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Comment by vymague | Hacker News Reader

Just tried to delete my account. Same experience, needs to verify with a photo ID. Kinda shady. I wonder if it violates any EU rules.

edit: Just to be clear. Like the link said, there were other authentication methods, like SMS. Blizzard disabled the other ones on purpose.

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Likely this is to protect against hacked accounts and the hackers deleting the account after trading away WoW items or whatnot. I've had an off/on idle WoW/Blizzard account for 10 or so years now, most folks don't want to delete their accounts when they don't play, they just let their subscription expire, so this seems like the most likely reason this is in place.

Normally I'd agree, but they added this due to the huge impact deletion has vs the cost. This is pretty clearly an anti abuse system they added begrudgingly due to real existing problems. I say this because its a huge burden on them to actually go through this process, so theres no way they chose to do it lightly, or recently.

If you got hacked and didn't want this to happen, would you still feel the same way?

Why even bother with an authenticator if they're not going to recognize it for something like this? Why should I have to send them an ID? I tried deleting my account multiple times and it still hasn't worked.

I don't know how good they are with PII - but asking for a photo ID means you own that data-breach now... if that ID information is leaked it's all on Blizzard.

It’s so our new Chinese overlords have your mug on file. Same government that has face recognition and cameras all over... Next time you step in China passport control, get ready for a grilling.

Just did in the EU, I was sent an SMS.

GDPR requires opt-out as easy as opt-in, so yes

True, GDPR requires it to be as easy to withdraw consent as to give it.

Yeah same, need to send a GDPR request. They're making me even more annoyed

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