A better forum account verification method

[Saopha Calas Vaduum]

As the current model stands, one is only required to verify the authenticity of the account on the forum end. The in-game nation plays no part in the process. I suggest that this be a two-step verification process, as anybody can set up an account and "verify" it. This has happened twice today, with two forum accounts pretending to be official Charming Friends voices, when in reality neither of them were. This was not an issue of voices speaking without authorisation, but instead it was attempted identity theft.

[CharmingFriendlies]

Now first of all, I am with you on this post,

secondly this post is coming from one of our more underhanded players

   ....so yes lets all trust this man Hvyvx

[Linsang]

As the current model stands, one is only required to verify the authenticity of the account on the forum end. The in-game nation plays no part in the process. I suggest that this be a two-step verification process, as anybody can set up an account and "verify" it. This has happened twice today, with two forum accounts pretending to be official Charming Friends voices, when in reality neither of them were. This was not an issue of voices speaking without authorisation, but instead it was attempted identity theft.

 

 

 

wow honestly how many accounts do you have to make? donsyland should be banned for making that country hyvyx

[Saopha Calas Vaduum]

The proof of why this is necessary is in this thread.

[Alex]

The proof of why this is necessary is in this thread.

 

Unless you've got a great idea, it's not feasible. We just ban the fake forum accounts.

[Kastor]

You could have some nation validation, not sure how that would work though.

[Saopha Calas Vaduum]

Unless you've got a great idea, it's not feasible. We just ban the fake forum accounts.

Here's a few.

 

Email verification, require the forum account have the same email as the game account.

 

Send a validation code to the nation, require that it be put into a field here.

 

You need to do something Sheepy. Today, a troll/trolls attempted to and possibly succeeded in severely damaging the reputation of the alliance and community that my charming friends and I have built together. They were allowed to post freely for several hours, their identities unchecked even after multiple reports. In fact, at the time of writing, the report thread has still gone unanswered, even though you have posted here and elsewhere.

 

The fact of the matter Sheepy is that I could make a forum account, post in your validation thread and claim to be an unvalidified nation (and it's easy to know who isn't validified), letting them have 50k, because it's pocket change to anyone with a large nation and therefore is politically influential and therefore is worth impersonating. My forum account then says I belong to that nation, there is a link on their profile, and as far as anyone can tell, I am that person. Combine that with a proxy or a VPN and there's no way to track it. This is all without mentioning that there is no formal mechanism that one can use to report if a forum account purporting to be you actually isn't you. Instead, one would presume that one has to rely on the perpetually slow moderation team here which seems intent on allowing situations to spiral out of control before entering the fray, all in order to maximise the amount of warning points that can be given out, instead of acting once the trouble has been pointed out. We do not expect the team to be psychic, we do not expect the team to act before the populace has broken the rules, however we also do not expect a forum report thread to go ignored for several hours, and moreover we absolutely do not expect said thread to be subjected to continual ignoral while the moderation posts in more flippant threads.

 

Long story short, we are not happy with how this situation has been handled, nor are we happy that the forum is built in such a way that allowed it to happen in the first place, and all that is being suggested is a two step verification process. You ask me for technical suggestions? I'm not a very technical person, I can work my way around a spreadsheet, but this stuff is beyond me. The onus is not on the users to precisely detail how this game could be improved, because frankly they most likely do not know, just like me.

 

Many other websites manage to have this system, why not Politics And War?

[Dr Rush]

1. I have in the past used different emails for a forum & a game. There are a few valid reasons to do this & what is at this time an isolated incident does not negate those.

2. I doubt any lasting damage has occurred to your alliance's or your reputation provided you did the obvious thing & released a statement saying there were shenanigans occurring.

3. A few hours for a response from the mod team is fairly reasonable especially given the relative size of the community & the staff team, who are after all volunteers.

4. What another website can do has no bearing on this issue. Different games & forums are coded in a variety of different manners with vastly different technical capability.

5. Making it harder for someone to join the forum is the wrong direction to take things. It's a very good way to turn off perspective users.

[Alice Lune]

Or just make it so that you can only make a forum account through a link from your PnW game account. Make it so that there's no other way to make a forum account aside from the game itself.

 

If it turns out to be a spam, just block that game account and simultaneously cause the forum account to be inactive. Alternatively, you can allow a banned game account to make appeal through a special forum section that only works as an appeal forum and nothing else.

[Dr Rush]

Or sheepy could not waste massive amounts time fixing a non issue.

[Crust]

It's obviously been an issue, considering it happened more than once.

 

It's one thing if there's bigger issues to attend to but it's kinda insulting to be shrugged off like that when pointing out a security miss.

 

Like instead of wasting time banning fake users and users who don't have an actual nation, you could easily make it so that one literally has to have a nation before they can even create an account. It's not rocket science.

 

If you don't know how, that's okay. No one will think less, but at least admit that. If you don't have time, that's also okay, just say so. Pretending like this wont happen again and again and again on the other hand, and as if this wont just result in more work for you is a bad idea tho. And it's making me not wanna donate any sort of money to this game.

[Dwemyrn]

Only one forum account can be link to a nation's link? Wouldn't that resolve the issue?