Fighting Back: Privacy issues arising from the ban

this.. and still this thread is going.

i bet every blizz employee has had a good laugh about all this on a daily basis

realy, you think you can do something... o god.. bwahahha

anything you try, debate or discuss has been done 100's of times allr in the last 10 years

gtf over it!

 

Well I sent my letter today, Via registered post, well as a copy to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (they handle this tuff)

 

@Thecamel I saw your post earlier about the ATO computer... can you pm me a link or something about that (been searching but havent found anything)?

Btw good luck with your letter I hope you can get ur acc back!

 

Um sure, Sydney herald I think Friday's paper, let me find it for you..

 

FYI I'm not doing this to my account back, this will most likely end in a perm ban

This is to piss of blizzard

 

You use the word "privacy laws" but you make no mention of what legal jurisdiction or what privacy laws were used. Did you even read my posts? Different countries have different laws.

 

thanks for the laugh

!!!

 

Legal jurisdiction doesn't mean anything when they have teams of lawyers in different countries. Do you think they use American lawyers for European disputes? Of course not. They are a huge company. You're an armchair lawyer. Who do you think would win?

There are much more pressing privacy issues in the world today. Scanning your computer for botting is nothing. Be more worried about all of your personal information being mined and stored in a giant data base if you really care about privacy laws.

Unless, of course, you only really care about all of this because of the banning.

 

Guys I am not a lawyer but I can say with 100% certainty that no company can make a contract that overrules a law. It just cannot happen. Laws are there to present the bare minimum that a company or individual is allowed. YOU can do better than but never worse than a law. I have seen this play out numerous times where I live and I have spoken to a lawyer on the matter relating to a labor dispute and this is almost verbatim what he said to me. So anyone saying the various things we are told to accept overrides the law is simply wrong. This maybe the BEST that Blizz can do to confuse us into thinking this but it would never stand up in court if there is law being broken by accepting it.

Now that said I will say this will never see the light of day. They will first try to BS you out and if that fails they will simply ignore you and see if you are willing to take it to court. 99 times out of 100 the person won't and the reason is simple. They have money and you don't. They can make it far more costly than it is worth to you. Would you really be willing to pay thousands of dollars for your account? This is why big corps beat small fries 99 times out of 100....

 

This isn't about Blizz overruling any law. We botted, we got caught. If you all think Blizz wasn't prepared for a little backlash, you are sorely mistaken. I can almost guarantee Blizz has their collective asses covered legally...

 

The terms of contract don't necessarily overrule a law. When you pay for the game, you're paying for a license to play the game. You're paying for access to the game, and you don't actually own the game itself. If they ban you from it, they remove your access to the game. They aren't taking the game away from you, they are just not allowing you to play it because you broke the rules. The rules that you agreed to also said that you can be banned for any reason they feel fit, so even if you argue that they breached privacy laws, they can just say that they wanted to ban you because they suspected you were botting. They don't even need to offer proof from scanning. They can just remove your access to the game because you only pay for the access.

If you read the fine print, you were paying for intangible goods and don't actually own the account. The wording is very precise. You pay to access the game, but Blizzard is still the owner of everything. Privacy is moot. You might be able to get some court to punish them if you can convince them that they were breaching privacy laws, but as far as your account is concerned, there's pretty much nothing at all you can do about it.

Most people here are just sour because their accounts were banned and don't care about privacy issues, they just want to take out their frustration on Blizzard instead of admitting to their mistakes.

 

Since money exchanged hands they would have to prove it. This is what this is about. They can't take your money without a reason and by saying you did something wrong they either have to prove it or refund you. The request being made is to say show me your evidence because its the law.

 

They don't have to prove it.

They didn't take your money. You paid to use their service and they banned you from using the service because you broke their rules.

If they were to ban you for six months and demand that you still pay for those six months, then you'd have a case, but you can just cancel any upcoming payments and get out of any contract. As for money already spent, you already received those services.

Remember, you don't own the account. It's not your property. You aren't paying money so you can play with your property. You're renting out the account that Blizzard owns. Just because you spent money on it, it doesn't mean you can treat it as a tangible good. This is the digital age. You were renting out the account and broke the rules, so they banned you from being able to use it for six months. This does not entitle you to a refund or access back to your account because you were only paying to be able to use it. It doesn't work the same way as you think it does. They don't have to give you information about the account because you are not the owner of it, they are. Therefore, a reason for the ban is not personal information.

 

To the last posters going about Blizzards right to ban you, and so on. This thread is about the potential privacy violation that might or might not have occurred. This is bigger than just those that got ban, if they did in fact violated your privacy in any way, they have done it to their millions of users not just those that got banned.

Now, this whole thing is going to be hard to prove, but, if anyone manage to get prove, Blizz could face a class action lawsuit from millions of players that had their rights and privacy taken away, a lawsuit that any big lawyer firm would be more than happy to take for a % fee of what ever amount Blizzard would have to pay as compensation and damage.

To those that state but Blizz has money, they got good lawyers... do some research and you will find many multimillionaire companies that were taken to their knees regardless of their so called "super stars" lawyers.

To OP very interesting thread, and good job on the research.

 

You are soo misled.

Money exchanged for a service rendered. It's like renting a movie...well back in the days. If you took the movie home and the dvd is broken, you can still claim back your money.

The guy who posted before you already put it in the most layman term.

Blizzard sells you entertainment. Just like watching HBO, you do not own the movie, but you got entertained... or not.
Thus, if you already paid for the entertainment (a service,) and it was terminated before the agreed duration as per contract (the contract you enter when the transaction is made,) then you are entitled for an explanation. Unless they refund your money. And even then, I believe you are still entitled to an explanation.

Most botters who were banned got an explanation but no evidence to support the accusation. If the person who got banned, disagree and tells Blizzard that they in fact did not bot, and without evidence can we not consider Blizzard lying?

If Blizzard hands over evidence to support their accusations, which MAY reveal that they have intrude upon your privacy (snooping around your comp,) then it is an infringement on the EU anti-snooping law. So they might get into another mess. But these are 2 separate issues. You will remained denied for further Blizzard's entertainment services (unless you buy a new license,) but that does not stop anti privacy suits against them.

Like it or not, when you make a game, put it in the public domain, accept payment from people who pays for your service, you must still play within the laws. Your contract will be superseded by the basic laws.

For an example, we don't need to see so far, take the most recent court case that some claimed may have caused this ban-wave.

Kaesler & Kollegen | Blizzard Entertainment S.A.S. withdraws the application for an injunction at the court of appeal that was an attempt to ban sale of “Gold” for Diablo III.

Won't you agree that ingame gold belongs to blizzard? How is it then someone or some other entity can claim anti-competition? lol Think about it, how laws work. Then come back with a better argument.

I am not sour at all. Matter of fact, I intend to play after the suspension is lifted.


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this, but all these rank1 lawyers want to prove it being different. And get mad if you dont agree.

lmao. so many bots before this one. Glider tried all of this shit allr.

and always on a banwave these stupid legal discussions.

if you realy think blizzard hasnt got all covered u can throw at em, you are downright STUPID as ****

owait, i covered this thread again with bs... aight!

 

Let's talk about the law.

"Personal data." What does that mean? Your account is not you. Blizzard's only personal information they have on you is the information that you entered when you registered the account. Everything else is not considered personal data. The reason for them banning you is not personal data. They suspended your account, not you. They don't have any more information about you. So, if you ask them for more information, they will just tell you what you already know.

If they are collecting your personal data, like your age, location, location of birth, family members, medical history, school records, then yeah, you can ask for that information.

But everything regarding your account is not your personal data. You don't even own the account. Basically, they weren't collecting information about you, it wasn't connected to you, it was only connected to the account. They suspended the account. They weren't invading your privacy because they aren't collecting data about you. Therefore, if you try to argue in court that they violated your privacy, they will just say they were going after the accounts and not the individuals.

They aren't collecting information on you. They don't have your personal information. These laws don't apply. Everything you ask for is related to the account. Think of it this way. Any data they did collect was about your account, not necessarily you. After all, it wasn't even you playing the account, it was a bot. Say they do scan, but anonymize the information. They can then suspend the account because they suspect whoever was playing the account was cheating. Blizzard doesn't care who is playing the account because you are responsible for what happens to it, even if someone else played it. They can do all of this without collecting personal identifying information. They don't need it.

 

Since I do not know how exactly they gather evidences to identify botting, thus it is a bit pointless to speculate.

However, on privacy issue, no, they do not own the bytes of folders created on my computer and by that, they are not allowed to monitor or snoop them. End of story. T

So, if you are recording a show on Pay Per View TV at home. So half way through the show, and they cut it off. Coincidentally, you are recording the show (maybe with intent to torrent it for financial gain.) But, since the cable company technically owns the cable box (which you are renting,) the cable and all, they can attach small cameras to their cable boxes to monitor you and ensure you are not pirating the PPV show right? Pirating makes you a bad person, that doesnt entitle them to spy on you tho. This debate is giving me aids. TT

""Personal data." What does that mean? Your account is not you. Blizzard's only personal information they have on you is the information that you entered when you registered the account. Everything else is not considered personal data."

Everythign else? For fk sakes. If they sent a "bug" into my comp, and monitor what apps I am running to detect then I am pretty effin sure that is a violation, even if the bug is running within the confines of their own game. If the program is not there for the gameplay, but instead to do detection work, then it is snooping. But as I said on the start of the reply, provided that we know for sure the detection method, then this is all talk cock sing song.


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The information they collected was anonymous and gave them enough evidence to suspend the account. It's that simple. They are not allowed to scan your computer to mine your information, but they weren't mining your information. They were looking for a bot program playing the account. That's not personal data, so it's not a violation.

As I said, they don't need to prove that you were the one personally playing to suspend the account. If the account is found to be violating the ToS at all, they will suspend it. It doesn't matter who or what is playing it. Therefore, they can safely anonymize any information they gather and evade any personal data claims.

And you gave them consent to scan.

 

So...what can be done about this? Nothing?