Voting Whitelist privacy concerns

I find it ridiculous that many people here are trying to lecture OP about how this shouldn't be a concern when the concerns are very reasonable.
Like @lozy mentioned, we have no idea how the data was stored or encrypted. We also don't know where the server is, or if there's any third-party host involved. We also have had very trusted senior staff members, such as Pure, Dong, and Kenny, who likely had access to those sensitive information, and ended up breaking staff rules. One of them even went crazy and leaked stuff on YouTube and Reddit.

I agree that staff likely won't have the capacity to design a new rule to address the issue, but that doesn't mean the privacy concern is not valid.

Instead of trying to downplay OP's concern and shut down his feedback, I think the discussion should focus more on proposing alternative methods that are equally or more effective and efficient to verify household players. Staff or mod can probably assist with the discussion here by telling people what their limitations are and what they think is important in the verification process.

 

So far, the only addition I've seen in this thread has been 'video calls' which are not only unfeasible, but also easy to screenshot.

Honestly I don't see a method that's less intrusive, but am more than curious what anyone has to offer.
Well or just no white-listing at all.

 

What if the Royals Staff provided some kind of unique identifier to the people applying to the whitelist? Then the couple/family/friends or whomever can have todays date written together with their ign's on a paper along with the identifier provided by the Staff team and then take a photo without exposing their faces or names. Would something like this be a viable option? Shouldn't take too much effort from the Staff imo.

 

Honestly a picture shouldn’t be needed at all, staff already have the tools to check if people are account sharing or are in fact different people. Use those tools.

 

If you have privacy concerns to that extent, and you're on here, online, possibly have all kinds of alternative accounts, like a reddit account, a facebook, an instagram, and anything that revolves around that area, then you already compromised yourself. Not many can say they actually protect their identity online because they don't. They continue to make their online presence known on several platforms, and then cry concern over their privacy? that is an unreasonable response to any issue too many people have overlooked over the years. You are online, therefore, anyone can find you. Denying that, and claiming the need for privacy is silly and ironic.

I think the issue here is, alot of you are making the staff out to be some kind of criminal organization, or completely inept children who do not know how to encrypt something, or store obviously sensitive information on separate devices. You're being overly critical over a private server, who probably care more about your privacy than any of the other social media platforms which treat you like a number. What's more ironic is, all of those other social media platforms HAVE been compromised, and all they can offer is an apology to you, but you're all fine with all your platforms and far more concerned about a children's game, run by people who:

1. Choose to be neutral on sensitive subjects.
2. strive to keep the game fair to everyone by enforcing rules accordingly without bias and work TOGETHER to find the culprit.
3. Make permanent bans actually permanent, so that a potentially dangerous individual remains offline.
4. Remain strict with their rules very visibly, fulfilling any transparency concerns you may have.
5. Check player activity far too persistently than they should.

The other side of this, is a bunch of AI software which checks for irregularities in login and possibly finds it's way to a dev, which may then send you an automatic email asking if you logged in recently. These concerns about the staff sound malicious and quite frankly insulting to them, as if in 10 years they learned absolutely nothing about running a server and people's privacy. In the end, they can only do so much, but they are doing their best not to harm you, or let anyone else harm you, both ingame and out. If you believe otherwise, then you need to get off the internet for a while, because you have been on for far too long and prefer to believe in conspiracies rather than consider an overall scope of effort which has been offered to you for over 10 years.

For the record, I am new here, but I know the ropes and valleys that occur within a timespan like 10 years, and the fact that this server still stands so strong, shows they care, and no amount of conspiracy will change that. Perhaps those concerned need to stop perceiving the staff as ill-willed, and take a clear look at the product they are offered for free.

I know this was long, but thank you for reading.

 

How would this work?
How would you give this person their 'unique identifier' that only that person would know?
How does it prove two unique humans instead of just one? A nefarious actor could simply request two unique identifiers.

There are clues, but most of the time people are 'account sharing' is because they're on the same computer at the same time. Please enlighten me these magic tools staff has to tell. There's clue that an account can be the same person (Same Email, PIN/PIC/Password), but this is hardly a foolproof "tool" and more often secondary evidence when they're suspected of a crime.

 

correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure sharing account information also counts as account sharing as only you should have access to that information.

as AI advances i think pictures has or will soon be made unreliable for applying to the whitelist.

 

They have access to player's IP, MAC address, (maybe HWID too), login patterns, and ingame setups such as skill/pot bind layouts. Possibly other tools that they keep for themselves to identify account sharers. This is out of most of our expertise, which is why I said they can assist with the discussions here by telling us what their limitations are. But I agree with @Fill that they probably can use the same methods that are used to identify account sharers to verify household players. And frankly speaking, that method will be more accurate than a picture that can be faked by having a random friend do the application for you(?)

 

your first mistake is assuming everyone uses social media
your second mistake is assuming everyone uploads their face on social media
your third mistake is assuming everyone doesnt prefer privacy

and its incredibly naive to assume that being online means you automatically give up your privacy
if you are someone who uses your real name on your forum account and have your IRL picture on your avatar and say nasty stuff about privacy concern like this
then i can respect you for being so based about privacy, otherwise these are just words for the sake of typing

it can take just one argument with a complete stranger for them to start trolling you relentlessly. but what if you are a female with a decent looking face?

Matt himself needed privacy to ignore DMCA when a letter is served
Tim and the rest of the GMs/Mods probably needed privacy because they will need to confront players, you know these players sometimes go to Reddit or gtop100's review and make false accusations about the GMs/Mods randomly banning people for fun and stuff, and what if they got a hold of their personal information?
and why do you think some of these voting whitelist applicants dont need to have privacy/some alternative methods?
why do you think xenforo forum have the options to hide gender, birthdate, online status and current activity?

incorrect, inaccurate and irrelevant to the comment you replied to
but you know how i can "find you"? by having a picture of you holding your IRL name and IGN
wanna know how i can get a picture of you as a normal player and not a GM? go read back my first post

1) show us where anyone even slightly claimed the staff team are some kind of criminal organization
2) show us a quote from staff detailing any data retention policy or security measures or anything else fancy enough (other than soft delete flag that wont be displayed on forum but still keeps them in the database) that can give applicants peace of mind when submitting their personal info (in case if you got sidetracked, OP clearly was not impressed and also claimed [GMs are just volunteers doing moderatoration for free and are in no way legally obligated to keep this information safe])

if you cant do that, apologize to the rest of us who were raising fair and reasonable concerns for OP and his wife
or sit out for the rest of this thread's discussion, and next time dont put random shits in our mouths when you write nasty stuff like that