Someone being listed as AFK Mobile when... he's not

One of the few people I have on my Battle.net friends list is my stepfather, who occasionally played World of Warcraft with my brother and I. He has been in the hospital since April 16, suffering from COVID-19. I myself have just gotten over a much milder case (which still highly sucked) over the past couple of weeks, and have only been playing again over the past few days.

Something I’ve been noticing, however: My stepfather is listed as being online via mobile, and as being away for the past month. The only problem with that is, the only mobile device he has with the app on it - and the authenticator as well - is his cell phone, which I believe is being held by the public safety officer (who handles patient valuables and the like) at the hospital, and after a month, the battery is most likely dead. Which begs the question… how is he online?

2 Likes

This is a very old bug, probably exists for 8 years or even longer and I am experiencing the same behaviour since last week.

But I think that’s only a small part of the problem.

As I found out, the mobile app, with which this bug first appeared, is able to read my latest messages on Battlenet. Even though I changed my account password and logged out all my devices via the security page.

The mobile app is no longer listed as a connected device, nevertheless I receive all messages via the Battlenet app as push notification on my mobile phone.

Something like this should never be possible!

I have already opened a ticket about it, I hope the problem can be solved and treated with the necessary seriousness. There are definitely possibilities to take advantage of this behaviour!

2 Likes

Greetings!

The Battle.net Mobile app will set your Battle.net presence to Mobile if you have installed the app and you have not logged out through the in-app Log Out button. We do this to let your friends know you are available via Push Notification sent to the Mobile app. Due to how push notifications work on Android/iOS, we send the push notifications even if the device is offline. We are looking into potential improvements of the Mobile status across our platform. Thank you for the feedback.

1 Like

Thank you for the report, we are actively investigating it. The app should not receive notifications after you change your password until you log back into the application.

As a workaround, please log in to the app on this device and logout via Log Out button on the settings screen. This will de-register you for push notifications and remove your Mobile status.

1 Like

Thank you for your Answer.
Perhaps a responsible person could comment on the current situation here on the forums. The ticket system is not well suited for such things.
I would be very thankful if you would take a look at the following tickets.

US74433499
US74379037

I understand that fixing these problems may take some time, but I would still like to be informed in more detail.
This is a very important issue for me, because I see my personal privacy violated and no measures have been taken by blizzard to protect me. I hope we can resolve this as soon as possible. Two weeks have passed so far and I would prefer not to terminate my account to fix the problem.

(I’m pretty sure that the described problem of the thread author is related to my problem. )

1 Like

This is a terrible feature. Accounts show as away/online on mobile after having had the app uninstalled for years. Please change it so that if Blizzard doesn’t receive any ‘activity’/requests from an account/mobile app after X days, hours, etc., you…consider the account OFFLINE.

Edit: I see though… This probably makes dead games not seem so dead. #OW #WoW

1 Like

it still doesnt work

Same here, I have tried the following.

-Forced log off of all devices from battle net
-Log off on the battlenet app manually
-Deleted the app
-Restart my iphone
-Forced log off all devices again

Still always shown as Mobile away, never offline

yea, this is still an ongoing issue.

1 Like

+1, same issue. People who don’t even have the app installed on their phone are shown as “Away” on “Mobile”

I’ts not a bug… I’ve tried everything to remove my gf’s afk status when she logs out… I’m assuming this is intended to keep players active longer than they really are… lmao multi billion dollar company and can’t fix “status”… ya right

1 Like