FFXIV Plugin is causing huge risks for both privacy and security

Back when Final Fantasy XIV announced that they were altering the Blacklist system, some players pointed out that the new system could enable players to access information that shouldn’t be for their eyes. Worryingly, this prediction has come true in the form of the PlayerScope plugin. 

FFXIV is strictly against any use of plugins or mods. Anyone caught using any type of game-changing software is permanently banned, which should be enough to put anybody off. However, this hasn’t stopped people from creating or using mods, and the latest doing the rounds is particularly troublesome, and it seems to have been enabled by changes made by Square Enix themselves and were warned of at the time.

The changes made to the Blacklist feature with the release of Dawntrail gave each player a unique account ID, which can be picked up by the PlayerScope plugin, allowing anyone who uses it to track not only specific characters, but alt characters tied to the same account, movement of each character, and appearance changes as well. This poses massive risks for things like harassment and stalking, which is already something of a problem for the MMO.

Players who have tested the plugin, such as wetsh0laze on Reddit, have reported that in order to prevent their data being leaked through the plugin, they had to download it themselves, connect to it using a Discord account, and then finally opt out of the process. 

However, a recent update from the developer of the mod has revealed that they will be removing the option to opt out from the mod itself, instead inviting players to join the Discord server and join a certain channel to “whitelist” their account. This will, however, require people to “verify their Lodestone account through the plugin”, which still leaves the entire process open to misuse and abuse. 

Image by Destructoid

Dalamud, the third party tool that many use to implement mod usage in FFXIV, has issued a statement regarding the plugin. It states that it “fundamentally does not approve” of the plugin, but “it’s not possible for the Dalamud project to prevent plugins from gaining access to these values (Account IDs)”. It’s also not possible for them to ban the mod from a custom repository such as where PlayerScope is stored, so it’s here to stay, unfortunately. 

Considering their one-strike policy on mod usage, it can only be hoped that Square Enix take swift action against creators and users of this plugin. The only viable solution that would prevent the further use of the mod is for FFXIV to overhaul the Blacklist system again, perhaps backtracking it to the system that was in place before. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem likely, but hopefully a way forward can be found that will protect players from those who abuse the system.

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