WoW Petopia Community

My account has been hacked and they have changed my password. but what is bugging me the most is that I'm the FOURTH member of my guild to be hacked and the THIRD in the last 6 months. It is like the hackers are working their way through.

I have come to the conclusion that WoW want us to be hacked so we will buy the flamin authenticator.
They are the ones making out accounts vulnerable by making us change are user names to our email addresses

As you can tell I am well ticked off. But can you blame me.
Anyone else think the same?

----end of rant---

God, and you're like...what, the 4th or 5th person from these forums to be hacked in a very short amount of time. It's a little worrisome.

Wishing you the best of luck getting your account back!

Thanks. Yeah it is worrisome. It shows that the blizzard security has loads of holes in it...too many for it to be accidental

I personally would recommend an authenticator to everyone. I purchased one as soon as I was able and I have never regretted that decision in the least. The security of having one is very reassuring.

There's a free version of the authenticator that can be installed onto cellphones. May I recommend you to get it?

Also, best of luck in getting your acc back, and if applicable, your stuff.

Yeah I guess that is the only answer...but i don't like being forced to buy things because blizzard cant protect their customers (i don't think my phone is compatible with the free one)...but on the plus side you get a cute pet.

Blaugh. I know how you feel. I went five years and wasn't hacked once, not until they integrated everyone into the battle.net design. I've been hacked TWICE since then, and the only questionable thing I've done was use Bit Torrent.

i still think theres a large amount of 'ive been hacked' cases around this site (no offence to the site) im still thinking that theres a link on here somewhere that most of use has clicked and theres either a banner or a hiding code somewhere on it

im starting to think about removing my links though the ads aint wow related so its a less chance its from my da atleast

i still feel really bad for everyone getting hacked i hope the best for you call blizz! they maybe idiots when they allow gold sellers and hackers abuse their games but we all know they are trying their best for us

Dude, there's a new version of mobile authenticator that works with almost all phones! check it out!

(Tis' the US version, I'm assuming that where you're at.)
https://us.battle.net/account/support/m ... wnload.xml

No dice on that, Kaarii. I was hacked before the site changed over to it's current format, and before I was really heavily involved.

Having an authenticator is nice peace of mind and worth the expense.

As for Blizzard condoning hacking, yeah, the conspiratorial part of me thinks there's something up. I know two people who had quit WoW, and I noticed that their non-active accounts were suddenly on-line and the characters would just stay in one zone (Sholazar, mining). As one of the players is a RL friend, we phoned him and let him know, the other we have contact with on Facebook and let him know.

Both players got their accounts back, but both players also wound up re-subbing to the game. When they called Customer Support they flogged the Authenticator and informed the players they the accounts must be properly active in order to have them restored. So basically the players needed to re-sub to get their accounts back. Now both are playing again.
Seems pretty suspicious to me really. That is, to the conspiratorial part of my mind.

this is teh only wow froum i am a memeber of at the moment with suck high 'hacking' thats why i think there might be a link somewhere or something for i know i probs clicked it to but since i havent been that active ill find out later ive been hakced to D:

I think the forums here are pretty safe. *Laughs* I think there are just a lot of way's that things can go wrong. I STILL don't know how they got ahold of my e-mail information and password. OR my WoW password, for that matter, especially this last time, when I hadn't logged on in over two weeks. Soooo, how are you supposed to get my information, when I hadn't used it for one, and regularly clear my directory and all similar information for another?

Sorry to hear you got hacked. I think I'd freak.

How do hackers do it, does a user have to visit a questionable link or are there other ways? I don't go to any strange links/websites, but even MMO got hacked not long ago (it was indirectly affected by a virus or something), and I do visit that. I've seen a LOT of hacked toons in game, and it's getting really worrisome.

There are many different ways an account can be compromised. The account holder can give away their account information, mistakenly believing they're giving it to Blizzard. Usually this sort of compromise begins with you receiving an email or a whisper in-game telling you that your account is under investigation for suspicion of selling gold or being sold or traded, and directing you to "confirm" the the account is yours by visiting a particular website. These are, uniformly and without exception, bogus. Blizzard will never EVER ask your for your password. They don't need it, it does them no good to have it. That's why their password reset function randomly generates you a new password.

To combat this, learn how to open up the full headers on whichever email provider you use. A "phishing" email may look like it really comes from Blizzard, but the full headers will show the true story - that the "From" address has been "spoofed," and that the email actually comes from some random internet provider. In-game, know that a Blizzard official will always, ALWAYS have a blue Blizzard logo beside their name when they whisper you, and the chat will take place in its own special chat window. For any other "phishing" whispers, right-click the whispering name and choose the "Report Spam" function. This puts that entire account on ignore until you log out, and alerts Blizzard to the spamming without your having to submit a GM ticket. Plus...Blizzard will never tell you if you're being investigated for something. They will suspend/ban your account and let you discuss the matter with Account Administration after the fact, no warning.

Other than that, keyloggers can get onto your computer from those banner ads on some websites. This isn't the fault of the website owner, as they usually have little if any control what ads get put up on the space they lease to the advertising company. Firefox with the NoScript and AdBlocker Plus addons, plus keeping your Java and Flash programs updated, will help cut down on those potential nasties. Get a good antivirus program on your machine, run it, keep it updated. Do periodic scans with a malware-specific detector like MalwareBytes.

And then there's our leetle friend the Authenticator. No, Blizzard does not make profit off these little guys. They sell them at cost, because they don't want you to have to spend the week it currently takes waiting for an Account Specialist to go through allll the logs and get your stuff back and put your characters back on their proper realms. Blizzard wants you to play and be happy. No other company offers this level of account security, and no other MMO company does restorations for free. Some don't do them at all, some do them for a fee. I'd say we WoW-heads have it pretty good.

Client-side account security is the responsibility of the player. That's us. Server-side account security is the responsibility of Blizzard...and believe me, we'd know if Blizzard had been compromised. US Federal law requires that we be notified of any compromise on their part because they have our billing information for the subscriptions.

I'm also including a link here to the Account Compromise Information Center on the official Blizzard website. It's chock-full of good advice about what to do if the unthinkable happens and you get compromised. Here's the link: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article. ... leId=30796

Hope this helps give some useful information and perhaps some insight into how these things can happen.

Hm speaking from experience the day my net went down my account was hacked. The idiot cleared most of the Guild bank (Not all of it bizzarely, I'm the guild leader), all my bank and made me wear Wildheart gear which I keep for being a gorgeous set and proceeded to kill me repeatedly in Sholazer. Balance Druids are hard for goldsellers to control clearly. They looted all my Horde Hellscream charras but ignored my allies and other servers Oo

I immediately got an email saying my account showed suspious activity and was temporay blocked and managed to speak to a very helpful GM on my mother's account who led onto a very awesome GM when my account came back. Everything that was stolen spammed up my mailbox but it was absolutely everything that got swiped with Aria getting her crap and GB crap, my alts getting their own crap individually. My account's auto billing was temp canceled to stop the hacker getting at them on the day it happened, took a couple days to getting Account Support to get that sorted and was the only downside to the whole fisaco, I wasn't informed it had been stopped and quite honestly never occured to me to look. Oh and my Egg glitched but that was it.

I have no idea how the swines got my details, this was before Battle.net intergration and the Authenticator which Lurky zealously guards so I admit this was before more security measures came into place. Personally though I could not have asked for a better service and the sheer relief of getting everything abck to normal, getting to distract a GM from his job talking about Lurky just made my day after getting back.

Just throwing in my "I got hacked" tales for the curious.

Hanuremeap wrote:Thanks. Yeah it is worrisome. It shows that the blizzard security has loads of holes in it...too many for it to be accidental

The biggest hole in the security is the user himself. ;) As far as I know, most successful hacks are due to the account owner giving the hackers the info thinking they're talking to a Blizz employee, or some keylogger hidden in the user's computer.

I got hacked the first time last Autumn due to a keylogger (which I have no idea where it came from). One morning I found that I couldn't log in at all and a quick Armory check showed that my main was naked. So a quick virus check and a password reset later I managed to get my account back. Unfortunately the buggers had deleted all but one of my characters and when I logged in, I found myself falling to my death. :P A couple of days went by before I got all my toons and items back. As an extra I got to keep the stacks of blue gems, Saronite and Titanium that were left into my main's bags.

I got the authenticator for Christmas and find it wonderfully calming to know that the most important key to my account follows me everywhere attached to my keys. Compared to what we're paying monthly to play the game at all, the authenticator is pretty damn cheap even if you decide to get the real thing and not an app to your phone.

Tahlian wrote:No, Blizzard does not make profit off these little guys. They sell them at cost, because they don't want you to have to spend the week it currently takes waiting for an Account Specialist to go through allll the logs and get your stuff back and put your characters back on their proper realms. Blizzard wants you to play and be happy. No other company offers this level of account security, and no other MMO company does restorations for free. Some don't do them at all, some do them for a fee. I'd say we WoW-heads have it pretty good.

Client-side account security is the responsibility of the player. That's us. Server-side account security is the responsibility of Blizzard...and believe me, we'd know if Blizzard had been compromised. US Federal law requires that we be notified of any compromise on their part because they have our billing information for the subscriptions.

Just wanted to reiterate this point because I'm in complete agreement with you there Tahlian. Well said.

Tahlian wrote:Other than that, keyloggers can get onto your computer from those banner ads on some websites. This isn't the fault of the website owner, as they usually have little if any control what ads get put up on the space they lease to the advertising company. Firefox with the NoScript and AdBlocker Plus addons, plus keeping your Java and Flash programs updated, will help cut down on those potential nasties. Get a good antivirus program on your machine, run it, keep it updated. Do periodic scans with a malware-specific detector like MalwareBytes.

That is good advise, right there. I would also add that you keep your Windows updated. Open the Control Panel, click on Automatic Updates(for XP) or Windows Updates(for Vista and 7) and set it to Install updates automatically. That, along with Tahlian's advise, has kept my WoW account safe for four years now, and my PC in general for much longer then that.

Wanted to throw in my one-cents worth. A computer-geeky friend of mine recommended I use a Firefox add-on called "Web of Trust" since I tend to go off on very random internet safaris.
It has kept me out of a lot of sites that looked innocuous enough, but apparently were quite dangerous.