Is Check PvP legal?

Que? You nor I talked about Check PvP.

What?! You must be joking.

Ah well I am out. Just hope you are not in charge of the GDPR topics in your office ^^

Read the TS?!
This isn’t about Blizzard, but about CheckPvP, a third party website that alledgedly could access private information. And someone thought that it would therefor be a breach of the GDPR.

But that is not the case, seeing as ones avatar is not private information as stated in the GDPR; seeing as it can not be traced to a person, nor an account.

Just a question then.

Why does Blizzard (in their privacy policy) specifically mention in which cases they process Character names? Wouldn’t that be completely obsolete?

Ironically, people seem to mistake the one for the other. And they make a fool out of themselves by getting mad when someone points out something as simple as copyright.

People own their accountinformation sure, and that information falls under the GDPR. But that is not so for characters, assets, items and any and all data related to the game/WoW. This is simply so due to the copyright that a company like Blizzard has on that data related to their games.

It is afterall kinda hard to protect ones copyrighted material when major assets of a digital good would become a users’ property when they simply use / access said data…

And the API that checkPvP (and other sites) uses only allows someone to access information on characters, and not to any personal data associated to the account(s) that are associated to the characters (or other copyrighted materials) in question. And so, there is no breach of the GDPR; it is afterall Blizzards property that is accessed, and not the personal data associated to the account(s) in question.

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can i ask about the incident that made you post this. because check pvp is extremely useful to the pvp community and the way you are recklessly posting might deprive pvp of a useful tool. for example we can make sure we are playing with people of similar skill level at a certain rating or if we are going to do a push ; its with people of similar experience. it also roots out liars.

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Yeah I 100% agree with you, its 2 different things that are completely separate.

And it is, but some people dont want to accept they do it through legal means.
Even if it has a option to toggle alt searching off.

But here’s the original thread to answer your question :slight_smile:

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be nice person to other ppl , if i are jerk everyone should know who you are

Just to inform people that their GMs, Devs and the likes may use your characters data for parts of their service. For that same reason, it also has a part about “Game Consumable licenses” aka wether you have looted a certain item, and those definitely wouldn’t fall under the GDPR.

And yes, a privacy policy can entail more then just the parts neccesitated by the GDPR.

While video game characters aren’t personal data, it can be a weird grey area with sites like these. Say I had made a few characters with my name, address, phone number and bank details and this site picked them up then they would technically be in violation with the GDPR assuming I had no intention of ever logging into them and expose myself but laws are never black and white so who the fault would fall on who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Blizzard API’s do not include accounts real name, email address, phone number or bank details. ONLY details about a character or basic account profiles (char name, realm, m+ progress, raid progress, pvp rank, mounts, achievements etc).

The link to the list of Blizzard API for wow is below.

https://develop.battle.net/documentation/world-of-warcraft

If 3rd party sites get this sensitive info like bank details its due to either you giving them that information directly or theres an illegal source of them which you need to bring up with Blizzard/ICO as it constitutes a major GDPR breach

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You quoted my message but it doesn’t read like it was directed at me?

I think what he means to say is, there’s no way they can get it, except from customer neglect, i.e. naming your alt your actual name

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3rd party sites cannot just ‘pick up’ details such as email addresses/tel numbers and bank details. Especially from the publicly available API’s from Blizzard.

The API’s that these sites use (Checkpvp/raider.io etc) only get information for a character and that specific characters progress. To link accounts (so for r.io to have your main linked to all your alts) you have to do it manually.

As far as i know GDPR does not cover ingame alias’ as there is no way for the character Orkantfany-Hellfire to be attributed to me irl.

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That was my point. The GDPR doesn’t really specify where the personal data has to come from. Say I had a character with my real name and another one with my home address and this website listed those as my alts they would technically be doxxing me. Doubtful it’d amount to anything but to interpret the law in a literal sense they’d be violating the GDPR.

That was what was interesting about this site and why I brought it up because it did find 2 of my alts automatically.

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Ah ok. Maybe then this needs bringing up with Blizz as far as i can see only char names and that chars progress should be in the API.

If you dont want that info on that site then you can request erasure under the ‘right to be forgotten’ clause of GDPR. They have to prove all data they have with you is deleted.

For info you can stop your char being part of the API for the most part in the settings on your b.net account =)

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I’m not too fussed if people know my alts, I just think it’s a bit of fun to interpret the wording of these laws :stuck_out_tongue:

Yep, people can use their account page to make themselves not be seen via API requests.
As for how to do that:
Go to your bnet account page -> privacy -> game data and profile privacy -> Update (deselect the checkbox) -> safe -> done.

Easy peasy.

Nope.

I tested that when the original thread came up. I disabled it. My character data is still available on the API.

Its always fun to do that as most of these laws are so generic and vague no one really know what they mean =P

My be that the info was already with the 3rd parties but wont be updated from now on.

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I’m thinking the same.