I am amazed that apparently there are many players out there who don't consider this new feature a privacy issue.
It is definitely a feature change if something that would have to be observed manually by looking at icons in a friends window suddenly changes into a status message that can easily be grabbed by scripts. The hurdle to capture player's logon/logoff has been lowered.
This is ok in my eyes because I can see the benefit for those wanting to be notified when their friends logon.
However, not providing at least an opt-out is careless, to say the least. As a matter of fact, I would have expected that this is an opt-in feature.
Come-on folks, if it comes to spam email, to unwanted mail delivery, unwanted phone calls and other pestering side-effects of companies and individuals trying to make money, most people do agree that there must be an opt-out facility, and a growing population believes this should be opt-in. When online websites suddenly publish private pictures there's an outcry. If google would suddenly publish the search terms and times of all those people who have an account at their site - with the username attached - there would be an outcry, too.
Although this friend list notification may seem harmless to some, it is a fact currently that it cannot be turned off by those who'd like to stay private, and it is a fact, that logon/off profiles of toons can be established.
This is the first thing I'd personally ask the developers to fix asap.
It does not matter if you're stalked or not. Everybody has a right to decide for himself what information one is to publish. The last thing we need is a few more players dropping out just because of ignoring some common sense good practices when it comes to personal privacy.
Try to not make the debate a matter of personal issues.
It is definitely a feature change if something that would have to be observed manually by looking at icons in a friends window suddenly changes into a status message that can easily be grabbed by scripts. The hurdle to capture player's logon/logoff has been lowered.
This is ok in my eyes because I can see the benefit for those wanting to be notified when their friends logon.
However, not providing at least an opt-out is careless, to say the least. As a matter of fact, I would have expected that this is an opt-in feature.
Come-on folks, if it comes to spam email, to unwanted mail delivery, unwanted phone calls and other pestering side-effects of companies and individuals trying to make money, most people do agree that there must be an opt-out facility, and a growing population believes this should be opt-in. When online websites suddenly publish private pictures there's an outcry. If google would suddenly publish the search terms and times of all those people who have an account at their site - with the username attached - there would be an outcry, too.
Although this friend list notification may seem harmless to some, it is a fact currently that it cannot be turned off by those who'd like to stay private, and it is a fact, that logon/off profiles of toons can be established.
This is the first thing I'd personally ask the developers to fix asap.
It does not matter if you're stalked or not. Everybody has a right to decide for himself what information one is to publish. The last thing we need is a few more players dropping out just because of ignoring some common sense good practices when it comes to personal privacy.
Try to not make the debate a matter of personal issues.