WoW Petopia Community

Blizzard and I may have finally reached an impasse. They now want an image of my photo ID (driver's license or passport) to prove I'm me. I refuse. I wasn't required to give this information to create the account and I wouldn't have played WoW if I had been required to. My account wasn't hacked or it would have been locked and/or the password changed. I am the *only* one who knows the password and the security question (i.e. I don't have a little brother who was selling gold without my knowledge or something like that). I'm still saving up for my epic mount, so it should be crystal clear that I'm not abusing the economy to anyone who would actually look with a real pair of eyeballs (as I think they should be *required* to do before banning someone and demanding their photo ID).

Bottom line: Blizzard screwed up, most likely with some automated algorithm that somehow thinks I'm abusing the economy. They're wrong and I will not surrender my driver's license number, home address, passport number, my (very bad) ID photos, etc for their mistake. I don't trust companies to keep such information safe, and certainly not ones that take 3 months to unlock my girlfriend's account simply for playing from a different computer.

Will keep you all posted.

Well folks, I have access to my EU account again, and my photo ID and personal information remains safely in my pocket where it belongs. I have no idea why Blizzard thought I was abusing the economy, but they were wrong and they figured that out after my little temper tantrum here on Facebook.

Stand firm on privacy, people! When you cave in, you feed the machine and you become part of the problem.

Special thanks to BlizzardCS on Facebook for helping escalate this.