Account suspended

#0 - Aug. 17, 2010, 12:38 p.m.
Blizzard Post
I am the father of an autistic child and I provide him with this account. His account was suspended apparently for buying/selling gold. He does not have a checking/saving account or any credit/debit cards. He is the only person who uses this account and he does not have access to the email account used to manage his game account. It would not be possible for him to buy or sell game items for real world currency. Here is a portion of the suspension notice.

Q u o t e:
Account Name: WOW1

Account Action: 3 hour suspension and password reset
Reason for Action: In-Game Chat Policy Violation - Advertisement and Spamming

This suspension happened because one or more characters on the account were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for ""real-world"" currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy
.


I reviewed his actions with him and found that he had taken a level 1 Alliance character into Orgrimar. It would appear that someone concluded that only gold sellers could take an "enemy" level 1 character into a Capital city and only for the purpose of delivering gold.

My questions: Is it a violation of rules to take low level characters into "enemy territory." ? At any time a low level character is found to be in an enemy capital city are the GM's expected to conclude that the purpose is to sell gold?

#1 - Aug. 17, 2010, 12:48 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Well, this was for spam.

Exactly what variety I cannot say at the moment since this is a realm with 24 maintenance, but typically it's gold spam - this is a hallmark of a compromised account.

Unless he was spamming something else and got reported - I'd go forward with the compromise theory at the moment and just verify the security of the system he plays on and the email account. Always a good thing to do anyway :)

Once this maintenance period is over, we can see a bit more.

This sticky may prove useful.

Account Compromise Info Center
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14318909866&sid=1

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/browse.xml?f=c:6

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