Stuff about character transfers and problems caused by it (CSM)

Stats

• Raised by: mazzilliu
• Submission Date: 2009/06/22
• Issue ID: TBA

Summary of the Problem

Under the current system, transferring a character transfers too much information.

Identity Purchase There is no way for a person to prove to a corporation recruiter, even by highsec API key, that they weren't purchased. Purchases can be made privately without a corresponding eve-o thread, so someone can purchase a reputation along with a character. This makes it more difficult to establish even a minimal baseline of trust when interacting with strangers- because there is no way to verify one way or the other if you are the original owner of your character, barring situations where one personally knows the original owner. I believe this goes against CCP's efforts in the past to make player history more transparent- such as adding the employment history and alliance history.

Privacy Violation Another major issue with character transfers is that private information is transferred along with the character. Petitions are the biggest issue here- while it's possible to delete petitions before transferring the character, it's not required and it's also not obvious(in the ingame interface) or not possible(in the html interface) to delete petitions. Considering players aren't technically allowed to divulge GM communications even if they wanted to, systematically doing so without their knowledge is a huge flaw in the system and possibly means CCP are violating their own EULA! :)

Other sources of personal information most likely being transferred with the character:

• eve-mails
• address book contents
• character notes(show info -> notes tab)
• info stored in the "notepad" accessed on the side button bar thing
• personal standings set by the character and associated notes
• chat channel listings and saved channel passwords, specific character invites to restricted channels, ownership of channels, and same with mailing lists

and while this may be stretching it a bit and may be hard to implement, it does go along with that "preventing impersonation" talked about above:

• personal standings set TOWARDS the character
• address book entries of that character in other people's address books

Account warnings: We need to seek clarification from CCP whether forum and ingame warnings are tied to accounts or characters. If they are tied to accounts, character transfers may be used abusively. If they are tied to characters, they must be made public as two strikes against someone severely diminishes their resale value.

Past misdeeds: I don't know how widespread the problem is anymore, but there needs to be some sort of refund or compensation system in place that a player can take advantage of if the previous character owner, for example, bought a lot of ISK and it was only noticed after the transfer. I have only seen a few cases of this and I don't know if it happens anymore. perhaps this also requires clarification from CCP.

The Proposed Solution

• delete all the above listed personal information, especially petition data, from all future transferred characters, and all personal information from old transferred characters that pre-dates the actual transfer
• add a listing in the employment history when a character gets sold, just like as if they had joined a corp or left one. For easier implementation reasons, forcing everyone to join a specifically created NPC corp (rather then their default NPC corp) before transferring would have the same practical result- people would know the character was sold.
• Seek clarification as to how warnings can affect the newly owned character. If it does, allow players to view their own warnings and disclose them upon character sale.
• Seek clarification with CCP on how widespread the problems outlined in "past misdeeds" is, and make a solution if it's a big enough problem.
• maybe ccp should ban themselves for sharing so many GM communications!

List of Pros and Cons

Pros:

• less crap recruiters have to put up with
• increased transparency for individuals means increased accountability
• no more massive scale eula and privacy violation
• potential comedy as we ask ccp to ban themselves

Cons:

• no more laughing at silly reimbursement petitions made by previous owner!
• more effort put into spy alts

Votes

• Dierdra Vaal - yes
• mazzilliu - yes
• Zastrow J - yes
• Erik Finnegan - yes
• Avalloc - yes
• Omber Zombie - yes
• Larkonis Trassler - yes
• Meissa Anunthiel - yes

• Issler Dainze - no