Alt snipers

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1

is there a proper report method for such a thing? i came across someone that happened to somehow know of some alts of mine then publicly leaked in /say as well as in whispers, and once i asked them how they found this more than once they provided no answer on how such is able to be done.

I have no idea if this is even legal let alone how one can somehow snipe alts on someones account without them even knowing about it. and by snipe i mean expose/leak the names of.

i tried looking through a google search but i cant find anything recent on the topic case im experiencing, saw a handful of posts of sites like warcraft logs an the like but i dont use any of those sites so im not sure how this person is able to find a few alts of mine two of which arent even on the server i saw this person on.

2

No personal information was revealed about you by them knowing your alts, so I do not think legality would enter in to it.

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3

not legal by means of personal info no but i mean legal as in within blizz coc/tos whatever to expose peoples alts without their permission then not tell them how such infos are found

4

As far as I know, all of that information would be readily accessible and therefore not protected.

Even with disabling the show character achievement option in the game settings, people often track alts (within same Battle Net) via pet teams.

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5

is there anyway to prevent being detected somehow? with further digging i found this, apparently some of my alts are leaked/linked at the bottom https://check-pvp.fr/us/Moon%20Guard/OdĂŻn

6

For what? If you are getting unwanted whispers, then place them on ignore and don’t respond. If they continue to contact you on different characters, then you can open a ticket for ongoing harassment. But the first step is to put them on ignore.

Legal? They are made-up character names in a video game set in a make-believe universe.

There are websites out there that can easily know alts by comparing achievement points/pet and mount collections/etc from the Armory. It’s not 100%, but it’s a lot more accurate than people realize.

The intent is for a realm/community/guild to know if a toxic player made a name change to escape their reputation.

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7

i’m unaware of anything like this being in the EULA.

not sure why this would even matter.
character info is available to everyone via the very public armory.

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8

Yeah that’s not a thing.

Unless they are using some illegal program (doubtful), they haven’t done anything they can get in trouble for doing.

They probably know someone on your friend’s list and that person is reporting which alt you are playing.

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9

The issue you seem to have is that you are equating a character name with some kind of real world information than can lead to identity theft or something similar. These are not even close to being the same thing.

Put them on ignore and move on with your gaming.

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10

No.

This used to be easily accessible through some websites. I’m trying to remember which of them listed alts in their profiles. As a guild officer, I would often look it up to see who peoples’ alts were so we knew if there were any troublesome folk to avoid. I think it was like WoW-heroes and others like it. Looks like it’s down now but I’m sure there are other pages. Heck, there used to be a browser extension that would show it right here on the forums who their alts were when they were posting.

It was data easily accessible from WoW/Blizzard’s websites.

I do know you can somewhat curb it by changing a setting here on the website by going into your account page → Privacy. It’s the last option down.

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11

yeah when i did a web search one link mentioned some sort of a browser extension but when i clicked on the relating link only thing it came with was an example pic via imgur that showed what the extension did of listing alts on forums.

i dont know why people would do such a thing though with what seemed like impression to invite for trolling in some way. but then again people are strange.

12

Cogshanks (the browser extension) broke years ago, unfortunately.

I suppose though, I don’t see why it’s such an issue with people broadcasting your alts. Anyone who is on your battle.net account can see who you’re playing at any given time. It’s not that hard to sleuth through profiles, find matching battle pets and the like if there is a need. Unless you’re a known troll or questionable character on one alt and you don’t want them figuring out your others - then the easy thing is not be someone who needs to hide their alts. What posting I do here on the forums can alternate between this gal and a rogue of mine who is a guild officer, I’m sure there are threads I’ve cross-posted on so that if someone really wants to look for me, they’d find it.

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13

sits like wowprogress and raider io will often link your alts

14

Using a bit of Google-fu and a bit of logical deduction, you can quite easily find alts of a main, therefore an alt isn’t a form of “privacy” away from your main or somewhere you can retreat or hide. The same goes for features like the ‘hidden activity’ here on the forums; a simple Google search will show all posts from someone, regardless of their “hidden” status.

These features are nice, sure. But they’re definitely not to be taken as something that would keep you private, if privacy is your intention. It seems that at some point, you were led to believe or decided that alts would be totally private.

Unfortunately, they are not. In order to be completely “private” on another character, you need to create a new account, then create a new character on that new account and treat it as your “private alt”.

Even then, though, if someone were to somehow know that the two characters were you behind the screen (perhaps you told someone in confidence or perhaps you let it slip accidentally), there’d be no rule keeping them from saying, “This other toon over here, this is Articskoll!”

I am sorry that may not be what you want to hear, but I wish you luck going forward.

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15

Don’t respond to them. Right-click them and report them for spamming. Put them on ignore (/ignore CharacterName/RealmName). Says broadcast in a limited area. Personally, I question the need of someone to give out someone else’s alts’ names. What are they actually trying to accomplish?

I know it can be unnerving, but it is possible through third-party sites. If someone is willing to put a bit of time and work into it, it can be done through the Armory. All it takes is having a really rare pet/mount, or you gave a companion pet a somewhat unique name.

They don’t have access to your account. They don’t have access to information they shouldn’t have.

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16

A player can take any name available as long as it doesn’t violate naming rules. You have no claim to a name.

17

That’s not what this thread is about, though I understand the confusion as that was my first thought too :wink:

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18

There are many websites that use the Blizzard website API to find characters and is able to compare them in ways (collections is a good way as very few people have the exact same mounts/pets (and same level) / toys etc.) which are part of the armoury then once that is compared if it’s an exact match that tells them that it’s the same player. Using that API does not reveal any personal information so there is no privacy concerns, If they use that information to harass you then go ahead and report that but just knowing your alts is a nothing.

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19

Even without that, it’s easy to tell if someone is an alt of another person as long as you have a reasonable suspicion.

For example, if you look at this:

And compare it to this:

There are a couple down in the list that have unique names, but you can tell that the active pets and lists are identical with only a tiny bit of scroll. The chances that someone would have exactly the same three active pets (or no team at all) and then every single collection pet would be identical are incredibly slim.

It also updates even if you don’t log in to that specific character and refresh the Armory.

I’m not saying that it’s the case with the OP at all, but on my server (a RP server, where a server community and reputation are still a thing) there’s a guy who likes to build up a reputation as someone who helps others, gets into big guilds and wriggles his way into officer status, and actively solicits donations of gold and trade goods to “help newbies”. During that process he actually does do a lot in the way of community organizing, helping lowbies, donating materials, running people through things, etc.

Then, when the pot gets sweet enough, he steals the guild bank contents and takes off.

People have learned how to sleuth out his new characters when someone randomly shows up advertising philanthropy and trying to burrow into the community through Good Samaritanism every few years, likely testing the waters to see if people still remember him. There are also people with seedier reputations for even worse behaviors that get tracked so they don’t try and slither back into visible roles in the community on alts, and when they do people tend to put them on blast in Trade chat and even in /yell in the populated cities.

Granted, all that is defeated if they set up a new account, but for some reason it seems to rarely occur to them to do so, or they want to keep all the collections they built up over time, and even seeing someone with a brand sparkling new account advertising “give me gold to give to other people” or a new guild member who’s really pushy about getting Officer rank who has next to nothing built up are big red flags.

Anyway, long story short those are some of the reasons I’ve seen for people wanting to ‘out’ people’s alts.

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20

But does anyone whisper him with his list of alts? The OP said they were whispered with the names as well as having the other player /say them. You would tell guild-mates and friends about that player, but you wouldn’t randomly post their alt names in /say. The activity mentioned sounds more like trolling than actually trying to be informative.

Personally, if I see someone posting the names of someone’s alts I report the poster for spamming. They are most likely trying to get that player to curse in chat so they can report that player. Or whisper back and laugh about it. Or they are trying to get someone else to harass the player’s alts in their place.

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