Unanswered ??'s having 1150+g stolen

#1 - Aug. 29, 2014, 1:52 p.m.

This was my first time ever being hacked and have been gaming since the commodore 64 days (I am over 50 years of age lol) and have tried to safegaurd my account in gw2 as well as other games (mmo/fps). I must apologize for I never have read forums until after the incident and submitted more than 1 cs ticket. While waiting for a response from cs, I did start reading the forums and have noticed most users that have been hacked have had their entire bank/inventory depleted. With me, only my gold went missing (guess it was a hacker that had a heart) One suggestion that I would like to see implemented is that in-game sent messages be activated along w a time stamp, not to be able to communicate with that person but to understand when the offense happened. I feel that the incident happened during a dungeon tour that usually nets me about 15-20+g per run, when run was completed my wallet showed 4 gold with 2 gold waiting for me at the TP. It seems to me that this offense happened while I was in-game. Another suggestion for change would be in the cs ticket replies. The replies from the 1st and follow up response (746775) seemed to be cold and demeaning at least to me. The reply from the 2nd cs ticket (814755) was more detailed and more supportive. However, that brings me to another question? If you have a legitimate player that has been hijacked, and anet knows who the gold was sent to, what happens to the user that received the ill gotten gains? I am not referring to the person that has my gold, but in general terms as I have come to grips with losing my gold and have moved on. It seems to me that whoever took my gold was probably a gold seller to begin with and the person that received the gold was probably a gold buyer. The only problem with this is that I was informed in both replies that the gold was sent from my ip. I have a hard time understanding this because the only person in my household is my wife who I assure you is computer illiterate, she would not understand the difference between Guild Wars 2 and Battlefield. I also inquired to tech support of my email provider and they also stated that no other ip has been on my email account, and I receive email from anet and have not had any removed since this incident. Oh, and btw, I have switched from email verification (this was in place during incident) to mobile authenticator which I would have done to begin with if it wouldnt have been so difficult to begin with. It took me 2 hours to finally figure out how to activate it. My suggestion to that would be for anet to sell to gw2 users a authenticator similar to the model that I used to use in WOW.

Gaile Gray

#2 - Aug. 30, 2014, 12:10 a.m.

This is a very long post, and I’m not sure I can answer you fully. I can tell you, though, that there is very little feasbility in the concept that we can simply access a thief’s account and pluck off the items to return them to a compromise victim.

RMT is very sophisticated. I’ve seen the trail of them stripping an account, passing it to associates, and then selling items or gold to other, innocent players in a matter of minutes. Therefore, the idea that we can simply “follow the gold” has very little merit.

We trace the items or gold, and we close any accounts associated with the actual compromise incident. But if there can be seven of eight generations of transfer in a matter of hours, and if players may not realize they’ve been hacked for many hours, even days or months, then clearly “following the gold” isn’t going to work. And to do so, to track down every person who might have received a single copper or a single plank of wood is going to impacts a whole lot of players who were not involved in the theft, and who purchased or traded without any knowledge that they were getting ill-gotten goods.

Now, speaking to your tickets specifically, there is a completely different element involved. The team has looked at the “gold trail” very carefully. And they also have investigated all incidents of access to your account. And in neither case can they see any disallowed access, nor any transactions that did not come from your location.

Your friend’s lack of computer skills notwithstanding, the trail leads back only to your location. And, with all due respect, that is where our careful, respectful investigation must end. Our agents have told you that we cannot help you. And from what I see in the game logs, I fully understand why, in the final review, they made that determination.