I did a short stream today to discuss the fever pitch FFXIV's third-party abuse problem has reached with the nefarious "PlayerScope" plugin being developed and more recently becoming more public - a tool that can scrape any specifically in-game (as far as we know) user data attached to your accountID that, since 7.0, has been made public as per ridiculous changes SE has made to their backend. This includes Location history, alt characters and more.
The biggest difference between this and other data-exchanging plugins like Mare for example (which is also more mild anyway), is there's currently no voluntary opt-in feature to it thus far, meaning you are opted in against your will to anyone that may have it nearby to you, thus exacerbating the problem with stalking and harassment which are already very real issues within FFXIV. The reasoning? The dev wants a larger data pool. Whatever could that be for, I wonder. You have to join the devs discord and opt out via a channel which is very sus in itself, and possibly does not mean you are definitively opted out, as well as the dev and potentially others already having this data prior to you doing so.
Needless to say this is a horrific plugin to create. There is no excuse or reason to need this information, nor is there any tangible positive use for it. Please beware. I hesitate to signal boost it but I think people need to know what could be happening without their knowledge. Of course anyone could do this and you wouldn't know, and some will not care about this as in-game data is not invasive to everyone, but anyone that's suffered issues with stalking or harassment via FFXIV will know what kind of problems this poses.
Hopefully SE patch this ASAP. They need to. I'll link the Reddit thread and PCGamer article in the replies.
Hi if you want the full details of this.
This persons group kicked 5 people from their group, a week before FRU just so they could Raid with Sfia Pirion and Shina Florem.
They're Receiving a lot of flack for it (Rightfully So)
and everything they're saying here is about sfia