I mean the actual number under all of our accounts and characters.
?
What exactly do you mean?
We got the account @ nsme and a character name, a server unique characterId. All of that is known locally. And you can see the charname and @accountname ingame, in guilds or groups or even the chat. So nothing secret here.
SlippyCheeze wrote: »technically, a whole lot of addons use the unique ID numbers for your characters, and so on, as part of their SavedVariables structure to separate out the data by, y'know, character, account, server, and so forth. ZOS wrote the code behind that, in fact.
in terms of "addons collect", though, I think you have a, uh, "category error" going on here: the ZOS addon API has ONE AND ONLY ONE way to send data ANYWHERE except for the local computer: opening a URL in the game, which will bring up an unmodifiable dialog box prompting you with the URL to be opened. (more below; this is the executive summary.)
What I'd like to know is: WHY do you ask? what is the problem that you are trying to understand or solve?
the only other way an "addon" can collect anything is for you, personally, to run some additional software that sends the data out to the world. for example, the UESP log uploader, or the Tamriel Trade Center client, implement that for their various own saved data.
there is also ABSOLUTELY NO WAY for an addon (ie, the lua code) to run a program. so, withhout you, the human, actively letting that third party software run, no addon could ever "send data" anywhere without permission.
it is also pretty much exactly impossible to send data *inside* the game to another account without a physical human pressing a physical button to make it happen: only secure, ZOS-approved code can actually send a chat message; addons can only fill in the text field and let you press the button to send it, and so on for other methods of sending data inside the game universe. (to avoid spamming and theft, primarily, but still, coincidentally provides you with strong privacy assurances.)
it *is* possible for an addon to export a small amount of data, on the order of 1 to 3 bytes, every couple of seconds, to people you have explicitly grouped with in the game. this theoretically could be exploited to pass information to someone without your permiossion, if both sides used an addon, but the limited bandwidth and the need to explicitly group our characters, make it pretty impractical.
Okay, well, seems it's trackable then. Disable the logger in the settings then. And if it still logs and sends to the log files data you can even find out who it was if e.g. only 1 warden was in group, or only 1 was not sending non anymous data.
All in all you can always make some connections to the data, if wished. You are never fully anonymous.
In the end of depends on what ppl do with that info. Collecting data is nothing wrong, humans can only be abusing it
There was an addon author who claimed to have all the stats on his addon's users because his addon sends him user data.
If I'm understanding you correctly, that's impossible for him to know just with the API that ZOS provides unless he bundles his own additional software with his addon that uploads data by user permission. The addon can't secretly send data without us knowing or our permission. Correct?
SlippyCheeze wrote: »
Which addon, and author? The specific context would help give a more sensible answer, but ... in general, they probably don't. You mention ESO logs, so I'm going to assume that is the context.
The exception would be if the data were visible to them somehow (eg: they grouped with you, and had the encounter log enabled, or their addon captured details from in-game events), or if the data is captured by others and then uploaded to the author through third party software.
They definitely can't (a) send data out of the game in real-time, either locally or to the internet, and (b) can't easily send data to the internet without *someone* cooperating and sending it for them by, eg, running local software or manually uploading it.
It would be quite difficult, and ZOS have blocked multiple ways that could, send data without the user knowing inside the game. So, things like "mail details to your account" are likely impossible, and if it was found ZOS would probably act to block the (in their opinion) exploit that allowed it.
OTOH, the people running Tamriel Trade Center probably do have, eg, the account name for everyone who was ever in a guild with anyone who used TTC, simply because that is publicly available data, and TTC uses it as part of tracking guild store activity, etc.
so.... yeah. public data (as far as ZOS are concerned), which includes your account name—because it is visible to anyone who encounters you in the world, for example, or is in your guild—could be available to them.
something extracted about your account, without any interaction, from your system? not really. and probably not "legally" under the ZOS terms of service. (legally, in the sense that ZOS can enforce those in a court, but not legally, as in a crime.)
all the data in the encounter log can be sent to the eso logs website, and it will include combat events from your character if someone in the group with you records the log and uploads it. (that is "public info" and "someone else uploads" in action.)
if you have set yourself anonymous in the logs, they could capture info that lets them figure out who anonymous-12 is, but they probably don't. even if they did, it'd be (a) rude, (b) almost certainly a TOS violation, and (c) kind of pointless. but it wouldn't really give them anything the folks in the trial or dungeon couldn't work out for themselves anyways.
I should probably ask, too: what is your concern here? Just knowing your account name (eg: @SlippyCheeze), or the unique ID and name of your character (8798292094729190, "K'sharraji Rian Slippychz"), doesn't do much of anything for anyone.