January 30, 2010

Avatars United

In yet another epic fail, TLWCBN has solved a problem that did not exist and created several new ones.
After rushing off to register my online identities in SL (R,TM,PIA) and Blue Mars, I have discovered that evidently anyone else can also register my avatars there as well. Making the site completely useless if you wish to ensure that the person you are dealing with is the same one you know from whichever world/s you visit.
See Dame Ordinal's blog for the quite amusing analysis.
So my answer was to search for the privacy settings (none I could find), decline to provide any information outside of my DOB and email address, disable the MANY email notifications they wish to spam me with, and finally post a status message, to wit:

I will not be using this site, and will get no notices from it via email. Please contact me inworld or via Steamlander.
I have now been made aware that anyone can register my name, and there is no limit on the number of times it can be done. I will NOT be using this site, and any communication claiming to come from me via this site is false.

Some may well find that this site performs a useful function, but as for myself I intend to ignore it. If TLWCBN is suddenly overcome by reason and turns it into something useful, good on them. I shall not hold my breath.

1 comment:

Rhianon Jameson said...

I had the same reaction. I registered just in case, at some future date, only one of me survives on the AU site. I wanted to stake a claim to, well, being me. Beyond that, though, I'll stick with the n social networking sites I already have (where n is a large integer).