The problematic nature of letting someone control your forum and discord picture

[jRuutu 2,474]

Multiple users have shared their items for the 2024 Charity Auction. Among those items are items where the highest bidder is allowed to control the forum and/or discord picture of a user for a short period of time. An innocent idea on the surface, but once you dig deeper you quickly find many potential scenarios that could lead to deep trouble.

 

Scenario 1: Tampering

In the hectic modern times, we have less and less time to read. Often it is the forum picture that lets us know who is who. If someone has been using a certain picture for a long time and that picture is now added to someone else's forum and / or discord picture - it could lead to tough situations. For example, If a GM approaches a user who recently changed their profile picture to a picture of another GM, the GM approaches this user to discuss whether player x would want to join their team, this player x just so happens to be the user who changed their profile picture, is the GM who started the conversation going to get punished for tampering? A lot of this depends on the wording of the original message and something like this more than likely has a fairly small chance of actually happening, but to be safe I recommend everybody to report each discussion with a GM during this off-season to the staff of VHL to ensure no foul play is taken place.

 

Scenario 2:  Cheating

As we all know, the world is full of great movies and actors, especially films where a real person is portrayed by an actor, we recognize this real person from the smallest of mannerisms. In the world of VHL, one of these mannerisms is the forum picture. If a user is going to use the forum picture of a banned VHL member - are they ban evading? When we lose someone close to us, are they really gone when we have the memories, pictures, and videos? Similarly, is a banned VHL member gone when their forum picture is active and their essence and spirit are being played by someone else? After all, it is not the person behind the username and account that VHL is mad at, it is the spirit and essence, the role that was being displayed by this person. This role is now taken over by the user who is using the banned VHL member's forum picture.

 

The topic of cheating has plenty of room for different scenarios. Another one is pretending to be a staff member of the league. If a staff member has that recognizable forum picture, a busy, modern VHL, user could be tricked into doing something they should not be doing when another user now has the real staff member's forum picture. For example, the user could be tricked into giving their password or doing the work of the staff member. This type of scenario is more than likely again a small percentage scenario, but I still recommend reporting any interaction you have with a VHL staff during this off-season to the staff of VHL to ensure to safety of the league.

 

These are just a few examples. I recommend to always double-check who you are talking to. It is advised to ask a user to send you a message, both, on the forum and Discord to ensure the information matches.