Friday 9 July 2010

WoW: Privacy e-mail sent

As per your privacy policy please remove all personal details about me from your records. I am no longer comfortable with your information security following the announced RealID changes. I understand and accept that it means I will not in future be able to reactivate my old World of Warcraft account. Please also provide me with details of any third parties you may have released my personal information to.

This is a response to your statement:
If, for any reason, you are concerned about the way in which we collect your personal information, if you wish to access, amend or correct it, or if you want us to delete it from our servers, please contact Blizzard Entertainment SAS, TSA 60 001, 78143 Vélizy Villacoublay Cedex, France. You can also contact us by telephone or by e-mail at: webmaster-en@blizzard.com. Please note that the deletion of your data will lead to the termination of your account and applicable services.
http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/about/privacy.html

[Name]
Account: [Account name]

7 comments:

  1. This whole thing is just way too ... I dunno. Excessive? (Not you -- Activision/Blizzard.)

    Seriously -- your only choice is to march along with the RealID jackboots OR never be able to reactivate an old account?

    Wow. Just wow. And I don't mean the game.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't think purging one's personal data is so simple. You will have to provide proof that you are who you pretend to be, or otherwise it would have been too easy to cancel your account for a hacker.

    The amount of personal data that you will have to provide as that proof will probably be *greater* than what you want Blizzard to delete. And that's why the entire thing wouldn't work for me, as I no longer trust Blizzard with my data. Which is sad.

    Please keep us informed on how that will pan out.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice. If I were currently subbing (ha!), I'd make a point of this in a similar way, methinketh.

    Psychic CAPTCHA made my day: "fument"

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ Anon will do, got an autoreply so far. I won't rush them I imagine they're pretty busy.

    My impression is that privacy laws are much stricter in the EU than in the USA. Also that citizens take these things far more seriously. The EU office must be swamped.

    There's also a real possibility that RealID breaches the European Convention on Human Rights which could mean Blizzard gets told to drop it or get out of Europe.

    ReplyDelete
  5. All you have to do it email privacy@blizzard.com using the email of the battle.net account you want deleted.

    Tell them you don't feel safe with them holding your information anymore, a few days or week later they will respond. They will tell you it will take about 14 days to delete your info, and that will also delete all licenses under that battl.net account permanently, so it is never recoverable.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Please send any updates I am strongly considering the same action.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I let the matter drop in the end. I'm not currently playing any Blizzard games and if I do play one in the future I'll set up a fake real name and email.

    ReplyDelete