A Redditor stated that when she turned on her Xbox One, she received myriad messages mentioning that her real name was visible to the public rather than the nickname she had set previously. Upon looking further, she saw a lot of other Xbox users’ names out and showing as well, causing valid reason for concern.
With this kind of mishap, it could mean a loss of privacy for some players, as knowing their first and last name can lead to strangers knowing their whereabouts and other information just by a simple Google search. It could even lead to something worse, like Swatting, which unfortunately seems to be prevalent the Twitch community.
According to Kotaku, Microsoft has now stated that it has fixed the bug causing the aforementioned issue displaying users’ real names. Prior to this, Microsoft took to Twitter to address some problems players were having with Xbox Live being down.
While Microsoft seems to have identified and rectified the real name display problem, there are some steps players can take to make sure their privacy settings keep everything that they don’t want others to know private, by going online and updating Privacy Settings. Once players are finished logging in, there are some options to change some settings really quickly, and one of them could prevent the real name display issue from happening again if it crops up once more in the future. On this page, scrolling about halfway down, players will see an option to “Share My Real Name” and players can opt to share their name with everyone, friends, or friends they choose. In doing this, players can hopefully see their names remain private.
This privacy breach definitely causes valid concern for Xbox One fans all around the world, and players should look into their privacy settings just to be safe. This is an unfortunate mishap, but hopefully Microsoft will use this instance to learn how to avoid such an issue later on down the line, and make everything more private and safer going forward.
Source: Kotaku
