Forced to Battle.net: My thoughts (long read)

[DrChaos]

I also created a new email account just for battle.net. They can sell, trade, publish, send all the spam they want to that email. Its just a single keystroke of deletion away.

[Tonuss]

I agree with fursphere, Nothing is private and if you think it is your wrong.

Yeah, but "privacy" is a political buzzword, and can be used to put pressure on companies.

That said, I don't see how it applies here. Blizzard already has your personal information. As for monitoring in-game and even cross-game activity, I don't see the problem here either. OMG, Blizzard is tracking my playtime in order to make their games better! Whatever shall I do???

[Khatovar]

Blizzard already has your personal information. [/I]

Exactly. They already have my credit card number, my home address, my real name, my marital status and his information. Including the same "secret question" type you'd use at your bank. If you're going to be paranoid, be paranoid about that, BNet means squat.

[Diwa]

I wonder what will happen if the Authenticator fails. Million lawsuits will put Blizzard out of business.

[kadaan]

I wonder what will happen if the Authenticator fails. Million lawsuits will put Blizzard out of business.

?

- You don't need to buy an authenticator if you have a battle.net account.
- You could file a lawsuit, but Blizzard would just laugh at you? If Blizzard decided to shut down their servers today, you couldn't sue them for anything. Best-case you could file a charge-back on your CC for the monthly fee, but even that's iffy.
- The authenticator is by Vasco, not Blizzard.

[Diwa]

?

- You don't need to buy an authenticator if you have a battle.net account.
- You could file a lawsuit, but Blizzard would just laugh at you? If Blizzard decided to shut down their servers today, you couldn't sue them for anything. Best-case you could file a charge-back on your CC for the monthly fee, but even that's iffy.
- The authenticator is by Vasco, not Blizzard.

I'm thinking if it fails to everybody who has it.
I don't need an authenticator if I have Battle.net Account? How come?

[kadaan]

The authenticator is a 3rd party product, and not related to a battle.net account.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I'm thinking if it fails to everybody who has it.
I don't need an authenticator if I have Battle.net Account? How come?

What he was trying to say was that the authenticator isn't a Blizzard product, so any lawsuits would be filed against the manufacturer, not blizzard.

[Diwa]

Ahh gocha and the one in Iphone/Ipod does

[Tonuss]

A lawsuit against Blizzard for the failure of a security device would probably be thrown out. You need to prove damages, and aside from your monthly fee it's unlikely that you'd convince a court or jury that you suffered damages due to the inability to log in to a video game. I'm thinking that there aren't many lawyers who would take a case on the hopes of winning $15 for his client, unless he was working at an hourly rate. In which case you're paying $150-to-$400 an hour to get back $15.