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by Mathew McCurley 
Jul 13th 2010 at 4:00PM
Yesterday, we learned that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) accidentally emailed the names of people who had complained about Blizzard's potential use of Real ID names on the official Blizzard forums. The ESRB has since sent out this apology:
Yesterday we sent an e-mail to a number of consumers who wrote to us in recent days expressing their concern with respect to Blizzard's Real ID program. Given the large number of messages we received, we decided to respond with a mass e-mail so those who'd written us would receive our response as quickly as possible - rather than responding to each message individually, as is our usual practice.
Through an unfortunate error by one of our employees, some recipients were able to see the e-mail addresses of others who wrote on the same issue. Needless to say, it was never our intention to reveal this information and for that we are genuinely sorry. Those who write to ESRB to express their views expect and deserve to have their contact and personal information protected. In this case, we failed to do so and are doing everything we can to ensure it will not happen again in the future.
The fact that our message addressed individuals' concerns with respect to their privacy underscores how truly disappointing a mistake this was on our part. We work with companies to ensure they are handling people's private information with confidentiality, care and respect. It is only right that we set a good example and do no less ourselves.
We sincerely apologize to those who were affected by this error and appreciate their understanding.
Sincerely,
Entertainment Software Rating Board
Filed under: News items, Account Security
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Hoof Jul 13th 2010 4:41PM
Better the Blizzard Scapegoat than a customer. Does it suck for the blizzard employee? Yes, but he put his name out there of his own freewill and basically dared us.
dracoamericanus9 Jul 13th 2010 4:54PM
@Hoof
and if you really cared about privacy, you wouldn't take the dare. all those people who did that cared only about themselves and their trolling, and no one else.
Sunaseni Jul 13th 2010 5:53PM
Oh, so it's okay to prove your point about privacy being important by violating someone else's privacy, dare or no dare. That's some serious pot calling the kettle black there.
vocenoctum Jul 13th 2010 8:20PM
No one "exposed" the rep, they revealed their own name. Then were shown how much you can bring up. Then Blizz was gonna protect their employee's ID's, and I guess figured out the hypocrisy of that, so gave up the idea.
Marcelo Abans Jul 13th 2010 4:36PM
OOOH THE IRONY!!!
agregson1 Jul 13th 2010 4:53PM
Remember I was telling you thedefinition of irony?
Warren Jul 13th 2010 5:04PM
On one hand: EPIC FAIL here for ESRB. The very people who want their privacy protected they did the complete opposite and gave everyone's info to each other.
On the other hand at least they had to decency and class to apologize publicly. I'm sure the person who hit that button is getting all kinds of shit from work. Kinda feel bad for them actually.
But all this was initiated by Activision/Blizzard who DID NOT apologize over this RealID fiasco. Read Mike Morhaime's response people there is no apology in there. They are not going through with what they want he said "at this time" also "Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature"
Translation: We panicked when we saw people canceling their accounts and are gonna give our little Warcrack addicts sometime to reconsider accepting what we want to feed them. He is telling you in no uncertain terms they are regrouping and trying to figure out another way to jam this down your throats.
kooda Jul 13th 2010 5:05PM
Would've been such a fail if they'd sent another email with reply all with the apology on it.
Got lucky this time.
lulz Jul 13th 2010 5:15PM
L2BCC nubz
jeffduty Jul 13th 2010 5:33PM
Its odd how the new ban list looks strangely like that email list...
bobthedalek Jul 13th 2010 5:33PM
Oh the delicious irony!
CritYourFace Jul 13th 2010 5:48PM
Still gotta say it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo
EPIC!
Josh Brown Jul 14th 2010 3:14PM
I added all of those people to real ID claiming I was friends with John. rofl.
thottstation Jul 13th 2010 8:45PM
At least Blizzard know exactly who the troublemakers are.
As do the hackers. They just got a whole bunch of potential Battle.Net email logins. Guessing passwords is the easy part.
aercane Jul 14th 2010 12:13AM
This is pretty inexcusable. Any organisation which takes email privacy seriously NEVER uses mass-email to communicate, but has in place a system which is CAN-SPAM compliant and protects the privacy of its stakeholders. Such as system would automatically preclude an event like this from occurring.
The fact that an organisation with the level of responsibility of the ESRB does not have such a system represents a serious management failure, and I would have thought it had potentially serious legal ramifications, let alone issues of trust or responsibility.
You have to ask what else they are getting wrong...
Zep Jul 14th 2010 2:09AM
Perhaps Alanis Morissette could work this into a song just to show us she really does know the meaning of irony
jfofla Jul 14th 2010 4:10AM
That is the greatest thing I have ever read!
OH NO...The Stalkers The Stalkers...THEY KNOW!
madabkr4tx Jul 15th 2010 1:19AM
Some of us were smart enough to use one shot email addresses. Does go to show just how highly we should value the ESRB emblem. Not at all?
Mardoc Jul 15th 2010 7:06AM
Smart enough? Hmmm... no, that doesn't sound right.
Intelligent enough? No, still not right...
Paranoid enough? Aha. There we are.
Mob mentality + irrelevant arguments + ridiculous paranoia + desperate trolls wanting to keep their anonymity shield = Real ID complaints.
Roger Waugh Jul 19th 2010 3:36PM
Well guess the best way to be sit-up !