The thing about a security breach is that it may not have happened ‘yet’. It could happen any time in the future when some hacker gets access to WTRL and finds the passwords (e.g. in a log file)
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Or when Martin takes a dislike to someone based on what they wrote on Facebook.
Luckily there is no precedent for anything like this, just an unfortunate maintenance incident that got misunderstood.
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Thank you all for your patience. We are now happy to confirm that WTRL is back up and running with their new registration flow which has been co-built and approved by Zwift. This new flow will make the lives of new WTRL members much easier by streamlining the sign-up process, eliminating the possibilities of mis-attributed race results and avoiding the need to look up your Zwift ID. These are the problems that the new account creation flow was intended to solve, and we’re satisfied those goals have been achieved.
To clarify why is verification in the first place, here’s a few brief notes for the WTRL account creation flow:
Why do you need my Zwift login credentials?
In order to comply with data protection laws around the world, WTRL is required to securely authenticate you as the genuine owner of a Zwift Profile in order to:
1. Validate that you are a Zwift subscriber (and not an unrelated party)
2. Confirm that you are the owner of the Zwift ID / Profile and therefore the data associated with it.
3. Automatically obtain your Zwift Member ID number which is used to sign you up to our events, link you to your results, teams and other competition related processes.
This Authentication is a one-time process for new users.
Authentication now occurs on Zwift servers and your login to Zwift has no direct connection to your WTRL credentials. This authentication step is simply used to retrieve and connect your profile ID to your new WTRL account.
For further details, please refer to our Terms Of Service and Privacy Policy
Once again, we apologize for the amount of confusion caused over these past two weeks and hope this update addresses your concerns. If you already have a WTRL account that is properly connected to your Zwift ID, no action is required. This is just for new WTRL accounts.
Finally, if anyone additionally has personal concerns about their recent ZRL experiences, please DM me. I’ve been following up with many of you 1:1 and will continue to. Our intention is to move on from this forum thread and get back to racing.
Ride On,
Mark
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Thank you @Mark_Cote, I guess I feel better about this now. I still don’t like ZHQ abdicating marquee racing event management to WTRL as I find their responsiveness to suggestions and constructive criticism … less than optimal. That’s your alls’ call though just know, there are many of us resistant to joining anything with their name on it.
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i am a member of a wtrl race team so i am fond of the club and i guess it depends who you speak to. probably the timing, also. it doesn’t have to be mr carew (i’ve never spoken to him), steve milliken is also an owner and maybe more accessible
I have not spoken with Steve as he was not the face of WTRL in the Zwift events last year. Martin interacted with me in every instance and I found him to be remarkably intractable and unable to see any other viewpoint than his own. I was not the only person to have this experience and I’m probably not the last. Please understand, your relationship with WTRL is quite different than those of us depending on them creating a level playing field in Zwift Races. My experience thus far indicates this will likely be the same going forward unless someone steps up and changes how they do business.
As I’ve said, I will not participate in any event WTRL manages on Zwift until things change. I’m hopeful for this change but as my SOF friends say, “Hope should not be considered a viable course of action.”
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Please forgive me the rather excessive posts here but I felt this needed to be said: Does anybody find it a conflict of interest that the Zwift Race management company has race teams competing in said Zwift events? This is odd, like USA Cycling having their own club racing against other clubs. I’m not talking about the national team but grassroots amateur clubs. I just find it to be without precedence in the fields of racing I’ve taken part in. This encompasses Sports cars, motorcycles, karts and almost all forms of bicycle racing. Just because Zwift is based on a video game doesn’t mean this shouldn’t be taken seriously.
You want to be taken seriously, then treat this like a serious sport. Otherwise it’s just a game.
Zwift themselves have teams in Zwift races as does every organiser on Zwift in their own events so I don’t really see this as a conflict of interest as long as things are kept transparent with no advantage given to them. Which for the amount of data from zp/strava etc I’m really not sure how they could be seen to be causing a conflict that would not get spotted. and from what i understand they are pretty hands off the teams they are busy enough running WTRL events to worry about team/rider management.
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Right, but none of those teams have the ability to pen riders where they want to. In the Zwift Classics series WTRL used Autocat to pen the riders and in EVERY SINGLE race I rode there were 4-5 riders who were head and shoulders above the rest of the field. Two of those guys were solid A racers. I’m a marginal B racer when I’m not broken and half the field got shelled off the back 5-10 minutes in. I was told by Marty that “everybody was penned perfectly.”
That’s why I’m concerned about the sanctioning body have their own teams in these events.
Naw, sorry bud, but that sounds like a meaningless moan. Or that you have a beef with WTRL and want to see their team disbanded.
In many sports clubs own facilities and host & organize competitions. I’d say good luck getting someone to put the effort in to organize & care enough to do it well if they can’t participate because you think it has the appearance for the potential for conflict of interest in some very specific race formats.
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I just sent Craig D a message that I wasn’t going to post in here but I lied. Yes, your local club organizes races as do all clubs. In fact for a USA Cycling club to be sanctioned by the national organization, they must put on at least one race/year. The difference is the local club does not establish the rule set nor can they categorize the racers in some kind of random pattern. They have to work within the national organizations rules or they lose their affiliation and nobody will race their events.
I saw this very thing happen in kart racing 30 years ago. A club started going off the reservation to give the racers in their club an advantage in tech. This got documented and sent to the sanctioning body and they went away. Literally lost their ability to put on more than local races which ultimately killed the club and the track.
This is what I’m talking about when I say Zwift needs to take this kind of sh*t seriously. I haven’t raced much at all after the stupid Zwift Classic series with the fouled up Autocat thing. Now learning a Zwift contractor has a series of teams just adds fuel to that fire. Should not be allowed to happen.
this is our division stack and if i’m not wrong, the closest team we have to the prem league. i don’t think wtrl were doing us any favours when they threw us into this shark tank. que sera sera
Happy it is all sorted and now secure.
The more important lessons to be learnt are probably on the communication side rather than the security side - and maybe the inherent issues with using a 3rd party to manage Zwift’s racing offering.
Happy for this thread to be closed so we can move on.
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Just before you close this, can i put forward the viewpoint of a basement level WTRL member?
I joined WTRL from TeamType1 where i met Steve at the beginning of WTRL, we trialled TTT’s as a group of friends in our spare time, from there WTRL has through sheer hard work and determination, grown from a group of friends wanting sonething more from Zwift Racing into the organiser it is now.
Reading some of the comments posted on this thread there are a few who ought to be ashamed of themselves for posting this attack on everything from their character to the way they present a website.
It’s sickening to read.
I have no idea why anyone would bother if they read threads like this?
Dont people remember the days of wall-to-wall unregulated WBR races? (Not a dig at WBR/3R btw)
Zwift racing has gone from the wild west into something a bit better and still people want to savage those trying to make a difference!
Martin & Steve are like everyone else on the platform, they long for the ability and tools to stop people taking the mickey and have fun and fair racing…nothing else. I know at least one of those two certainly doesnt need financial gain from organising either.
Some of the language used here is disgusting to describe people who’ve dragged racing forward kicking and screaming.
Nothing these guys have done has been done with any malice, as far as I’m aware the rogue element of Zwift users continue to make it impossible to curtail false information and make a mockery of the policing system.
When something is done to try and stop that this forum explodes with plastic rage and barrack room lawyers spouting.
I’d love to see a few of the thread contributors here organise and police events, I’d take pleasure in reading the deluge of nasty comments you’d undoubtedly attract too.
To suggest that WTRL racers are somehow favoured is frankly laughable.
I’ve bounced between C & D cat for years, I’ve recieved nothing but encouragement from our organisers and team members but at no stage has anyone helped me behind the scenes…to suggest it nay happen is just incredible. Its in the realm of ‘tin foil hat’ in fact, along with a fair swathe of this thread.
As pointed out by others, Herd, 3R and many others organise events but I’ve yet to see them accused of a conflict of interest or favour to their participants!
That in itself is so ridiculous on a platform that there’s no material gain?
Other than a percieved prestige of being Zwift Race Leage C1 EMEA league champion, what ‘gain’ is there from zwift racing?
A small gold icon in Zwiftpower?
Decrying organisers when this it the only prize on offer is childish at best.
Sorry, i couldn’t let this pass without putting my opinion over.
Lock the thread by all means, I’m not terribly interested in any reply…though i would suggest a mattress or two be put out underneath a few ivory towers.
Note all views expressed in this post are my own not those of anyone else.
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In particular, the communication side that probably needs most improvement is between ZHQ and WTRL. My working hypothesis for why this happened is still that WTRL only had a chat with the racing/event/programming content/whatever team that okayed the initial plans without either party realizing that the design wasn’t exactly kosher.
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Although not my main team now, I’ve raced for the WTRL team on a number of occasions over the years and still do sometimes.
The race team has very very little to do with the events organising side of things and you certainly do not benefit from any kind of advantages from riding for the team that are also the organisers.
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I agree with much of what you’ve said, and have said as much in this thread. WTRL have been a huge asset to Zwift racing.
The thing that has people most upset is the “customer service” response they received. Providing a great, and needed service to people doesn’t excuse treating them like trash when they call out a flaw. Banning people from the primary comms channel and platform itself, or accusing them of bullying without grounds isn’t on.
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As a matter of interest, is Martin’s comms any less caustic in the WTRL team group?
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Mad monday in that sense works very well. the majority of team captains are in a discord chat which is very open to discussion on riders if there are issues it’s clear to all why decisions are made.
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One thing i know is if i was on the recieving end of stuff like this I’d just pull the plug and walk away.
Seriously? Who needs it?
I know there is a flow of quite abusive messages from the get-go too, not because of any reply sent either, and they’re sent almost daily to organisers from every level of the competition, ten times that number if there’s been a problem…maybe that freys people’s goodwill and temper?
I don’t know, merely hypothesising.
If it was me, I’d just shut up shop and wash my hands of it all.
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