Account hacked and resolved but confused

#0 - Oct. 3, 2010, 5:06 a.m.
Blizzard Post
First off I have to say that the customer support for Blizzard is top notch. Seriously you guys rock. Now on to the story of what happened today, and why I am concerned/confused.

Two months ago I canceled my account to take a break for school, because I lack self control. Well today I get an email from a friend of mine wondering if I had started playing again, because my paladin was currently running Black Temple. Of course all of you could imagine my shock to this. I quickly log in and then I am logged out. Thankfully my password was the same and I was able to quickly change it and log in. I see that all of my characters have been stripped and my paladin has been respect and standing outside of BT. All just very odd.

I have now scanned all of my computers and found nothing. I have gone and changed ALL of my passwords and advised my wife to do the same. Blizzard in their awesomeness came through and fixed everything in a matter of hours.

So here are my questions. How? Why now? I have been away from the game for 2 months and it seems like the hackers were waiting a period of time to access my account. What truly makes me concerned is that people could have their accounts compromised and not even know it.

Also my friends brother had the same thing happen to his account while he was taking a break.

Tell me what you think because this is really odd, but took a fare amount of planning to pull off.

Oh the good news is I got one month free because they used a referral bonus or something of the sort.
#1 - Oct. 3, 2010, 5:12 a.m.
Blizzard Post
It's possible, Tehtodd, that they held on to your information to use at a later date. This is why we always encourage players to keep their security up to date and regularly change their passwords.

If you have not done so already, I highly reccommend reviewing our Account Security Awareness page and possibly picking up an Authenticator. The extra layer of security can help set your mind at ease, especially if you decide to take a break. >^.^<

Account Hacked? Security Issue? Look Here!
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=24702231244&sid=1

Battle.net Account Security Awareness
http://us.battle.net/security/

Account and Computer Security
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/30794

Battle.net Authenticator
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24986