Final Fantasy 14 communities panic as it turns out change to blacklisting, meant to help reduce stalking, also lets players use mods to track their alts

pcgamer.com:

Final Fantasy 14 communities have been in a bit of a commotion lately—as a recent mod stepping into the limelight has exposed a vulnerability in the way Square Enix has handled its new-and-'improved' blacklist feature. In essence, this solution to the game's stalker problem has inadvertently made it very easy for ToS-violating (but currently untraceable) players to uncover all of their target's alternate characters.

A fuller explanation requires context. Firstly, while mods in Final Fantasy 14 are against the terms of service, a ton of players use 'em anyway. This is because Square, at present, operates on a sort of 'don't be an idiot' policy.

The official stance is that mods are forbidden and you should not use them under any circumstances. Under the table, however, Square has stated that it can't spy on your computer to see what you're using. Instead, it will simply punish you if you're either obviously cheating, which is detectable through common sense, or if you're reported for it. For example, if you use an addon that tracks DPS numbers, you're fine, but if you flame someone for their DPS sucking? They can report you, and you'll be banned.

This has led to a thriving modding community that Square can't bring the hammer down on, exactly, even if it's led to controversies and disappointments before. Doing so would basically nuke the entire roleplay community, for instance, where the use of cosmetic mods is commonplace for harmless visual tweaks (like, say, playing a hyur with pointy ears) to Second Life-tier monstrosities of wobbling flesh. That's to say nothing of the accessibility and quality of life functions mods can offer—not that I'd know—like basic fixes and ping corrections to FF14's netcode.

The mod in question, here, is a plugin called PlayerScope. Previously only used by a small group of players, its mod author, who goes by the name Generall on its official Discord, has recently been taking steps to unveil it for «public» use. This has caused a hubbub