I've been hacked twice in two days

#0 - June 14, 2010, 9:08 p.m.

Be careful with your security, it can happen to anyone.

After more than one year away from warcraft, I decided to try it again, I only installed it about 6 days ago. About 4 days ago my account was hacked and all my items were gone. Not a big deal, I'm going to be leveling and needing new gear anyway.

I update my Adobe reader, remove the key loggers and install Microsoft security essentials. I change all my passwords several times. I spent about 6-8 hours total learning about security flaws and key loggers.

Today I log in and now all my characters have been deleted. I've been playing for less than a week and I get hacked twice? I am not trying to blame Blizzard for me getting a key logger. What I do blame them for is a bad design. They could easily make it so that you need something more than a username and password to log into my account.

The authenticator was their answer, but how many people actually got it so far? If you tell me I should just buy an authenticator, you are right that would fix MY problem, so I can't be mad at blizzard. They obviously didn't develop the authenticator to get rich, they tried to improve security.

They need to be doing something to improve security which would be free, and automatic. Scammers aren't taking advantage of stupid people, and you shouldn't need to be a computer whiz to play WoW. Scammers are taking advantage of a poor design.

Malkorix

#6 - June 14, 2010, 9:57 p.m.

Q u o t e:

Yeah I replied in the other thread, I just wanted to put this in a new thread.

I don't know, I'm not a programmer and I wish I had a suggestion. But I do think this should be a pretty high priority for them. I'm not the only one having problems, there are thousands. There was a 10-14 day wait to get someone to look into item restoration.

I suppose I would be happy too if Blizzard hired some more customer service staff to shorten the wait, if they couldn't improve the security. The people they have are great but I think overwhelmed right now.

I completely understand where you're coming from, and this isn't something that we've ruled out entirely. On the other hand, there are limits to what we can do on our end to improve account security, and the ultimate responsibility for account security, by necessity, rests in our players' hands.

I've posted on this subject in the past, actually. Here's a link to the thread in question:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22048400200&postId=220463263841&sid=1#54

Q u o t e:
An authenticator is indeed an effective additional layer of security, and we've made the Mobile Authenticator free of charge for those who have eligible devices, while endeavoring to ensure that the Blizzard Authenticator is accessible to as many players as possible.

Ultimately, we must expect our players to take the necessary steps to protect themselves. It would be both inappropriate and intrusive for Blizzard Entertainment to intervene directly, not to mention potentially expose us to liability for any kind of intrusion on a player's system, not merely those related to World of Warcraft.

We're in the business of making video games. We try to craft the best experiences that we possibly can, and we hope that players the world over continue to enjoy them. That said, and while there are limited systems in place, we are not in the business of developing malware scanning or protection.

We realize that this is an extremely important topic though, and in addition to making Authenticators available, we also endeavor to help educate our players regarding the steps they can take to help protect themselves.