#25 - May 21, 2010, 7:31 p.m.
Q u o t e:
thats kinda why Im here making a stink..
Unfortunately, by doing so you do a disservice to yourself and others by diverting attention away from awareness and personal system security. Were there a breach of our security, frankly, we would have substantially larger issues than compromised accounts. While extremely upsetting and unfortunate, even were something of that nature to occur, it would be correctable. If our systems were breached, there is financial information to consider, and the cost in intellectual property alone would be staggering.
Needless to say, extremely tight security is very much in our best interest. As I stated elsewhere:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25001940455&pageNo=2&sid=1#30 Q u o t e:
When something like this occurs, it's perfectly natural to look for answers and try to find some causality. That's actually not only reasonable, but by far the best and most preferable course of action. I'm delighted to hear that you make active use of well regarded malware scans, but I also feel compelled to remind you of a couple things.
The unfortunate truth is that it doesn't matter how effective your system security is if:
* You've ever provided your account information to another person.
* You fell prey to a phishing scam.
* You've ever logged in from a potentially unsecured or infected system.
There's more than one method of ingress for malicious account thieves, I'm afraid. Merely because you haven't found a keylogger, is not indicative of a security issue on our end.
As of this moment, I can confidently state that our systems remain secure. I would remind those reading that there is more at stake in our security measures than player accounts (though that information is crucially important). We also have all kinds of our own data and creative properties to protect, that are vital to the existence of Blizzard Entertainment.
Approaching the situation logically and bluntly: those who engage in these practices have a much easier time getting account information directly from our customers - ultimately a cheaper and better course of action for them. Where keyloggers and trojans fail, they fall back on social engineering and phishing. I'm sure that if those measures were no longer as effective, that they'd devise new ways to get at your accounts.
That's one of the reasons why we made the Blizzard Authenticator and Mobile Authenticator available, as well invested effort in helping to educate our players regarding account security:
Account Hacked? Security Issue? Look Here!
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24702231244&sid=1
Moving forward, and within the bounds of appropriate responsibility, we will continue to examine new and better methods to help protect and educate our players.
Q u o t e:
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth!"
Agreed! Unthinking defiance of rationality can be disastrous as well though - and has spawned many a conspiracy theory based on plausibilities of molecular thinness.
