Games Are Starting To Require a Phone Number To Play (polygon.com) 62
According to Polyon, players will be required to link a phone number to their Battle.net accounts if they want to play Overwatch 2. "The same two-factor step, called SMS Protect, will also be used on all Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 accounts when that game launches, and new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare accounts," the report adds. From the report: Blizzard Entertainment announced SMS Protect and other safety measures ahead of Overwatch 2's release. Blizzard said it implemented these controls because it wanted to "protect the integrity of gameplay and promote positive behavior in Overwatch 2." Overwatch 2 is free to play, unlike its predecessor. Without SMS Protect, Blizzard reasoned that there is no barrier to toxic players or trolls creating a new account if an existing one is sanctioned. SMS Protect, therefore, ties that account to something valuable -- in this case a player's mobile phone.
SMS Protect is a security feature that has two purposes: to keep players accountable for what Blizzard calls "disruptive behavior," and to protect accounts if they're hacked. It requires all Overwatch 2 players to attach a unique phone number to their account. Blizzard said SMS Protect will target cheaters and harassers; if an account is banned, it'll be harder for them to return to Overwatch 2. You can't just enter any old phone number -- you actually have to have access to a phone receiving texts to that number to get into your account.
Overwatch 2 lead software engineer Bill Warnecke told Forbes that, even if accounts are no longer tied to Overwatch's box price -- because the game is now free-to-play -- Blizzard still wants players to make an "investment" in upholding a safe game. "The key idea behind SMS Protect is to have an investment on behalf of the owner of that account and add some limitations or restrictions behind how you might have an account," Warnecke said. "There's no exclusions or kind of loopholes around the system." The report notes that Blizzard has refunded one player after they contacted customer support and said they didn't have a mobile phone, but it's unclear if this policy will apply more broadly.
SMS Protect is a security feature that has two purposes: to keep players accountable for what Blizzard calls "disruptive behavior," and to protect accounts if they're hacked. It requires all Overwatch 2 players to attach a unique phone number to their account. Blizzard said SMS Protect will target cheaters and harassers; if an account is banned, it'll be harder for them to return to Overwatch 2. You can't just enter any old phone number -- you actually have to have access to a phone receiving texts to that number to get into your account.
Overwatch 2 lead software engineer Bill Warnecke told Forbes that, even if accounts are no longer tied to Overwatch's box price -- because the game is now free-to-play -- Blizzard still wants players to make an "investment" in upholding a safe game. "The key idea behind SMS Protect is to have an investment on behalf of the owner of that account and add some limitations or restrictions behind how you might have an account," Warnecke said. "There's no exclusions or kind of loopholes around the system." The report notes that Blizzard has refunded one player after they contacted customer support and said they didn't have a mobile phone, but it's unclear if this policy will apply more broadly.
Excellent data exfiltration target (Score:2)
Blizzard is painting a target on their back by retaining extra user data. Not like their billing database system wasn't already a juicy target.
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True. It's just another exposed attack surface, though. The more the merrier?
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Blizzard doesn't care about cheaters. You can go online right now on Overwatch 1 or World of Warcraft or Diablo and find lots of reports of obvious botters. Especially WOW has tons of them, you can see rows of them going back and forth between the auction house and the mailbox. These get reported and sometimes banned, but they're making enough money to endlessly buy new accounts. Blizzard is making money form this so it's not like they really have an incentive to crack down.
No, this information is one more thing Blizzard is going to sell to the highest bidder. Many consumers have caught on to the usual email practice and use disposable email accounts or have good spam blocking. That's not as easy to do with cell phone numbers, so those are more valuable for big companies to harvest and sell.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying this as a longtime fan, starting all the way back with warcraft 2 -- But, Blizzard needs my mobile number about as much as i need to buy future games from them.
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People got banned from overwatch for using the wrong character.
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That's not as easy to do with cell phone numbers, so those are more valuable for big companies to harvest and sell.
Only in America. In much of the rest of the world you can face a pretty big fine for sending unsolicited spam.
But your comment is begging the question anyway. Blizzard does care about cheating, they are literally implementing new anti-cheat systems with every other update to their games playing an endless game of whack-a-mole. Unfortunately (and this is true of any game) the cheaters are better than the developers.
Phone number? Pfft. Give it a few years and games will run as self contained VMs requiring exc
Also known as. (Score:4, Interesting)
Give it a few years and games will run as self contained VMs requiring exclusive access to hardware and you'll be rebooting your computer every time you want to change a game.
Also known as "a gaming console".
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This is Orwellian (Score:5, Interesting)
In a lot of countries you can't buy a SIM card without showing passport/ID. So your phone number is what ties you to the big brother system. There is a market for creating disposable SMS-capable phone numbers, problem is if that takes off in "a particular country" and nowhere else then that entire country's prefix will end up blacklisted in a lot of countries.
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>I hope the likes of Signal and Telegram will someday enable connectivity without a phone number or at least to jettison the phone number from the account.
The reason they require this probably indicates some shit going on behind the scenes. You can't operate a popular Internet service these days without collecting your users' personal information for government spying.
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Phone number tied to a land line (Score:2)
Phone number is tied to SIM card is tied to National Big Brother System ....
No. Phone number is tiled to a land line no one ever talks on. Maybe, there is an answering machine. Home number are now often the number you give to people you don't want to hear from and won't be talking to. Ex, the grocery store rewards card.
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I doubt Blizzard has access to that kind of data though, and won't get it just for civil cases against alleged cheaters.
Phone numbers increase the cost of creating accounts slightly. You can buy a pre-activated SIM that's good for receiving SMS for a few months on eBay for 1 Euro, including shipping. For an individual who just wants to protect their real phone number it's nothing, but for a spammer who wants to create hundreds or thousands of accounts it's both a cost and a big time sink.
How this will help
Freedom (Score:1)
Tell me you have a social credit score and citizen ID without telling me...
Re: Freedom (Score:1)
Complaining about CCP tactics being tried out on American citizens is either racist or anti-science. I forget which one it is today...
Opaquely transparent (Score:5, Insightful)
SMS Project's site is loaded with statements like this:
This way, all your traffic will be recognized and monetized.
Emphasis theirs.
And if they're really using SMS as a 2FA challenge, then they're certainly not concerned with their users' safety or security [krebsonsecurity.com]. For that, they should be using a real OTP like Authy or a real HW key.
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Blizzard has had their own 2FA app for years at this point. So I suspect it's more likely that they only use SMS to verify you control the phone number at the time of account creation.
Lost Players (Score:2)
How do I buy and play games with my kids, nieces, and nephews?
The kids certainly do not have cell phones.
Won't somebody please think of the children?!
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The kids will be thrilled to get a phone, sim contract and a new game on top of it from a rich uncle.
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Play games that support couch multiplayer, not only online multiplayer, and are not published by Activision or Blizzard. Put a PC next to your TV.
Won't stop a thing. (Score:2)
Why? Because where I live it costs 1 GBP to get a new burner SIM which stays active for half a year.
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Stopping anything isn't the point. The point is to gather data on their customers that can be cross indexed with data collected by other companies.
Google Voice not good enough (Score:2)
Blizzard is constantly pestering me to enable two-factor authentication, and then takes a shit any time I try to use my Google Voice number. It's, like, my forever number. Actual cell phone numbers are freaking fungible; why would I tied any type of authentication to one?
Didn't Radio Shack get called on this years ago? (Score:2, Interesting)
I tell the places I get my hair cut that I don't have a phone when they inevitably ask for a phone number. I was told during my last haircut that they use these numbers for a unique customer ID. That's nice, I don't care. I don't like sharing unnecessary personal information to do business. They might claim this is for only tracking if the same person is coming back for a cut but I don't know that. My phone is nearly constantly ringing because of phone scams, I don't want any more people knowing my pho
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I tell the places I get my hair cut that I don't have a phone when they inevitably ask for a phone number.
When clerks at stores ask me for my phone number, I tell them I'm flattered but married.
What happens if someone gets a new phone number? (Score:2)
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Why would you get a different number? Here the number is yours and you can switch telcos and keep the number.
Re: What happens if someone gets a new phone numbe (Score:1)
Abusive spouse, moving to a new country, starting fresh after certain circumstances like depression, bad job, moving house, etc.
Phone numbers should not be regarded as unique. The amount of numbers is limited, so when I cancel my current subscription, after 1 year or so, the telco will recycle it and give it to someone else.
SMS over VoIP. Near free, disposable, etc. (Score:2)
I have read the 19 comments before mine. The useful ones say it's hard to spoof or have disposable SMS-capable numbers.
Not so. TL;DR - read the last five lines of this post, conveniently strung together as a pseudo-paragraph.
I use a US VoIP provider that has assigned me a 10-digit ('10D') telephone number ('TN'). I route that to an Asterisk VoIP server and it sends calls to cellphones and home DECT phones,etc., but that's not the point here.
It also accepts SMS and forwards that both as email to me, and S
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Google Voice is still a thing and easy to get.
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Sure, if you're in the US. Blizzard games are available internationally ;)
At least they don't require an actual cell phone (Score:1)
If they did, it would knock out everyone in the National Radio Quiet Zone [greenbankobservatory.org] and anyplace else without cell service.
At least if they just require a number that can get SMS messages, well, several posts above this one have already mentioned several cheap or free ways to get a "cell number" without a cell phone.
Polyon (Score:2)
Right, that gaming website Polyon...?
Blizzard is limiting their market (Score:3)
I haven't read anything regarding this exactly, so I'm not sure if it's addressed in any way. My 10 and 12 year olds play Overwatch, and have for a couple of years. They bought the game for the XBox. Neither have a cellphone, nor will they at any time in the near future. I play Blizzard games so my phone # is already going to be tied up to use with my account. Not to mention I wonder what the legality of this requirement, due to the fact that they are minors, and that my country has very strict privacy laws, even more so for minors. So not having a cellphone means that they won't be buying battle passes. This is a really, really stupid move on Blizzard's part. I hope that falls by the wayside, like the Diablo 3 marketplace did.
Typical Blizzard (Score:2)
Taking "Don't you have phones?" to the next level.
SIMs are cheap (Score:2)
Not about security (Score:2)
>"The report notes that Blizzard has refunded one player after they contacted customer support and said they didn't have a mobile phone"
This isn't about security. It is about gathering personal info so they can spam the hell out of you and/or sell the data to their "partners".
If it were about security, they would offer TOTP and you could then use any authenticator of your choice on any device, not disclosing anything at all.
And this isn't just games. All kinds of companies and sites and services are tr
Kill this by demanding refunds (Score:1)
How to boil a frog... (Score:2)
No problem (Score:2)
Lots of newspapers want them too or Whatsapp and others.
That's why prices for a dozen empty prepaid SIMcards on Ebay doubled to 2$.
For a confirmation SMS they are amply enough.
Americans with Disabilities Act issue? (Score:2)
For some of us, age related presbyopia makes the use of cell-phones untenable: we can't deal with the Flyspeck-3 fonts that these devices use. Not making allowance for that fact is an open-and-shut violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
FWIW.
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"Reading glasses" are a perfectly good accommodation under the ADA. Let alone the accessibility and font options available on any modern smartphone. Or screen readers, for that matter.
If you can't figure out how to read your smart phone, you probably can't see the video game, either. And if you're that old, your reflexes sure as shit aren't going to keep up with the 12 year olds.
I'm pretty sure that cheaters gonna cheat.... (Score:2)
If a cheater wants to cheat, they can get a burner phone number, and factor the cost of that into the cost of their play. This will do practically *nothing* to curb cheating.
So no,,, "Blizzard still wants players to make an 'investment' in upholding a safe game" is bulshit.
This is simply about having a new marketing vector they can use later,
Worse, when the site's database gets compromised, those phone numbers are going to be available to nefarious people, who will in t
All you need is a burner phone (Score:2)
It's not gonna stop anyone. Burner phone accounts in the US are dirt cheap (as little as $7/month). But it goes a long way to tying your phone number to your identity to sell to anyone who wants their database.
Sorry Blizzard, but no.
Phone Numbers Might as Well Replace SSN (Score:1)
The vast majority of people don’t realize that their phone number is identifiable as a Social Security number ever since numbers could be transferred and stay with the person.
All those burner numbers is one of the reasons little Connecticut now needs 4 area codes.
CPU is not enough (Score:1)
I guess getting the Hardware ID or CPU ID isn't enough.