Wave of account hacking after battlenet merge

#0 - July 12, 2009, 3:46 p.m.

i have been hearing quite alot of the "i merged my wow account to a battlenet account and it was hacked for the first time the next day" from a number of people over the weekend.

and considering that, friday night, 6/10 people in my ulduar 10 group disconnected and couldn't log back in untill they merged into battlenet accounts, and a good number of the people that i know also did the account merge into battlenet this weekend, whom encountered the same problem, because they could not log in without doing so.

...bringing me back to the first two lines of my post, i heard a large ammount of "my account got hacked right after i merged it into a battlenet account" ...so...

is there a wave of account hacking going on with people who have merged into a battlenet account, or am i just being paranoid? considering that, to my knowledge, merging into a battlenet account will be mandatory to play blizzard games, this information is very disturbing.

a few replies with "yeah, it happened to me / my friend" would be nice, and if so, a blue post following it explaining what is going on / what actions are being taken would be nicer. = )

Aredek

#12 - July 12, 2009, 7:40 p.m.

To be perfectly honest, I, personally, have not seen an increase in the frequency of accounts reported as compromised since the introduction of Battle.net accounts. I believe Battle.net accounts are brought into the discussion most commonly because malicious parties may merge World of Warcraft accounts that have not already been merged -- after the account was already compromised.

To dispel any myths or rumors: there is no security flaw in the Battle.net creation process which results in compromised accounts.

Aredek

#28 - July 12, 2009, 9:59 p.m.

I completely understand your concern and do not fault you for believing that the security flaw originates with Battle.net, but this is not case. I realize that my words can easily be looked upon as defensive and may even be discarded as such, but I assure you that our goal is not to dance around the subject or place fault on our customers. We would much rather help resolve the issue to get you back into the game knowing that you have shored up the security issue. After all, the only thing worse than watching one of our customers go through this once is seeing a customer go through this twice (or more) because they were unable to identify and resolve the lapse in their personal security.

We want you to enjoy your experience within the World of Warcraft and recognize that there is little more devastating to that enjoyment than to see one's account compromised. We have employees working around the clock to assist our customers with issues pertaining to compromised account. We're happy to provide this service and will continue to do so indefinitely with the best interest of our players in mind. Remember, our success depends entirely upon your enjoyment of our product.

We will do everything in our power to reduce or eliminate the number of compromised account, but we cannot fight this battle alone -- we need your careful attention to account security. I, humbly, request that you take the steps necessary to secure your computer, secure your registered e-mail address, and practice safe browsing and internet habits.