Twice in Three Weeks, Seriously?

#0 - July 22, 2010, 8:05 p.m.

So I consider myself a veteran of sorts of the various MMOs currently on the market, online gaming for almost 10 years now. I started playing WoW at the urging of my younger brother, and have currently been playing for around four months. What I honestly can't seem to understand is, how can someone who's played that long in other MMOs and never have any issues as far as account security is concerned come to WoW and be hacked twice in four months of playing time, twice in three weeks more specifically.

After the first time I, like most others, rushed to purchase an authenticator only to find out that the store is sold out. Luckily I was able to purchase one the next day, but now have to wait for it to get here. Unfortunately for me I don't have a smart phone, never really saw the use in them, so I have to wait for my snail mail to arrive. One week after my items are restored, authenticator is ordered, and things are fairly back to normal (dailies, randoms, raids, etc.) I am, yet again, hacked.

Could this possibly be a side effect of the Real ID system? The first incident occurred within days of this system being put in place. I'm just wondering, since Real ID uses our log in e-mail (brilliant idea btw) wouldn't that expose our e-mail to various hackers in the game? Just brainstorming/venting.

Whatever the case, this issue needs to be resolved now; not the week+ is generally seems to take. Also, the customer support line is useless if it's impossible to ever get in touch with someone, and when you finally do get through you get to listen to annoying music for an hour+. Maybe cut out customer support all together? I mean honestly, if I performed as bad as this company seems to when I worked in customer service, someone would have probably stabbed me in the face. Anyway, have a nice day gms, and good luck with all of these hackings going around; it seems no one is safe.

Orlyia

#31 - July 23, 2010, 9:36 a.m.

I know this is frustrating Drot, but truly, we keep your information safe on our side. There is only so much we can do about yours.

We do try our best to help players that find themselves in this situation. We offer many articles and tips on how to avoid this. We also developed the authenticator to give players another layer of security since even the most tech savvy can fall prey to a zero-day exploit.

Malware, compromised email accounts and phishes are the most popular ways this happens. Remember, if any other system has been used to log into game, these forums, or even Account Management - that system is also suspect.

Email accounts can be compromised and information plucked directly from them - or forwarded. Changing your email also has the benefit under Battle.net of changing your login information.

Phishes, some are very obvious - some are very slick...in fact, some our OUR emails that have been doctored to go to fake sites via redirected links. It always pays to pop open the internal routing header on any email to make sure it really did come from Blizzard. That will always tell you if it was Blizzard or someone else sending it to you.

Fake websites that have been sponsored so they come up in priority listings are also popular. This is not only fake WoW webpages, Armory - but also popular addons.

There are about a gazillion other ways these thieves will lie, cheat, scam and steal a player's account information if they can.