. Typically, the attorneys hired to write up these documents go overboard, thinking (at least from THEIR point of view), it's always better to cover EVERYTHING conceivable, and let people fight it out in court later if they don't like it. (Lawyers get paid a second time if they get hired to write this stuff up initially, and then hired to defend it in a court battle later on!)
Well, yes, if you use the offline meaning of friend, circa 1990 or earlier. In the meantime, "social networks" and online games devalued it to meaning basically "one of the 2000 people on a list of names of people not only I don't know personally, but I wouldn't even remember their name without that list" (check out the Dunbar number for humans: it's not 2000) or just "random stranger I met in some online game, who was healing well and I might look up in the next raid if our secondary healer is late again."
Either way, to be on someone's friend list on some online service, and doubly so in a game or game network, it doesn't mean the same thing as the kind of friend you've been knowing for years and going bowling with. It often just means some guy who's just one step above perfect stranger, but short of what you'd even call "acquaintance" IRL and very very much short of what would pass for a "RL" friend. You've played together once or twice, have seen his character, maybe know that he had awesome damage per second or maybe can't remember even that about him. But other than that, for a lot of them you don't really know much. He could be the nicest guy, or he could be a psychotic dude who has voices in his head telling to do weird things.
So basically let's not do the equivocation fallacy. Just because some things would be expected for the old RL meaning of "friend", doesn't mean they're equally expected or even sane for the watered down online meaning of "friend".
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Actually, Blizzard's "similar" idea that got the bad reaction was to use real names on forums, not on in-game friend-lists and invites. Blizzards system does show me real-life names on friend-lists and invites to friend-lists, and my friends and I are as a rule not upset about it. They're only copying what Blizzard has succesfully implemented here.
How the hell is anyone supposed to know that their friend "Fred Johnson" is UberGamer34? If you are sending out a friend invite, that person should already know your name right? In real life, I assume that you give your friends your real name.
As for people that you say are your friends "online". Listen, if you cannot trust them with your real name then they are not really your friends. Stop calling strangers that you talk with online "friends".
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The thing is that-
1. If your friend already knows your first and last name, you probably know him enough to be able to talk to him about it on another communication channel ("Hey, I'm adding you to my apple game list")
2. If you don't know your friend personally, because you met him in another game, or another community - then you probably don't want him knowing details like that. I play a lot with the same community. In this case they will know me enough to recognise my nickname, but giving them my name and surname will not help them identify me any more than I would want them to.
Uh. Someone think of the children. It is important to for some parents to know who their child is communicating with and playing with. This makes it a lot harder for some pervs to "friend" children on game center.
If you don't know them personally, then they are not your friend. If you don't have any actual friends, then maybe you should get out more in the real world and make some.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Didn't wikileaks wiki leak the climategate emails..?
Climategate files were uploaded to Russian FTP server and link to it was provided in a comment on this blog post at Air Vent(comment #10).
Wikileaks had nothing to do with leak in Climategate.
The people who are upset about it left. I'm one of them. One of my best friends, with whom I used to play WoW, is a guy whose legal name is "Jessica". We do not want to use real names, but we wanted to be able to be friends across alts/factions/etc.
So we went to City of Heroes, which uses a global handle instead of real names, and we're happy.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The people who are upset about it left.
I didn't see many people leave. I am not sure why many would, myself -- I only add people to my battle.net friends list if I'm friends with the actual human being in real life. If I'm not, the in-game character-based friends lists are sufficient.
Maybe Blizzard's (and Apple's) intent is to just get more gamers to think like me and my friends (you don't get on my friend list unless I'd go drinking with you in real life), and less like XBLA gamers (who often invite people to their friends lists simply because they had a good gaming experience with them, which I confess to not understand myself.).
I figure it would be a cool way to keep track of players who weren't douchebags when playing board games on idevices. The problem is, there aren't that many classic board games that actually allow for free/random play online, most tie-in with facebook. On top of that, the list of gamecenter-enabled games is pretty crappy, a whole hell of a lot of press-button-receive-cookie games. :(
--- Do you believe in the day?