1 Year Later... SMS verification still leaves a minority out! 😔

bunnyshadow • 28 November 2023 at 2:36 PM

@sinthr It's nowhere close to blackmail. I understand how it can be a security risk but you're just objectively wrong by saying it feels like that.

1. black·mail
/ˈblakˌmāl/

noun
the action, treated as a criminal offense, of demanding payment or another benefit from someone in return for not revealing compromising or damaging information about them.

verb
demand money or another benefit from (someone) in return for not revealing compromising or damaging information about them.

Deleted • 28 November 2023 at 2:39 PM

@bunnyshadow and that's not the point of the whole discussion. :/

In my opinion, it feels like one, yes. Do I need to change my opinion just because you have a different one?! It's something forced and wrong imo. "If you don't put your personal info here, you can't partecipate in the game's activities like everyone else who did it.".

Also, just because you think it's a good thing, it doesn't mean it's good for another person. Please respect I have a different opinion and point of view from you. I can understand where you're coming from but you're just actually just trying to argue with me, or that is the feeling I'm getting from you.

bunnyshadow • 28 November 2023 at 3:13 PM

@sinthr You made it the point by highlighting the word blackmail lol. I don’t see how you can say I’m not respecting your opinion when I said it was valid & I can see how it is a security risk.

I’m telling you that it’s plan & simply not blackmail, but that everything else I could see where you are coming from.

kataclysm • 28 November 2023 at 3:23 PM

In addition to the superb points made about accessibility, there are ways to verify phone numbers without... Using your phone. There are services available - for free - that can provide workarounds. It's a grey area fo sho, so I won't say any more about it than that; y'all know how to use Google and I don't want to advise anyone to do anything when the bigger issue is one of Eggcave's truest faults.

Accessibility on this site sucks and relevant staff seldom hold themselves accountable or address the glaring issues encompassed under the umbrella of accessable use. It ain't a good look to continue introducing new features without addressing the mistakes, errors, and flaws in existing ones. The head honcho should be doing better to further reward and incentivise its members to remain active and engaged instead of sweeping them under the rug.

And if Ian wants to say he's not sweeping issues under the rug, maybe he can address the inaccessibility itself and give us a clear explanation as to why things take as long as they do and to give the eggcave community the transparency we've cried out for for so long.

Deleted • 28 November 2023 at 3:31 PM

@bunnyshadow then... what word would you use? I used blackmail because that's how to translate "ricatto", a word in my mother language. In my mother tongue a ricatto is when a person says something like this... "you do this, or x won't happen", basically giving you only one choice and If you refuse that choice, then there's restrictions or something unpleasant for you. I don't really know what else to use tbh. 🥲 I'm not understanding If it's such a bad word.

Edit: Someone made me notice I might've offended using this world, but clearly it wasn't my intention and I'm sorry If you perceived it as an harmful word. I wasn't offending you or the site, I just wanted to point out honestly how this situation made me feel - and with me, many others I think. Left with a single choice, and since we didn't want that single choice, our doubts were left unanswered and our pleas for a better solution or at least an alternative that could be used by everyone, unheard. "Do this this way, or you can't fully enjoy all the site's features. No other choices." It's a "ricatto". It's a very bad feeling when you get put in a minority of people that can't enjoy fully the site, and I'm hoping you can at least, If not agreeing to disagree, understand that kind of feeling and the desire to see something better come out of it.

As for @kataclysm ...3 hours standing ovation, I really don't have anything else to add to this. 🙏

hinokazes • 28 November 2023 at 6:48 PM

@sinthr Thanks for the ping !

It's too late right now for me to answer, so I'll do it later, tho I read everything so far. Depending if there's new posts or not, I'll either post a new message or edit this one

Deleted • 29 November 2023 at 6:18 AM

@hinokazes take your time and thank you very much! >///<

More random pings (sorry for bothering):
@elluwah
@sandara
@kleineprinz
@sylvanaria

sandara • 29 November 2023 at 10:07 AM

I personally do not have a problem using the number on this site. Still, it's mostly because I have 3 different numbers on 2 different cell phones, for work and personal use on one cellphone and another for other stuff on another cellphone.

But I do see a problem if the site would possibly be hacked and the numbers leaked.
I have seen an article by Brian X. Chen from The New York Times (translated from Portuguese):
"[...] Emre Tezisci, Fyde security researcher specializing in telecommunications added my number to a public list. Soon, he obtained a complete dossier on me – including my name and date of birth, my address, the property taxes I pay, and the names of my family members. [...]"

Now imagine having all this information on someone with just their cell phone number, you could literally make that person's life a hell.

Edit:: I truly recommend reading the entire article if you can, with the phone number you can get some personal information, with this personal information you can get even more information and then do bad things.

Deleted • 29 November 2023 at 10:13 AM

@sandara exactly, thank you very much for pointing this out. 🙏 Our concerns about privacy and wanting an alternative to phone number sms verification are legitimate and should be properly addressed.

hinokazes • 30 November 2023 at 6:59 PM

*sigh*

Ok let’s try this…
After all this time, I’m still (and probably will stay) very angry at eggcave for doing this to us. A website about collecting some random small pictures that aren’t even our property and that we will lost once the website is gone shouldn’t ask for our phone number. Not at all ! There’s absolutely NO justification for doing so, especially for supposedly help against cheating. If people really want to cheat they will try everything for that, it’s not hard for some to get different phone numbers and make more than 1 main account. You punish most innocent players just for a few annoying ones.

I never understood from the beginning why it was possible to have multiple accounts, and that it was never asked from the start to link them together from the beginning, like, from your main account, you can create the sub-accounts, to make them linked together right away. Cheaters will always create multiple accounts anyway, so that always confused me. And now, obviously, having to link them is possible, yet for that you, SOMEHOW, need a phone number ? Why not just tell which account is your sub-accounts, verify them by a mod or something, and boom, they are linked now ? And don’t complain to me how it’s going to be too long, maybe next time think about this from the start and not years later ? :|

I have also a huge issue with this website, it’s how over the years, I could feel it was becoming more and more about MONEY. Almost every new thing is with premium stuff, and with how most past stuff are premium currency too, it’s very bold of eggcave (that I more and more want to call greedcave) to dare to call themselves a free to play game. No guys, the more time pass the less it is. At best, I’d say playing for free is playing for the DEMO of the game, and if you actually want to play the game properly, you have to pay, or give away very personal informations that such website have no real justification to ask from you. Yeah there’s more than 1K pets, but you can’t even get 1/10 of them for free if you start now, you’ll have to pay an insane amount of premium currency, or trade away everything you have for maybe one of the oldest pet (assuming you can trade enough lol this is ridiculous how the oldest/rarest pets cost so much IRL money when they absolutely don’t have such value), or maybe you get lucky and someone gift you very rare stuff… I personally don’t call this free to play when most of the pets are behind a paywall ‘-‘ And items are not better, so many of them, yet most are either nowhere to be seen or need premium currency too. Oh, and I wanna laugh too at the “infinitely expandable accounts”. Come on, we all know the money price get so high that it becomes mandatory after a certain point to have side accounts if you want to continue to collect pets, or even have extras for trading. Not everyone can click like there’s no tomorrow to get insane amount of money, and also, not everyone want to have all their money goes for cove space when there are other things that need lot of money too (like the lab pets). Could help to make the feeding keyboard friendly to make life easier for some players to feed, but I guess it’s too hard if after all this time and being asked more than once, it’s still not be done :v

Anyway… Don’t really know right now what to say more, but there’s clearly other things that bother me a lot too. At least I can still do the November gobbler hunt, because if I was ostracized from that too, I would have definitely quit the game (still, it makes me angry now that I can only get max 2 CC pets and not 3 at the end of the year). I only stay mainly because I like the art and the pets, but there’s so much I can take in the face before it’s just too much and even despite that I’ll leave… Also I’ll certainly not say a happy birthday to this website until I can get my 500 CC again during the anniversary moment, it should be an event open for EVEYRONE, not only to a part of the player base. Yeah you can call me childish all you want, I don’t care. If I see something unfair, I’ll say it’s unfair. I have never cheated or anything, and yet I’m being punished, so don’t count on me to be kind.

Ok I’ll stop my rant here, it’s making me angry to think of all of this. I don’t really have any hope left for this website…

heatherm19 • 30 November 2023 at 9:10 PM

*cautiously raises hand* Really don't want to get in a debate about all of this, but I do want to voice my experience. As a newer user, just from what I've seen in the past 1 1/2 years I've been here, I love this game and honestly feel like Eggcave is doing a lot better than other similar games, in terms of different ways to get creatures, in terms of staff communication (most of the time), in terms of updates and such. I join and see that it's free to play, and I still think that's true. It's *easier* to get what you want, especially older creatures, if you have the ability to buy CC, but it's not necessary to enjoy the game.

My biggest issue with this whole verification thing is simply a matter of inclusion. Eggcave, and it's staff, *should* do what they can to include the full userbase. Not just those privileged enough to have their own cell phone. If users don't *want* to verify for whatever reason, fine, that's not my concern. Everyone should have the *option* to verify if they want to, and restricting it to cell phone only means a lot of people are left out.
@Ian any thought on that in particular?

Deleted • 1 December 2023 at 3:04 AM

@hinokazes thank you very much for expressing your concerns, I feel you a lot as well and I'm sad that you're feeling this angry (I am, as well). We're derailed a bit as current economy isn't the focus of this topic, but I feel like I want to address your concerns about it as well - I think that than the past, we're better because there's more availability in terms of creatures and all, but I think it's overwhelming every month because 2 creatures at 500CC each is totally feasible, but adding 2 re-releases at 1000CC each is a bit... yep. It makes people wanna spend more too and it wont't allow people with that much CC to feel urged and sad. I think It would be best to have just ONE new cash shop monthly and ONE re-release and I think re-release should be priced at the original price of 500CC as well. I feel like also many of the commonly used items (star potions or gender stones) should be priced a little lower, such 50CC and freezes / rebirths at 100CC, esp considering how much we use these items to freeze creatures in our preferred stages. And I agree we have a lot of accessibility issues that should be fixed, hopefully @Ian will give this thread some attention and a possibility to us who are showing to him our concerns with an honest heart.

Thank you very much once again for partecipating in the discussion even though I think it was very hard for you. I think you care about EC as much as I do, I really hope these doubts will be properly addressed this time. ;w;

cryogenics • 1 December 2023 at 3:28 AM

I can understand that people have an issue of sharing their info with sites.

did you consider this?

1. you ip adress gives all the info EggCave admins need about your location, and how many of your side accounts you use to access the site. VPN doesnt work.

2. using side accounts - you use different emails - so can not authenticate with a single 'persona'

3. when you purchase CC - you freely give your credit card details to Egg Cave.
I am an international user - and they have not setup the proper merchant 3D authenticator factors, to prevent anyone else from using my details. the payment goes through immediately. which it should not.

4. when you use 2FA - with any other site, a mobile app or desktop app - you HAVE to give them your personal details, which include mobile, email, and sometimes even residential details.

lambasting the site for not wanting to give your details in this day and age is quite honestly, silly. There is not a system or site out there anymore that does not require - as mandatory - at minimum cellular / email.

yes, this might be a site for a game of pictures - but this is still a public space.

its still a game. and any game, system, will require some sort of authentication factoring.

cellphones in this instance - is the more sensible way to authenticate you and your multiple accounts - see point 2 - you can have many email accounts, but you would rarely have multiple cellphone numbers.

Deleted • 1 December 2023 at 4:11 AM

@cryogenics not all of these points are true. I use 2FAs to set up my 2FA and it didn't require a phone number, and it's also open source so everyone can check the code out. And it's not silly not wanting to share your personal info even "in this day and age", it's a choice that has to be respected (and also, remember, some people DON'T have a phone. I didn't have a phone one year ago). Yes, it's a danger to be on the internet, but still we can do what we can to prevent out info being leaked and it's a right we have. Please respect other people point of view and choices on the matter. Also If EC implemented a proper linking side feature and ONE mail required for max four account (main + sides) it would still be a working alternative imo. Setting 4 different emails is another accessibility issue this site has, because really, I created these mails especially for this in the past, while I would have pretty content having just one. << Also for MOST sites, 2FA isn't mandatory, but optional. And it doesn't lock you out from site features. ^^

That said, thank you for stating your opinion but seeing these concerns as silly doesn't really help in making the people that made this choice feel better, nor leave them from the minority group that was excluded from site features.

PS: I never used a credit card on this site. I am a regular, non-CC-buying EC user. So yeah, not everyone has a phone, not everyone uses a credit card, *not everyone*. And being a minority isn't "silly" nor it's fun to be called that just because we've made a different choice. Sorry.

cryogenics • 1 December 2023 at 6:58 AM

the words you use creates a clear divide for yourself. be careful.

Deleted • 1 December 2023 at 7:21 AM

@cryogenics I don't really understand what you mean, but okay. owo

werewire • 2 December 2023 at 2:13 AM

ever since i joined i did feel like the sms verification was a bit extreme! because honestly it's probably fairly common to have internet but not be paying a phone bill. like for example, when i got a new phone i transferred my old number to my new phone, if i sold this old phone to another person they could call emergency service numbers but might not be able to receive text verification.

it's a really is a hard thing to tackle, because if it's too easy people can use VPNs to cheat, but too hard and legitimate players cannot even earn any CC from the monthly challenge (or receive any during ec's anniversary). so it really is a delicate matter that needs very, very careful consideration to preserve CC value that unfortunately comes at the cost of other players. :-(

not even to mention that petsites like this one do get targeted for personal information with neopets having multiple breaches and flight rising reportedly having a person attempting to inject code into a vulnerable page. so it would be understandable to not want to attach a phone number to a website like this one

Deleted • 2 December 2023 at 3:54 AM

@werewire thank you very much for your input! Yes, that is what I was worried about... I was on neo during the leak and it was wild and scary. I felt lucky because I never put my personal info anywhere on the web (I don't use social media either) because I value my privacy and even If it could be feel "silly" to other people, well, at least I want to [i]try]/i] to protect my privacy when online. Because of my choices on the matter, I was spared a big headache as people that got the info on neo didn't get anything much valuable for me. I changed mails and pass and I was okay... On the other hand, after that Neopets implemented REGULAR 2FA that you can use using a private app like 2FAs (no phone required) and I was happy to use it. Here where phone is required I drew the line, among with many others I think. And among others, I'm pretty sure we're feeling abandoned and left out here.

Please, please please, consider giving your userbase an alternative, @Ian! >///<

cho • 2 December 2023 at 3:45 PM

@sinthr THIS!!!! granting accessibility and being inclusive of the minority members is a must ❤️ sending love to all who feels left out (and ARE left out because of this situation) Thank you so much and I hope EC hears this ❤️

@Ian can we please consider alternatives that users have suggested to help include everyone? I understand that it can be a lot of work on top of the already existing workload, and it may take time to find alternatives that encourage active users and participation instead of making them feel punished for not having access. Thank you so much for creating this site and we all appreciate you and the team. ❤️

Deleted • 2 December 2023 at 4:05 PM

@cho thank you very much for your support! ❤️ And thank you very much for your kindness as well.

Yes, I do indeed love EggCave too, and I feel grateful I have this little safespace on the web in which I can unwind by feeding creatures (it's relaxing and reassuring for me and it helps me a lot to fight off anxiety). I'm this salty over this situation exactly because I love this site so much. I've been here since 2012 and... well, it's not nice being put off some features because I don't want to share personal information. TwT I know as well changing the system might take time or not be possible, but a little consideration and a reply to everyone that has shown concerns or support to an alternative, would be really, really nice. Please communicate with us! >///<

discordia • 16 December 2023 at 9:32 AM

@sinthr
I am late to the party here but I support alternative methods for verification, not just because of not wanting to leak phone numbers in the worst-case scenario but because it can be difficult for players without access to receiving phone text . As absolutely weird as it sounds to some people in a modern era, global demographic and financial issues may count for players having difficulty with limited funds/poverty.

Thus I feel it isn't just convenience, nor privacy but touches something that honestly? I felt shy about addressing.