Micah Whipple, aka Blizzard CM Bashiok, made the mistake of giving out his name on the WoW forums. He has since been e-stalked, voraciously, on Facebook, Myspace, Photobucket, and other such sites. His address and phone number have been publically released and his home has been called, repeatedly, ever since.. They are no longer answering their phone. Micah's Facebook has also been locked down.

This topic has been talked to death already, so I won’t rail on it too hard. I don’t like it. Even though I believe that it probably will decrease the amount of forum trolls, it’s still too big of a risk for me to be able to support.

From a former banker’s perspective, it’s absolutely short sighted. I’m talking, of course, about the risks for identity theft. Keen and others might think it’s silly but they’re not getting the whole picture. With just your name, it’s unlikely you’ll have anything happen to you. But, add into that, say, an address and you have a whole different can of worms.

It’s amazing the paid services you can rack up with just someone’s name and address. From there, it’s as simple as running a computer program to spoof an account number or debit card– usually a card, the big issuers algorithms have been broken for a long time (I was surprised to see a detailed description of how to spoof a Visa in a recent edition of the 2600 – available at a grocery store near you!). When we’d take fraud claims, it wasn’t uncommon for someone to have simple information stolen from them and find themselves getting mysteriously billed later that month. And, let me tell you, those people had an uphill battle ahead of them to fix their credit.

Let me preface the following statement with this one: most forum users will never have a problem. But, if your name is listed in the phone book, you’re putting yourself at risk.

In a world where Blizzard exists in a vacuum, they can claim to have thought this through. Right about now, though, I’d rather keep the rolls than switch to a Real ID forum. At least now they can’t give out my address and phone number when they get mad.

PS: I found this thread at WoW Riot pretty interesting. It seems one of Blizzard’s CMs decided to prove how safe it was to give out his real name. The ever diligent trollbase was quick to expose just about his entire personal life and harass his family (tsk, tsk… working at Blizzard means unlisting your phone number it seems). I wonder how much his mother supports the move? Seriously, they have pictures of his house. But, hey, once people get your name and address, looking them up on Local.Live is only natural, right?

Hey Gordon, I think I see your house. And your pool. And… naked Gordon! Skinny dipping! Must cleanse eyes! Baah!

PPS: Looks like Keen tested the system and failed too. I’m glad to see him acknowledge the privacy concerns.

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