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Blizzard considering making Authenticators mandatory.
Bob_Blawblaw
Member Posts: 1,278
http://www.wow.com/2010/01/08/blizzard-giving-serious-consideration-to-mandatory-authenticator/
I have mixed feelings about this, if only because I play WoW on multiple machines, and I don't have a WiFi connection near one of them (I'd go with the free iPod Touch App version of the Authenticator).
My opinion, if they're mandatory, they need to come in the box, or Blizz needs to make sure we all have them for free somehow.
Still, it would kill account hacking. Which is a good thing.
Comments
Well, if they also provide the authenticator for free, then maybe.. expecting people to use iphone apps is something else, what for instance, would you do if you didnt have a mobile phone that could do that ?
my guess is that it would never happen, because they'd lose too many subs if they did.
Won't happen, will cost blizzard millions to send every one a physical authenticator, and what happens when some one buys a digtial download they'll have to wait 7 days for an authenticator to arrive in the post?
logistically & financially it does not make good business sense and there would be a lot of pissed of post men/women =D
No reason there could not be a software authenticator after all that's all the iphone app is. I think some MMO's already use such a system.
If they are seriously considering it being mandatory, I think this is the only logical answer.
well, just anti-virus itself is probably not enough, i use 3 seperate programs to protect my systems, avg for antivirus, spybot s&d and zonealarm, all freebies ..
as for people not giving out account information, well, phishing attempts will no doubt get more advanced/believeable as time goes on, so the only thing to do, is to never respond to emails purportedly from companies querying account activity/status etc. inevitably people will get conned into disclosing account information though...
They could put one in every Cataclysm box for a start,this wouldn't surprise me.I've also read that Square Enix is giving some serious thought into requiring authenticators for FFXIV.
The initial money spent is pennies compared to time saved not having to deal with all these hacked accounts!
What do you think it will cost companies like Blizzard now? In support staff and all. Dealing with hacked accounts!
The costs of physical authenticators is peanuts compaired to having to have a large amount of support personel dealing with hacked account issues.
They will earn it back in no time!
I find this funny, many people including myself as bitched and moaned that Battle.net is less secure, hell doesnt even take someone thats computer savy to see simply ones like your email being your username.
If they make a authenticator mandatory as others said, if it came in the cata box then i wouldnt have a issue with it, what i do have a issue with is paying extra money for security flaws in their system(i havnt got hacked FYI)
Excuse me? Who's system?
Not blizzard's. If anything this is a result of the playerbase clearly not being able to keep their accounts secure or abusing it themselves. (+the gold community gunning for it obviously)
As a longtime authenticator user, this can only be a win-win. Good for Blizz....good for us users.
Even though I have an authenticator already, i say go ahead and toss one in every Cat box. Or maybe include a code in the box that can be redeemed for an authenticator. It's not like the average WoW player is going to scoff at an extra $5. The company I work for buys authenticators for business use, and they are far more expensive than what Blizz charges.
For the 'worried' folks, don't worry. The authenticators are not limited to one machine, or even one account.
One thing I'd like to see, is the replacement of the login password box with a passcode box. If each passcode truly expires after use, then i'd think it would be plenty secure.
Edit: OMG....for the peeps cryin' about the cost....gimme a break. If you quit the game over $5, then you didn't like the game anyways. I don't believe the cost would have any impact on subs.
I wouldn't say a username being an email address is a security flaw, my steam account had to have an email as a username and I probably got £400 worth of software on there, various online store have to use an email as a login name.. its common practice. And touch wood in the 12 years or so I have shopped online etc I have not been hacked.
Stil comes down the user protecting their data.
The issue is only an issue when they use the same password for their email address and logins.. which many do.
But at the end of the day the best solution is not to get hacked. simples.
its a good idea but only if its free . it would be very cheeky for them to make a player pay for this . perhaps they could include the authenticator with cataclysm ?
Not possible, part of their sales are from digital copies, and unless they have developed some kind of instant transportation device (with cheap costs), this idea is currently insane, a suicide for a MMO, or in the case of World of Warcraft, at least a considerable hit, that would be not selling Cataclysm digitally.
Shipping costs would be insane, for example, for me the shipping costs are the only reason I haven't acquired Blizzard's authenticator along with a lot of more stuff from them (T-shirts, calendars, regular TCG boosters), also it being the reason I purchase digital versions of games only (except for Guild Wars CEs, which I gladly paid around $120 each with shipping and taxes at their time of release).
Well, this would be all false if Blizzard only wants players from a few select countries (effectively cutting off a lot of players), which I strongly doubt.
Not possible, part of their sales are from digital copies, and unless they have developed some kind of instant transportation device, this idea is currently insane, a suicide for a MMO, or in the case of World of Warcraft, at least a considerable hit, that would be not selling Cataclysm digitally.
Shipping costs would be insane.
But even if you DL the expansion, digital users have to register an account just like everyone else. So what's so hard about having them pay shipping and handling for authenticators to be sent to them by snail mail? If they could get a majority of their users to understand and use such a system, it would be a RMT company's nightmare. I just hope the practice catches on for the rest of the MMO industry.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
Not possible, part of their sales are from digital copies, and unless they have developed some kind of instant transportation device, this idea is currently insane, a suicide for a MMO, or in the case of World of Warcraft, at least a considerable hit, that would be not selling Cataclysm digitally.
Shipping costs would be insane.
But even if you DL the expansion, digital users have to register an account just like everyone else. So what's so hard about having them pay shipping and handling for authenticators to be sent to them by snail mail? If they could get a majority of their users to understand and use such a system, it would be a RMT company's nightmare. I just hope the practice catches on for the rest of the MMO industry.
This small device that costs $7 can reach up to $30 or more to be shipped to certain countries. I understand the potentials of the authenticator's increased security, but I doubt Blizzard would pay this for each WoW account (huge costs and efforts), much less expect every single player not currently living in the US to face this cost to continue playing their game.
Not possible, part of their sales are from digital copies, and unless they have developed some kind of instant transportation device (with cheap costs), this idea is currently insane, a suicide for a MMO, or in the case of World of Warcraft, at least a considerable hit, that would be not selling Cataclysm digitally.
Shipping costs would be insane, for example, for me the shipping costs are the only reason I haven't acquired Blizzard's authenticator along with a lot of more stuff from them (T-shirts, calendars, regular TCG boosters), also it being the reason I purchase digital versions of games only (except for Guild Wars CEs, which I gladly paid around $120 each with shipping and taxes at their time of release).
Well, this would be all false if Blizzard only wants players from a few select countries (effectively cutting off a lot of players), which I strongly doubt.
Apparently in the U.S. anyway, they are not charging for shipping. $6.50 with no shipping is not too bad at all. Although I would suggest using your phone if you have a phone capable of running the software.
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
The same people crying about a single time fee of 7 dollars are the same ones who cry when they get key logged that it takes a month sometimes to get all your gear back.Its a stupid argument really.
Anyone who downloads add on's for their UI and invest's any significant time with raiding pvp or whatever should not cry about a one time fee of 7 dollars.
Flame me if you will.I could care less.They probably feel like it makes more sense making the authenticator mandatory then having to fight with key loggers and gold spammers who end up hacking the accounts of the people who are lazy enough to buy gold instead of farm it.
Just my opinion.
Also to the people asking what about digital copies.It doesn't matter.You have an account name.You go to Wow.com/account and sign in and can set up an authenticator where you would make any other subscription/race/faction changes to any active wow account im pretty sure.Does not matter if its a digital download or not.The authenticator is set to your account not to a specific version of the game.The only thing you have to worry about after getting an authenticator is some key logger posting on your name on the wow forums.The authenticator blocks anyone from
A) Logging into your World of Warcraft account without the specific 6 digit code the authenticator gives you when you press the button.
Not trying to sound harsh to the people complaining about this really..Im trying to give my reasons why i think the one time fee of 7 dollars(free shipping in the U.S) pays for itself really considering all the crap you avoid just from having an authenticator associated to your account..
Later all
I'm hoping MMOs to be released take this idea on board as well and ship them with the game from the start.
Not possible, part of their sales are from digital copies, and unless they have developed some kind of instant transportation device, this idea is currently insane, a suicide for a MMO, or in the case of World of Warcraft, at least a considerable hit, that would be not selling Cataclysm digitally.
Shipping costs would be insane.
But even if you DL the expansion, digital users have to register an account just like everyone else. So what's so hard about having them pay shipping and handling for authenticators to be sent to them by snail mail? If they could get a majority of their users to understand and use such a system, it would be a RMT company's nightmare. I just hope the practice catches on for the rest of the MMO industry.
This small device that costs $7 can reach up to $30 or more to be shipped to certain countries. I understand the potentials of the authenticator's increased security, but I doubt Blizzard would pay this for each WoW account (huge costs and efforts), much less expect every single player not currently living in the US to face this cost to continue playing their game.
They *might* include it in the Wotlk box, making Wotlk 'mandatory'
That said,what seems more likely to me is that they might opt to only help recover accounts *if* you have an authenticator (eg when you wouldn't lose them in the first place), and otherwise you get stuck with the 'care package' they just introduced.
Wait till it happens to you. I have an anti-virus package, it's updated and I ran scans before and after having my account hacked and never found any viruses, keyloggers or any other malware. I don't buy gold and I don't fall for e-mail scams. Only 2 people knew my account information other than me and neither of them had used my account in months prior to my account being hacked and neither of their own accounts were hacked so obviously they didn't have key loggers on their PC's or they would have been hit as well.
The occurrence of hacks have been rising exponentially lately which indicates that something is going on here besides just your basic stupidity. I'm not sure how the accounts are being compromised, but they are being compromised. I've had my account since beta and only recently did it get hit and nothing has changed in all that time. On top of that, whomever did it was a professional. They cleaned out everything on my account and the guild bank and were using the account to spam gold selling messages within an hour of taking over my account which got my account banned. I know this because my password was changed 3 times over the course of like 10 minutes prior to all this happening so that even if I had caught them in the act, I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. By the time I had contacted Blizzard, they already knew what had happened and had started the process to recover my stuff. They never asked me a thing, they just recovered it all.
Blizzard is well aware that something is going on for suddenly after 5 years to be a huge upswing of hacked accounts. No, I can't prove that I didn't cause my account information to be compromised, but I have found no evidence that it was indeed me that caused it to be compromised. I'm sure you think I'm an idiot and just don't know what the hell I'm doing. You'll change your mind when it happens to you.
The only thing that I could come up with as to how my account information was compromised is that I used the same user-id and password for WoW that I used for a couple other WoW related websites, including this one. My guess is that although I believe that WoW's login information is very secure, I suspect one of the other websites that had my account information was compromised and they tried to use that information to get into my WoW acount and lo and behold it worked. If anyone reading this is using your WoW user-id and password combination for ANYTHING other than WoW I suggest you change your WoW password to something unique that you don't use anywhere else. All it would take would be for someone to get a list of user-id's and passwords to some random WoW related website and have them start trying them in WoW. I didn't think about this until after my account was hacked and now I use a unique password for WoW only.
Excuse me? Who's system?
Not blizzard's. If anything this is a result of the playerbase clearly not being able to keep their accounts secure or abusing it themselves. (+the gold community gunning for it obviously)
More than likely it's costing Blizzard money because people getting hacked and then go crying to Blizzard to do something about it which means they need to spend man hours investigating all of these accounts.
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I used the same user-id and password for WoW that I used for a couple other WoW related websites, including this one.
No it won't happen to me...
I hate to break it to you but using the same password for an important site and a useless forum is a bit moronic.Once you think about it you realize that casual forums and sites like this one don't have the resources to protect themselves and get hacked at the source all the time. Once they hack a forum they either have the passwords for just about everyone (by cracking the passwords or by interjecting a small code that intercepts it when you log into the forum...
So don't do it. Have one set of secure passwords and one that is a throwaway useless for forums and etc.
I used the same user-id and password for WoW that I used for a couple other WoW related websites, including this one.
No it won't happen to me...
I hate to break it to you but using the same password for an important site and a useless forum is a bit moronic.Once you think about it you realize that casual forums and sites like this one don't have the resources to protect themselves and get hacked at the source all the time. Once they hack a forum they either have the passwords for just about everyone (by cracking the passwords or by interjecting a small code that intercepts it when you log into the forum...
So don't do it. Have one set of secure passwords and one that is a throwaway useless for forums and etc.
Hindsight is 20/20. Yeah, now I recognize that it wasn't the smartest thing to do, but how many people use the same user-id and passwords for lots of things? So many places ask you to create a user-id and password, if you made every one of them unique you would never be able to remember them all. So alot of people use the same user-id and password combination for lots of things, I'm not the only one to do that and I don't really think it's moronic.
And lets be clear here that I don't know for sure that's what happened, I'm speculating because I can't come up with any other plausible explanation. Perhaps that's not what happened at all, I mean it is quite a leap of faith to think that the user-id and password combination used for a WoW website would be the same as their WoW account info, so I don't think I was being blatantly careless in making them the same.
Like I said, when it happens to you you'll change your tune, just like so many others have. I used to think I was one of those people that wouldn't get hacked. Most people who haven't been hacked believe they are immune to it...right up till the day it happens to them.
You gotsa pick some secure values, for example I picked:
email: axelman322x@yahoo.com
with values so obscure I cannot possibly be hacked. On the downside it takes a lot of trials to log in an getting everything right.
as long as they dont charge 50$ for shipping a keyring to Canada, i wont bother. I'm not joking, last year i tried to order one and it was 50$ to ship a 50 gram keyring item to Canada !
I used the same user-id and password for WoW that I used for a couple other WoW related websites, including this one.
No it won't happen to me...
I hate to break it to you but using the same password for an important site and a useless forum is a bit moronic.Once you think about it you realize that casual forums and sites like this one don't have the resources to protect themselves and get hacked at the source all the time. Once they hack a forum they either have the passwords for just about everyone (by cracking the passwords or by interjecting a small code that intercepts it when you log into the forum...
So don't do it. Have one set of secure passwords and one that is a throwaway useless for forums and etc.
Well, hacking isn't just guessing a Battle Net account password... It may come from a trojan in your computer, from a trojan on one of your trusted users' computer, from a mod, from someone who has hacked your email account (he can change your password this way without you even noticing btw), ect, ect... It just exploits your weakest link, and it may not be your computer or your password(s).
Well, ok if somebody is the white knight of security and is certain never to be hacked, good for him... but the common user will be :P Everybody knows somebody who's WoW account got hacked.
I'm one of those who believe the authenticator should be mandatory.