Poster: Idril at 2006-09-12 12:35:15
Subject: Blizz giving personal info to Dell? |
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So, you might have seen the new contest Blizzard is running with Dell, to give away 5 gaming machines. Sounds cool, right? Well, how do you enter? Take a look at the official rules here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/contests/dell/rules.xml
Wow, so you mean all I have to do is complete 25 in-game quests, before October 11th, to get entered?! That's easy, anyone can do that. In fact, thousands and thousands of people WILL do that, without even knowing about the contest. And they'll be automatically entered into the contest, again, without even knowing about it.
So what's the big deal, you might be asking. Ok, ok, well let's take a CLOSER look at the official rules, this time look at section 8:
"8. Collection of Information. The information collected to enter the Contest will be used to contact you in the event that you are chosen to receive a prize. Additionally, Sponsor will use this information for marketing purposes, and to contact you regarding offers, promotions and other Contest related to this and/or other products distributed by Sponsor. In the event that you are under the age of eighteen (18) years and submit an entry to Sponsor, Sponsor will delete, erase or destroy any and all personally identifiable information that is obtained from the entry."
I know, it's a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo, but the summation is that Blizzard will give contest entrant's account information to Dell; Name; Address; Phone Number; Email Address; and who knows what else. This is so Dell can contact you if you win. Wait, thats not so bad, right? I mean, if you win, you'll want to know.
Read closer. Dell is also legally authorized to use all your info "for marketing purposes, and to contact you regarding offers, promotions and other Contest related to this and/or other products distributed by Sponsor." The only way Dell won't use your info is if you're under the age of 18 (tough luck for adults).
So what's the point? What we have here is an involuntary contest; designed from the ground up to automatically enter unsuspecting, unknowing, and perhaps UNWILLING participants into a contest set up to provide Dell with 'marketing information' about possibly millions of computer gamers (as we can't be sure exactly how many WoW Subscribers will complete the 25 quests). Does this sound a bit, I dunno, *unethical* to you?
So what's Blizzard getting out of this deal? Are they simply GIVING away valuable marketing info to a massive corporation that normally would pay high dollars for the marketing info of thousands, or even millions, of gamers ? From a corporate standpoint; hell is more likely to freeze over. Is Blizzard doing this merely for the PR (Public Relations) aspect of the contest, or are they being paid by Dell for the information collected?
The only way to avoid divulging all your personal info to a well-known, annoying marketer such as Dell (seriously, several mailed catalogs and emails a month is the usual from Dell), is to avoid doing quests until Oct 12th. That means no leveling a new character, no leveling an alt, no doing quests at level 60 for extra gold. But the saddest part of this scam is that most players will never know: they wont be notified that they've been entered into a contest, they won't be notified that their personal information has been given/sold to a large marketer, and they have no way to reverse it should they accidently play WoW and do 25 quests.
If you don't want to be "spammed" by Dell, at your mailbox, your telephone, and your email inbox; simply stop doing quests, and above all; *DEMAND* that Blizzard stop this contest should section 8 not be changed. Thanks for reading the diatribe, and I hope you feel as I do about this under-handed tactic being employed by Blizzard and Dell.
PS: Blizz, please don't come down hard on me. I'm not trying to bad-mouth your company, as I love Blizz's work most of the time. But this is simply a scam; a scam on the behalf of Dell; and I feel that to maintain your image among gamers as being a "cool" company, you need to halt this obvious attempt at getting your gamers personal information. Every corporation makes mistakes, and this is one of yours. Please take this to heart; and pass along the concerns further up your company chain-of-command. TY
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22952353&pageNo=1&sid=1#0 | | |
Poster: Tseric at 2006-09-12 12:40:31
Subject: Re: Blizz giving personal info to Dell? |
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Dell is not the sponsor of the contest, Blizzard is.
This pretty much invalidates the premise of your long post.
I'm sorry. :(
You can find more info here. Of particular note for you may be question 3.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22782304&sid=1
"It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull." - H.L.Mencken
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22952353&pageNo=1&sid=1#1 |
Poster: Tseric at 2006-09-12 12:55:23
Subject: Re: Blizz giving personal info to Dell? |
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Q u o t e:
Playing the devil's advocate here ....
So Blizzard is just really kind and generous to put a Dell banner on the contest page for free without anything in return?
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/contests/dell/index.xml
Ummm...the return is advertising and enticing people to use their products/services?
[ Post edited by Tseric ]
"It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull." - H.L.Mencken
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22952353&pageNo=1&sid=1#7 |
Poster: Idril at 2006-09-12 12:35:15
Subject: Unable to patch 1.12, Mac Tech useless |
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Sweet, now that I got a blue tag, I might finally get some help.
I've been unable to play Wow on my Mac since 1.12, I've reinstalled the game from CD, downloaded the full 469mb patch, and no matter what I do, I always get this error when trying to patch:
The patch "DeadminesInstance_34_32.adt" could not be applied. (CRC mismatch: expected 0x312f5154, actual 0x10b0dec9.) If this problem persists, you may be able to solve it by uninstalling and then reinstalling the game. If you are unable to correct this problem, please contact Blizzard Technical Support. (BNUpdate::PTCApply)
I've even gone so far as to REINSTALL Mac OS X on my computer, doing a full erase/install and disk repair. I'm running 10.4.7 on a 1ghz iMac with 768 mb RAM.
Justinkk over at Mac Tech forums has been unable to help me with this problem, instead always telling me to reinstall WoW even though my posts always clearly state I've done so several times, or to remove the RAM, which does nothing. I've basically wiped my computer down to nothing, and reinstallled everything to try to get WoW working. I need help, please :O
[ Post edited by Idril ]
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| | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22952353&pageNo=1&sid=1#0 | | |
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