Player Portal Privacy Problem

[ReverentBlade]

So, this is a thing I get to have nightmares about now, apprently.

I track all player activity by scraping the portal every few seconds and noticed a few things. When certain old characters suddenly get a new house, or a new shop, (many times a very attractive one) sometimes they will have logged in at an "awkward" time. If I compare their regular playtimes they're usually very consistent, except that one login I can see that coincided with them getting the shop.

This means they weren't regularly logging in at that time to check the shops availability. They were either a) warned OOC about it being available or b) have a tracking thing just like my own to track when that player was last online ( or c: I'm wrong and misinterpreting what im seeing )

I can currently input a character name into my little application and get a notification when they haven't logged on for X days/hours together with a timestamp of their last appearing online. This is how I believe many old characters and players seem to always get the most baller shops and houses (pure guess) and it gives a somewhat unfair advantage to anyone with such a tracker.

I reported the post in question, and the ticket was closed within 30 seconds and I heard nothing back indicating that this is a problem being taken seriously. I'm posting this to hopefully raise awareness. I value my privacy. I play with -notells on to discourage creepers, and so I'm not exactly comfortable knowing that my metadata can be used to build a dossier of my activity and habits. Unlikely as it may be, just imagine your exposure if anyone ever used this to know when someone was home or not.

Please fix this vulnerability in the portal code, or allow me to opt-out of having it display me at all. Thank you.

(If the portal code -is- secure and the above guy is trolling, please disregard.)

[The Rambling Midget]

-dissaportal

Can't track what they can't see.

There actually used to be a player made portal page that allowed you to search this type of data, to some degree, although it was being used to track player counts for more constructive purposes. For obvious reasons, it was closed a while back.

[DM Rex]

The issue presently is that while you can hide from the newer portal, the old one is still capable of being viewed which does not work with the in game command to hide from the portal list.
But there is no assurance that collected information will be used to pursue actions in game. If someone is harassing you directly then we would like to hear a report about it.

If we disabled the older version of the portal then we would not have this issue admittedly. (Which only displays the three of the four servers anyway..)

-dissaportal works!

[ReverentBlade]

I'm certainly more concerned about collected information being used to pursue actions -out of game-, Rex.

[Frailman]

Not trolling. The moment you put anything online anyone can store it. There's no vulnerability in any code or anything similiar. It's just a simple fact of any online information being gatherable by anyone.

If I could manually make a notepad to write down who's online, then a bot can do it automatically every minute. That's just how the internet is. Personally not using this maliciously in any way I would say, but that's just me. Anyone could do the same.

[Drowboy]

I've never understood why we need a big trackable list if who's online rather than just the server numbers but that's just me.

[Emotionaloverload]

I've never understood why we need a big trackable list if who's online rather than just the server numbers but that's just me.

When you have a limited time to play, it is nice to be able to see who is on so you can decide if that RL thing that you need to do can wait or if you should do it now instead and log in later.


-S

[Gouge Away]

Or if you're avoiding someone you can know when they aren't on, or if you want to gang up to assassinate someone you can know when they are... There's advantages and disadvantages though having the list is probably better than not.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

or if you want to gang up to assassinate someone you can know when they are...

I wish we could ban these people away. It's such a complete and utter disregard of the Be Nice rule.

It's not nice. Nothing about it is.

[Dreams]

We have -playerlist in game, I don't see why we also need to have the portal. The portal encourages metagaming and it isn't always the benevolent 'check to see if my friends are here so I can play with limited time'. The same check can be done using -playerlist + sending a message.

[Drowboy]

We have -playerlist in game, I don't see why we also need to have the portal. The portal encourages metagaming and it isn't always the benevolent 'check to see if my friends are here so I can play with limited time'. The same check can be done using -playerlist + sending a message.

[Anomandaris]

Are people actually gaming this to track players and see when they will drop quarters/shops? If so that is brilliant, devious and awful all at the same time. It would also explain a lot...

[Hoodoo]

People in this day and age don't always have the opportunity to log on and see if other players in their faction are active or if they've got one of their friends online to play with or RP

As some folks get less and less time to play, we can't always remain in-game. On top of that, there are people that don't necessarily participate in conflict RP and have no reason to care about being "portal sniped".
Then comes the issue of metagaming... sure it's metagaming to check the portal to see if you have friends you'll be able to play with, but when it comes to metagaming like this, I feel Jjerm put it best.

Is this OOC/Metagaming? Assuredly. Is it beneficial to the RP? Absolutely. Since we played one night a week at a specific time, and only had about a 5-6 hour window, it meant that we could play as a party for longer if we just started out together. Not technically "in character", but we didn't really gain any unfair advantage by our metagaming either, just made it a funner experience by being able to play as our party a bit longer.

Now for the final thing about privacy. A player came to me about these exact concerns during the redesign, the very next day I created dissaportal. If you feel like somebody is using your information to metagame with bad intention, use it. If you don't want to be seen online, use it.

I'm honestly not quite sure what the "old" portal is? The classic and new "styles" should both hide you.
If there's somewhere that it's not hidden or if there's a bug, be sure to let me know.

An Addendum after I got onto my PC:
There is no vulnerability in the portal. Players cannot scrape/track info from players that choose not to be shown on the portal. It's just not possible. The backend information that gets sent to the client isn't even processed when you choose to be hidden.

[aergnist]

-dissaportal seems like the best/feasible solution to this, especially given the great value of having the portal.

I remember asking a DM a couple years back about whether scraping the portal was allowed, and the response I got was a hard no. The unfortunate reality, however, is that there's no really dependable way to prevent scraping. If you put something on a website, it can be read both by human eyes and by applications; there are ways to detect bot activity but it won't be definitive and exhaustive, and you'll just inconvenience real users if you try to be heavy-handed about it.

[TheRagingGoblin]

So.. lol.. why not just make appearing in the portal be opt in rather than opt out? Have characters not show by default. If you want to see your friend's availability and they're not showing you can easily request they toggle it on.

[Hoodoo]

So.. lol.. why not just make appearing in the portal be opt in rather than opt out? Have characters not show by default. If you want to see your friend's availability and they're not showing you can easily request they toggle it on.

Because people are not by default in conflict scenarios that would cause them to be maliciously meta gamed/scraped.

If you genuinely feel like you are being targeted/metagamed via the portal use the -dissaportal command.

[TheRagingGoblin]

So.. lol.. why not just make appearing in the portal be opt in rather than opt out? Have characters not show by default. If you want to see your friend's availability and they're not showing you can easily request they toggle it on.

Because people are not by default in conflict scenarios that would cause them to be maliciously meta gamed/scraped.

If you genuinely feel like you are being targeted/metagamed via the portal use the -dissaportal command.

So, Frailman presented information that suggests players are monitoring the behaviour of others players, and those being monitored are extremely unlikely to be aware it's occurring (how would they?). This is something wholly separate to (ingame) 'in conflict scenarios'. The people it's possibly occurring to remain unaware and have no inkling that they're being 'targeted'. Opted in by default is a design decision that enables this.

If a survey was taken of all players (however this'd be accomplished), I'd bet a significant portion are unaware the portal even exists. It's possible they're being monitored without knowing a system exists that allows such monitoring to occur.

All you need to do is make it off by default & present the option to opt in, or go to reasonable lengths to ensure people are aware that when logged in their character's presence online is made visible via a web page (and this page can easily be retrieved, parsed for the relevant information that's their character's online presence & then tracked if you retrieve the page at frequent enough intervals) and that there's a command to prevent it.

This would show that the first concern is the playerbase's privacy rather than convenience.

[Frailman]

So, Frailman presented information that suggests players are monitoring the behaviour of others players, and those being monitored are extremely unlikely to be aware it's occurring (how would they?). This is something wholly separate to (ingame) 'in conflict scenarios'. The people it's possibly occurring to remain unaware and have no inkling that they're being 'targeted'. Opted in by default is a design decision that enables this.

While not wrong I'd just like to add that I didn't really present the information that made me think so at all, and so far all you have is me going "Sure looks like these other people are tracking when the owners of shops and houses were last logged on".

But it's true that this is definitely possible and therefore pretty likely.

[Halibutthead]

All you need to do is make it off by default & present the option to opt in,

while i don't necessarily agree or disagree here, that change would make the portal pretty much useless, unless you wanted to contact the dozen or so players on their couple of characters that would go out of their way to use it. at that point, we may as well take it down

This would show that the first concern is the playerbase's privacy rather than convenience.

privacy has yet to win against convenience in the war of social media afaik

[Hoodoo]

You all harbor some good points, a solution will be coming in the next week or so hopefully. Depending on my free time.
I'd like to note I'm still against opt-in portal appearance. But this temporary solution will give us valuable data.

[-XXX-]

Just pointing out, there's zero personal information being disclosed anywhere on the portal, so if we could stop misrepresenting the matter at hand by dropping buzzwords like "privacy", that would have been nice.

Also the currently available player side options to address this would consist of:
- changing the player name and playing a brand new character
- using the aforementioned -dissaportal feature
- reporting questionable behavior to the DM team
- the -notells feature can be also somewhat relevant to the topic


I think that jumping the gun here would have been a bad call, because then the -playerlist feature would have to be disabled too and I don't even know if the actual playerlist can actually be desabled once we go there...

Tbh. I personally would be much more OK knowing tha someone obtained a shop/quarter through cheeky means on occassion, than losing all the outlined functionality.
It's somewhat needed in order to navigate a multiplayer game.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Just pointing out, there's zero personal information being disclosed anywhere on the portal, so if we could stop misrepresenting the matter at hand by dropping buzzwords like "privacy", that would have been nice.

Also the currently available player side options to address this would consist of:
- changing the player name and playing a brand new character
- using the aforementioned -dissaportal feature
- reporting questionable behavior to the DM team
- the -notells feature can be also somewhat relevant to the topic


I think that jumping the gun here would have been a bad call, because then the -playerlist feature would have to be disabled too and I don't even know if the actual playerlist can actually be desabled once we go there...

Tbh. I personally would be much more OK knowing tha someone obtained a shop/quarter through cheeky means on occassion, than losing all the outlined functionality.
It's somewhat needed in order to navigate a multiplayer game.

Isn't it bad form that the would-be victim has to go out of their way? Why is the onus on the individual that is targeted?

It seems backwards to me that "if you feel like you're being targeted/metagamed against, let's just wave our hands and make you disappear from the portal."

That's hand-waving, not eliminating the problem.

[Frailman]

Just pointing out, there's zero personal information being disclosed anywhere on the portal, so if we could stop misrepresenting the matter at hand by dropping buzzwords like "privacy", that would have been nice.

Also the currently available player side options to address this would consist of:
- changing the player name and playing a brand new character
- using the aforementioned -dissaportal feature
- reporting questionable behavior to the DM team
- the -notells feature can be also somewhat relevant to the topic


I think that jumping the gun here would have been a bad call, because then the -playerlist feature would have to be disabled too and I don't even know if the actual playerlist can actually be desabled once we go there...

Tbh. I personally would be much more OK knowing tha someone obtained a shop/quarter through cheeky means on occassion, than losing all the outlined functionality.
It's somewhat needed in order to navigate a multiplayer game.

Isn't it bad form that the would-be victim has to go out of their way? Why is the onus on the individual that is targeted?

It seems backwards to me that "if you feel like you're being targeted/metagamed against, let's just wave our hands and make you disappear from the portal."

That's hand-waving, not eliminating the problem.

Reminds me of how we deal with this kind of stuff over here in Sweden. A lot of information is publicly available, such as private adresses, phone numbers, salaries, stuff like that. If you are getting harassed or threatened you can opt-in for "protected" status or whatever, to get your information hidden.

Works well around here, and I definitely wouldn't call it "hand-waving" (Hand-waving is a pejorative label for attempting to be seen as effective – in word, reasoning, or deed – while actually doing nothing effective or substantial.) . Very convenient with public information when it's not abused.

[DM Rex]

So I was incorrect, even the classic mode supports our new command.
If you do not feel comfortable with having your online presence out there on Arelith you can use -dissaportal and not have to worry about it further.

[-XXX-]

Isn't it bad form that the would-be victim has to go out of their way? Why is the onus on the individual that is targeted?

It seems backwards to me that "if you feel like you're being targeted/metagamed against, let's just wave our hands and make you disappear from the portal."

That's hand-waving, not eliminating the problem.

...and couldn't it be considered a bad form to ask a staff that works for free to change a working system in a way that would also drastically reduce the QoL gameplay experience of the entire playerbase in order to prevent a highly theoretical scenario that you yourself can easily prevent in multiple ways?