Authenticator added to account but not by us?

#0 - June 24, 2010, 6:50 p.m.

Just as the subject reads somehow an authenticator was added to my friends account without him being the one to add it. He would like to know how this was possible.He hasn't been on wow since march of this year and he went to try to activate his account yesterday and this is what he found when he logged in. It is asking him for an authenticator code and he never ordered or received an authenticator. He has tried calling blizzard but their hold queue is full and he can't even speak to a representative to try and remedy this. I checked to see when the last time he logged in was and it told me march 30th which sounds correct to him. He was a member of a few wow forums and one of them sent him an email stating that their database was hacked and that all the emails they had stored were compromised. He gets around 4 to 5 emails a day from idiot scammers who try to get his login information all the time but he never opens them and immediately deletes them so him being hacked is pretty much out of the question. I armoried his character and he has all his gear on in the armory so at least i know no one was able to login to his account. He has left emails with blizzard but they have yet to get back to him. He needs to get this issue resolved because he would like to start playing again. Any help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. he cannot even post in this forum because he has no active playing account so this is why I am doing it for him. Any help once again would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Orlyia

#14 - June 25, 2010, 12:56 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I am the owner of the account that is having this problem and i assure you I haven't been hacked I take way to many precautions when it comes to account security. the armory shows the last time a character has been updated which in this case was march 31st. Every time you log in and out your of wow your character gets updated in the armory Not just when you do something new. If you look at the bottom of the screen in your character page it tells you the last time the character was updated which = last login time. The account has been closed since march with no playing time left on it so if it was hacked they would have had to add game time to the account in order to get anything from it and since my armory still shows i have all my items I can assume they have not done that. Regardless of whether or not the account was hacked and how they did it is not the issue, the issue is getting blizzard to respond to the request for help. I still have yet to be able to reach anyone over the phone and no one has answered any emails or any posts. I know they are swamped with millions of customers but they should have more dedicated people working on these issues since from what I am seeing they seem to be coming up a whole lot. I have already setup a new email address to add to my account I just need to be able to log into the account to be able to change things. Look at the character I am talking about and you will see what I mean. The character name is Krazyone on Onyxia server a lvl 80 blood elf paladin.

For someone to have added an authenticator, that means they obtained your password and ID somehow. That is the quintessential definition of a compromise, whether or not they actually tampered with your characters yet.

In this case, this was added on 6/16 if that is at all helpful. They may have obtained your information weeks or even months ago. Doesn't look like there have been any damages, but you will want to look that over.

See if you can access this account now. Changing the email will also change your account ID is is a very good idea.

You may also want to look into getting an authenticator for your account. It's no substitute for good security habits, but it will help keep them out of your WoW account.

Blizzard Store
http://us.blizzard.com/store/

Mobile Authenticator
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=26109