The idea that Blizzard screws up their users accounts to sell more authenticators, is as likely as Blizzard paying users to claim their accounts got compromised, and having them shout afterwards "after I had my authenticator, I was never hacked again".
Actually...
I think they just scew up their user accounts because of a mixture of incompetance and general laziness with regards to doing things in a proper and secure manner.
Good catch by the earlier poster, by the way - the OP claims this happened "last week" but includes a screenshot of the 3.3.5 June client build.
How Not To Get Hacked
Create an email address and password that are ONLY used for your Battle.net account. Google Mail (GMail) is your friend - you can make a new account for free, and set it up to forward everything to your regular email, so you don't have to check a bunch of different inboxes. I have three active Battle.net accounts, each with its own unique email address, and since the day they were set up I have never received a single piece of mail to any of them that was not bona fide Blizzard information. I don't use those emails anywhere else - not for Curse, not for WowInterface, not for MMORPG.COM, nowhere. They only exist to log me in to Battle.net. (Instead of GMail you can also use an inexpensive "vanity domain" with mail forwarding enabled, and create all the "accounts" you want.)
Install and use a high quality lightweight antivirus package on your PC. I don't mean hideous bloatware like Norton or McAfee - I mean something like Avira. With up-to-date protection, you can play without worrying about Trojan links, keyloggers and other beasties.
If possible, live behind an inexpensivefirewall routerrather than putting your computer "naked" on the Internet.
Don't share your account. If you use more than one PC to play WoW, take the above steps on each of them. I'm not a "gold buyer" but of course many people are - if you do buy gold, for God's sake don't choose "Express Option" or whatever they call it, where you give them your account and password and they log in and get the gold for you. You will be hacked!
Don't listen to superstitious nonsense from idiots. When some genius in Trade says "I don't want to be hacked so I don't use any addons" - just ignore him. Game addons don't hack you, the Curse Client doesn't hack you. Carbonite doesn't hack you - and yes, Virginia, GearScore doesn't hack you! Believing superstitious nonsense creates a false sense of security and leaves you vulnerable to real hacks. Follow the steps above and enjoy the game.
Adam i feel for you i really do... i had my account (had since launch) and never EVER got hacked.
Only when we moved over to battlenet did my account get hacked. And like many others before me they never bought gold, never paid for leveling services or being duped by emails
Heres a thing i will put out there.
Just so you sheep all buy more and more protection... Why hasnt gamers tried to sue BLIZZARD for not properly protecting THEIR servers.
FACT. Blizzard have ALL your details
FACT. You now need to pay for an authentictor WHY?? WHY isnt their logon process secure.
Lol! Hacks are client side. I like how so many posting are "IT Security Experts."
Fact is, nobody wants to feel like a sucker. It's not Blizz's responsibility to keep you from getting hacked. It's yours. Responsibility.
If I was a poor guy in the third world, and I saw 10-odd million people with stuff I could steal and sell, I could easily assume 10-20 percent of them don't know how to protect themselves and create bots and mass phish mails to check.
Kinda like folks who leave a door or window unlocked and get robbed. But of course, it's not their fault.
As mentioned earlier, if the Blizz servers were compromised, it would be credit card info they would go after.
Lol! Hacks are client side. I like how so many posting are "IT Security Experts."
Fact is, nobody wants to feel like a sucker. It's not Blizz's responsibility to keep you from getting hacked. It's yours. Responsibility.
If I was a poor guy in the third world, and I saw 10-odd million people with stuff I could steal and sell, I could easily assume 10-20 percent of them don't know how to protect themselves and create bots and mass phish mails to check.
Kinda like folks who leave a door or window unlocked and get robbed. But of course, it's not their fault.
As mentioned earlier, if the Blizz servers were compromised, it would be credit card info they would go after.
As mentioned earlier, if it were client side, their bank accounts would be hacked, not their WoW account.
Actually, Blizzard is responsible. maybe not wholy, but they are in part responsible.
It's Blizzard's responsibility to ensure that their end of the system is secure, and additionally to ensure that it is as simple as possible for users to do their part in keeping their account info secure.
Blizzard is not living up to these responsibilities.
How is blizzard not living up to these "responsibilities"?
How can blizzard stop people from clicking on phishing emails? How can they prevent people from giving out their account information when they get "accepted in beta"? How can they prevent people from using the same username/password on every message forum in the world?
A company, any company, cannot stop end users from being their own worst enemies when it comes to account security.
Blizzard has made serveral secondary account security tools available. Many for free, but people still do not put them to use (see original posters).
Blizzard has put up several announcements, login screen tips, forum posts and many other articles about account security, but people still do not listen.
Yes the responsibility is on the user to keep their information safe. Blizzard can't babysit 12 million people.
I have the same problem, though I dont plan to buy a authenticatior. Here is the funny part, my account has been inactive for almost half a year but only 3-4 months ago a authintification key was registered to my account.
I kept getting emails from blizzard warning me about "me" trying to sell my account. So they suspended my account....wait isnt it deactivated? WHAT THE HELL?!
I just want to know is it blizzard whos #%$@ing up or did some retard spend $6 to keep me out of my inactive account?
I have the same problem, though I dont plan to buy a authenticatior. Here is the funny part, my account has been inactive for almost half a year but only 3-4 months ago a authintification key was registered to my account.
I kept getting emails from blizzard warning me about "me" trying to sell my account. So they suspended my account....wait isnt it deactivated? WHAT THE HELL?!
I just want to know is it blizzard whos #%$@ing up or did some retard spend $6 to keep me out of my inactive account?
Those emails from Blizzard......they weren't from Blizzard. My suspicion is that no, Blizzard didn't mess it up, and you probably unknowingly DID. So yes....someone has now bought an authenticator for your account and taken it. That sucks, but maybe you should have considered protecting your account yourself? I'm just sayin'......
Everyone keeps talking about authenticators being a money making plot from Blizzard.....great conspiracy theory. Whether they ARE or NOT doesn't matter a damn to me. (I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory.) All I know is that I've had one from the get go and never been hacked. That's testamonial enough for me, but maybe not for some. Regardless of why they exist, my experience is that they work. To me....that's all I care about. It's just six dollars. That's pretty cheap for peace of mind, and you CAN get them for free using the cellphone app, so....not sure why people whine about authenticators. I'm sure Blizz is making a fortune on a free app.....
Lol! Hacks are client side. I like how so many posting are "IT Security Experts."
Fact is, nobody wants to feel like a sucker. It's not Blizz's responsibility to keep you from getting hacked. It's yours. Responsibility.
If I was a poor guy in the third world, and I saw 10-odd million people with stuff I could steal and sell, I could easily assume 10-20 percent of them don't know how to protect themselves and create bots and mass phish mails to check.
Kinda like folks who leave a door or window unlocked and get robbed. But of course, it's not their fault.
As mentioned earlier, if the Blizz servers were compromised, it would be credit card info they would go after.
I applaud your common sense. It's not that common these days. Bravo, Compadre!
I just wanted to share my personal experience with everyone. I was hacked after playing wow for over 2 years during a time when I was still paying for my account but wasn't playing, i don't blame blizz for what happened and I accepted full responsibility for my actions. Where i ran into problems was with battle.net and blizzards customer service. I was inundated with email spam about my blizz account after the battle.net merger, wasn't an issue prior to that. Once i found out my account had been stolen i couldn't log on, kept getting redirected from one website to the other, back and forth, telling me i can't log in through blizzard anymore because i have switched to battle.net but couldn't log into battle.net because my blizz account was compromised. When i contacted blizzards customer service, it was the worst experience i ever had, therefore, will never consider them for any game again. Email support was very slow to respond and kept reciting the same corporate bs in prefabricated emails resolving nothing, just kept telling me to call. When i tried calling customer service on several occasions i was on hold for a very long time, over 30 minutes, without anyone picking up, time which i didn't have too much of because i was working two jobs at the time (also reason why i wasn't playing). And when i had time during late evenings and nights they were closed. I fought this issue until blizz said that my character and items could not be recovered. At that point i finally gave up and never looked back.
Yes, i made a mistake but there isn't any excuse for a company to treat paying customers like this. I am very glad that many people had good luck with recovering their accounts but for me it was a nightmare.
Eh, I find the controversy amusing, and believe Blizzard has to be involved in this crap. Mainly because I can see a big company like that milking the game for all it's worth, because they could easily cover that fact and pay off whoever knows with the extra money they are making.
I say this because regardless of how likely the clients are being hacked, because people are stupid and do stupid things (that doesn't exclude me). The thing about it is though that many people are claiming they have authenticators or don't do things to get hacked, ect. The problem I see here is that I could see blizzard selling information to third parties in order for them to gain money, which means they can buy more information and create a loop that takes vulnerable people and take advantage of them.
The other thing I should point out is that this type of incident wouldn't be the first to happen, but the problem is that no one has been able to prove it and bring about a class action lawsuit because they can claim security flaws. However, I'm just waiting for someone to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his client was hacked infront of a judge, then whatever else to bring about blizzard losing lots of money to people because of their stupidity. I'd be happy if blizzard was only shamed for bad business practices, but they are a big enough company it's similar to the walmart lawsuit going on right now about women being sexually harrassed. From what I have heard about it walmart is fighting the lawsuit by asking the judge to dismiss it, because they claim they are just too big of a corporation, among other things. The basis of my point is that walmart claims they are just too big to hold all these sexual harrassment cases against them because it's the managers' fault or whatever, and I could see Blizzard claiming they are just too big to have to give the money back and just supply everyone with free in-game items (destroying the economy further with it) and fire a few people that were responsible the whole time.
All just theory, but if Blizzard wanted to get away with it, they probably will, but that's because they can afford the best attorneys and hold all the cards when it comes to arguments. On the other hand I do think at least half of those claiming to be hacked without a reason, I bet they just don't know how they got on their computer and it's really their fault. And I notice a few posts claiming if they hacked blizzard they would take other things besides ur account info, but I beg to differ because the more personal the information gets the easier it is to blame blizzard and bring about a lawsuit for damages. So the best case would be to sell, lose to hackers, or whatever other way you want to claim towards losing minor information that can be blamed on anyone and everyone. When you want to get away with something, you steal candy from a baby rather than shoot the president for money. Minor things aren't noticed or caught as easily as big things.
there are 3 types of people who are against this 1. people who hate WoW. 2. gold sellers/hackers, because it hurts their profits. 3. people who can't be bothered with personal security or think they know better, and say, but i didnt do anything wrong, when unsurprisingly, they get hacked.
You forgot:
4. Cheapskates, which I think are most of the objectors to getting one.
They'll spend 6.50 on a latte and a bun at Starbucks in a hot second, but Blizzard offering to give them something to secure their account for 6.50???
the data miners that work on getting your wow account info are the best in the biz (at this sort of thing). If you want to make sure, MAKE SURE your account stays safe, buy the cheap (yeah its cheao im sorry but it is, if you cant afford 6.50 theres further issues there) OR download the free app for smartphones (you dont have a smartphone???). problem SOLVED.
"Well let me just quote the late-great Colonel Sanders, who said…’I’m too drunk to taste this chicken." - Ricky Bobby
I made a WoW trial account once, the download on WoW failed, and I stopped caring, I never once entered those account details to any site anywhere. Two weeks later and Blizzard's busting out of my spam folder telling me I need to be safe. And of course, a week later the account has been "Suspected of gold selling" It get's suspended. I still didn't care.
I made a WoW trial account once, the download on WoW failed, and I stopped caring, I never once entered those account details to any site anywhere. Two weeks later and Blizzard's busting out of my spam folder telling me I need to be safe. And of course, a week later the account has been "Suspected of gold selling" It get's suspended. I still didn't care.
Blizzard needs to step it up.
Chances are that's not actually Blizzard, I know this because I had the exact same problem, hahah! I only tried a trial account way back when Burning Crusade had just came out, because a friend of mine does play and was bugging me to try it with him. That's it...once the trial days were over, I never bothered again. Haven't looked at anything else about WoW since then with the exception of stuff about it I read here on MMORPG.com
So, where is all of that coming from? Could it really just be a coincidence that I never got those e-mails until the free trial? Doubt it. Years later I still check my inbox after a few weeks (it's an account I don't use much anymore, ironically because of the spam and aol's failure in doing anything about it) and i'll have 300+ messages filled with "You're account is hacked!" crap from people posing as Blizzard.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I love people saying "buying gold will get your account hacked". Unless your stupid and use the same email address and password on the gold buying sites, your not going to get hacked from buying gold. Chances are you installed an addon or something that has a keylogger in it. And you dont have to "buy" an authenticator, you can get them free on smartphones etc.
I stoped playing WOW back in late 08....I just came back to the game to try Cata. To my surprise my account had been hacked and used a a gold sellers account. I never once had a keylogger on my system or did anything to get on on my system. I am also an IT spec. So to say that I do not know about net security would be far from the truth. I was not able to get anything back from my account other than 250g from blizzard and new lvl 80 gear for one of my characters. I honestly belive that it is from within blizzard maybe an employee selling user information for inactive accounts. Because other then that I do not know how they would have obtained my information for an account that has not been used by me for over a year. Blizzard told me that they used a hacked CC to activate my account back in mid 2009 to use my account for selling gold.
If you had a keylogger, you wouldnt know. Even if you are in IT, such as myself, you never know what kinda new thing pops up
ahhh, now it makes sense - blizzard wants money from me.
i get this messages since months now, though i never had a wow-account (i cannot even remember i ever registered by blizzard, but that could be). i replied many times to blizzards emails to let them know that i dont use the account and that they can delete it.
guess what - i still recieve the emails at least twice a month ...... blizzard must only employ analphabets (to not say they are only greedy idiots).
It's highly unlikely that it's the company itself purposefully doing something malicious. It's entirely possible that they had/have some holes in thier security which allowed hackers to get your info (or made it easier to break accounts) and that they didn't want to make those holes public. It's also possible that they have some internal breaches....either through themselves or business partners. Statisticaly greater then 50% of security breaches that occur in large companies today come from internal sources.
There is an easy way to do some testing of how carefull a company is with your internal data... this will work with any company...not just Blizzard. You can make your own "honeypot". Make 2 new e-mail addresses....the best way is if you manage your own mail domain, but it will work with hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc.... One address, do not give out to anyone or anything anywhere. The second address register with the company you want to test....nowhere else.
Over the course of the next month or so, monitor the volume of SPAM you get at each address. The address that you gave out to noone is your control. If the company is being carefull with your data...you should get ROUGHLY the same amount of SPAM in both. That SPAM will be due to either random dictionary mailings...or your mail host leaking it's info.
If the volume of SPAM you get at the 2nd address.... the one you registered with the company and nowhere else.....is SIGNIFICANTLY higher....then it's leaking your data somewhere.
I for one and 2 good friends were all hacked within 2 weeks of each other.. During the conversation on the phone with the Blizzard employee to restore my account and items, she politely informed me that her account too was hacked that week and she is also waiting for restoration.. She informed me her hack was from a virtually undetectable "keylogger" that way missed by updated virus programs.. The keylogger was piggyback upon a "ADDON".. I and 2 friends all use the same addons, 2 of us auto update our addons, the other scans and self installs.. In any case, what happens is the keylogger is browser activated.. So when you go to use the Blizzard Armoy or Forums and it sends you to an "account" log in screen.. THIS is where it gets you.. YOU think you are logging into WoW when in fact you are also keylogging your info.. The customer service employee also informed me that such keyloggers are almost inpossible to detect because when you do updates to addons, the virus can be installed and removed befor any anti virus updates can keep up with them..
In conclusion, Blizzard is very aware of this problem, they are very aware that many keyloggers are piggybacked on ADDON's and they are very aware that it is browser activated.. WHICH some suspect was the real cause of the "new" website for WoW and the Battlenet changes.. BTW.. NONE of us.. ALL 4.. never recieved anything in emails from Blizzard prior to the hacks.. All 4 us were ADDON hacked, not fake emails..
PS.. NO matter how good our anti virus is and updated.. New hacks are always one step ahead.. It is always possible to get infected by new viruses before your computer even knows it.. Anti virus programs are REACTIVE, not proactive
Comments
Actually...
I think they just scew up their user accounts because of a mixture of incompetance and general laziness with regards to doing things in a proper and secure manner.
Mmorpg.com writers have integrity ? lulz
Good catch by the earlier poster, by the way - the OP claims this happened "last week" but includes a screenshot of the 3.3.5 June client build.
How Not To Get Hacked
Create an email address and password that are ONLY used for your Battle.net account. Google Mail (GMail) is your friend - you can make a new account for free, and set it up to forward everything to your regular email, so you don't have to check a bunch of different inboxes. I have three active Battle.net accounts, each with its own unique email address, and since the day they were set up I have never received a single piece of mail to any of them that was not bona fide Blizzard information. I don't use those emails anywhere else - not for Curse, not for WowInterface, not for MMORPG.COM, nowhere. They only exist to log me in to Battle.net. (Instead of GMail you can also use an inexpensive "vanity domain" with mail forwarding enabled, and create all the "accounts" you want.)
Install and use a high quality lightweight antivirus package on your PC. I don't mean hideous bloatware like Norton or McAfee - I mean something like Avira. With up-to-date protection, you can play without worrying about Trojan links, keyloggers and other beasties.
If possible, live behind an inexpensive firewall router rather than putting your computer "naked" on the Internet.
Don't share your account. If you use more than one PC to play WoW, take the above steps on each of them. I'm not a "gold buyer" but of course many people are - if you do buy gold, for God's sake don't choose "Express Option" or whatever they call it, where you give them your account and password and they log in and get the gold for you. You will be hacked!
Don't listen to superstitious nonsense from idiots. When some genius in Trade says "I don't want to be hacked so I don't use any addons" - just ignore him. Game addons don't hack you, the Curse Client doesn't hack you. Carbonite doesn't hack you - and yes, Virginia, GearScore doesn't hack you! Believing superstitious nonsense creates a false sense of security and leaves you vulnerable to real hacks. Follow the steps above and enjoy the game.
[Mod Edit]
Adam i feel for you i really do... i had my account (had since launch) and never EVER got hacked.
Only when we moved over to battlenet did my account get hacked. And like many others before me they never bought gold, never paid for leveling services or being duped by emails
Heres a thing i will put out there.
Just so you sheep all buy more and more protection... Why hasnt gamers tried to sue BLIZZARD for not properly protecting THEIR servers.
FACT. Blizzard have ALL your details
FACT. You now need to pay for an authentictor WHY?? WHY isnt their logon process secure.
Well it IS SECURE, until THEY HACK YOU
How else did they get your DETAILS ADAM?
[Mod Edit]
Lol! Hacks are client side. I like how so many posting are "IT Security Experts."
Fact is, nobody wants to feel like a sucker. It's not Blizz's responsibility to keep you from getting hacked. It's yours. Responsibility.
If I was a poor guy in the third world, and I saw 10-odd million people with stuff I could steal and sell, I could easily assume 10-20 percent of them don't know how to protect themselves and create bots and mass phish mails to check.
Kinda like folks who leave a door or window unlocked and get robbed. But of course, it's not their fault.
As mentioned earlier, if the Blizz servers were compromised, it would be credit card info they would go after.
How is blizzard not living up to these "responsibilities"?
How can blizzard stop people from clicking on phishing emails? How can they prevent people from giving out their account information when they get "accepted in beta"? How can they prevent people from using the same username/password on every message forum in the world?
A company, any company, cannot stop end users from being their own worst enemies when it comes to account security.
Blizzard has made serveral secondary account security tools available. Many for free, but people still do not put them to use (see original posters).
Blizzard has put up several announcements, login screen tips, forum posts and many other articles about account security, but people still do not listen.
Yes the responsibility is on the user to keep their information safe. Blizzard can't babysit 12 million people.
I have the same problem, though I dont plan to buy a authenticatior. Here is the funny part, my account has been inactive for almost half a year but only 3-4 months ago a authintification key was registered to my account.
I kept getting emails from blizzard warning me about "me" trying to sell my account. So they suspended my account....wait isnt it deactivated? WHAT THE HELL?!
I just want to know is it blizzard whos #%$@ing up or did some retard spend $6 to keep me out of my inactive account?
Those emails from Blizzard......they weren't from Blizzard. My suspicion is that no, Blizzard didn't mess it up, and you probably unknowingly DID. So yes....someone has now bought an authenticator for your account and taken it. That sucks, but maybe you should have considered protecting your account yourself? I'm just sayin'......
Everyone keeps talking about authenticators being a money making plot from Blizzard.....great conspiracy theory. Whether they ARE or NOT doesn't matter a damn to me. (I don't subscribe to the conspiracy theory.) All I know is that I've had one from the get go and never been hacked. That's testamonial enough for me, but maybe not for some. Regardless of why they exist, my experience is that they work. To me....that's all I care about. It's just six dollars. That's pretty cheap for peace of mind, and you CAN get them for free using the cellphone app, so....not sure why people whine about authenticators. I'm sure Blizz is making a fortune on a free app.....
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I applaud your common sense. It's not that common these days. Bravo, Compadre!
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I just wanted to share my personal experience with everyone. I was hacked after playing wow for over 2 years during a time when I was still paying for my account but wasn't playing, i don't blame blizz for what happened and I accepted full responsibility for my actions. Where i ran into problems was with battle.net and blizzards customer service. I was inundated with email spam about my blizz account after the battle.net merger, wasn't an issue prior to that. Once i found out my account had been stolen i couldn't log on, kept getting redirected from one website to the other, back and forth, telling me i can't log in through blizzard anymore because i have switched to battle.net but couldn't log into battle.net because my blizz account was compromised. When i contacted blizzards customer service, it was the worst experience i ever had, therefore, will never consider them for any game again. Email support was very slow to respond and kept reciting the same corporate bs in prefabricated emails resolving nothing, just kept telling me to call. When i tried calling customer service on several occasions i was on hold for a very long time, over 30 minutes, without anyone picking up, time which i didn't have too much of because i was working two jobs at the time (also reason why i wasn't playing). And when i had time during late evenings and nights they were closed. I fought this issue until blizz said that my character and items could not be recovered. At that point i finally gave up and never looked back.
Yes, i made a mistake but there isn't any excuse for a company to treat paying customers like this. I am very glad that many people had good luck with recovering their accounts but for me it was a nightmare.
Have fun playing.
I see one flaw in this whole story. The client version and login screen is a couple months old in that picture.
Jesus christ, you guys are f*cking losers. How people find the time to discuss the most boring topics, I don't know. Actually... I do.
Eh, I find the controversy amusing, and believe Blizzard has to be involved in this crap. Mainly because I can see a big company like that milking the game for all it's worth, because they could easily cover that fact and pay off whoever knows with the extra money they are making.
I say this because regardless of how likely the clients are being hacked, because people are stupid and do stupid things (that doesn't exclude me). The thing about it is though that many people are claiming they have authenticators or don't do things to get hacked, ect. The problem I see here is that I could see blizzard selling information to third parties in order for them to gain money, which means they can buy more information and create a loop that takes vulnerable people and take advantage of them.
The other thing I should point out is that this type of incident wouldn't be the first to happen, but the problem is that no one has been able to prove it and bring about a class action lawsuit because they can claim security flaws. However, I'm just waiting for someone to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his client was hacked infront of a judge, then whatever else to bring about blizzard losing lots of money to people because of their stupidity. I'd be happy if blizzard was only shamed for bad business practices, but they are a big enough company it's similar to the walmart lawsuit going on right now about women being sexually harrassed. From what I have heard about it walmart is fighting the lawsuit by asking the judge to dismiss it, because they claim they are just too big of a corporation, among other things. The basis of my point is that walmart claims they are just too big to hold all these sexual harrassment cases against them because it's the managers' fault or whatever, and I could see Blizzard claiming they are just too big to have to give the money back and just supply everyone with free in-game items (destroying the economy further with it) and fire a few people that were responsible the whole time.
All just theory, but if Blizzard wanted to get away with it, they probably will, but that's because they can afford the best attorneys and hold all the cards when it comes to arguments. On the other hand I do think at least half of those claiming to be hacked without a reason, I bet they just don't know how they got on their computer and it's really their fault. And I notice a few posts claiming if they hacked blizzard they would take other things besides ur account info, but I beg to differ because the more personal the information gets the easier it is to blame blizzard and bring about a lawsuit for damages. So the best case would be to sell, lose to hackers, or whatever other way you want to claim towards losing minor information that can be blamed on anyone and everyone. When you want to get away with something, you steal candy from a baby rather than shoot the president for money. Minor things aren't noticed or caught as easily as big things.
You forgot:
4. Cheapskates, which I think are most of the objectors to getting one.
They'll spend 6.50 on a latte and a bun at Starbucks in a hot second, but Blizzard offering to give them something to secure their account for 6.50???
Horrors! What an evil company!
These types crack me up, lol.
"TO MICHAEL!"
the data miners that work on getting your wow account info are the best in the biz (at this sort of thing). If you want to make sure, MAKE SURE your account stays safe, buy the cheap (yeah its cheao im sorry but it is, if you cant afford 6.50 theres further issues there) OR download the free app for smartphones (you dont have a smartphone???). problem SOLVED.
Authenticator phone app. free. how are people not on to this yet?
heck, if you want you can even run it on your computer.
Since the invention of the internet the worlds rotation has been solely propelled by English teachers rolling over in their graves.
MMO player since Meridian 59
I made a WoW trial account once, the download on WoW failed, and I stopped caring, I never once entered those account details to any site anywhere. Two weeks later and Blizzard's busting out of my spam folder telling me I need to be safe. And of course, a week later the account has been "Suspected of gold selling" It get's suspended. I still didn't care.
Blizzard needs to step it up.
Chances are that's not actually Blizzard, I know this because I had the exact same problem, hahah! I only tried a trial account way back when Burning Crusade had just came out, because a friend of mine does play and was bugging me to try it with him. That's it...once the trial days were over, I never bothered again. Haven't looked at anything else about WoW since then with the exception of stuff about it I read here on MMORPG.com
So, where is all of that coming from? Could it really just be a coincidence that I never got those e-mails until the free trial? Doubt it. Years later I still check my inbox after a few weeks (it's an account I don't use much anymore, ironically because of the spam and aol's failure in doing anything about it) and i'll have 300+ messages filled with "You're account is hacked!" crap from people posing as Blizzard.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
I love people saying "buying gold will get your account hacked". Unless your stupid and use the same email address and password on the gold buying sites, your not going to get hacked from buying gold. Chances are you installed an addon or something that has a keylogger in it. And you dont have to "buy" an authenticator, you can get them free on smartphones etc.
If you had a keylogger, you wouldnt know. Even if you are in IT, such as myself, you never know what kinda new thing pops up
ahhh, now it makes sense - blizzard wants money from me.
i get this messages since months now, though i never had a wow-account (i cannot even remember i ever registered by blizzard, but that could be). i replied many times to blizzards emails to let them know that i dont use the account and that they can delete it.
guess what - i still recieve the emails at least twice a month ...... blizzard must only employ analphabets (to not say they are only greedy idiots).
It's highly unlikely that it's the company itself purposefully doing something malicious. It's entirely possible that they had/have some holes in thier security which allowed hackers to get your info (or made it easier to break accounts) and that they didn't want to make those holes public. It's also possible that they have some internal breaches....either through themselves or business partners. Statisticaly greater then 50% of security breaches that occur in large companies today come from internal sources.
There is an easy way to do some testing of how carefull a company is with your internal data... this will work with any company...not just Blizzard. You can make your own "honeypot". Make 2 new e-mail addresses....the best way is if you manage your own mail domain, but it will work with hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc.... One address, do not give out to anyone or anything anywhere. The second address register with the company you want to test....nowhere else.
Over the course of the next month or so, monitor the volume of SPAM you get at each address. The address that you gave out to noone is your control. If the company is being carefull with your data...you should get ROUGHLY the same amount of SPAM in both. That SPAM will be due to either random dictionary mailings...or your mail host leaking it's info.
If the volume of SPAM you get at the 2nd address.... the one you registered with the company and nowhere else.....is SIGNIFICANTLY higher....then it's leaking your data somewhere.
FYI.. Keep this in mind peeps..
I for one and 2 good friends were all hacked within 2 weeks of each other.. During the conversation on the phone with the Blizzard employee to restore my account and items, she politely informed me that her account too was hacked that week and she is also waiting for restoration.. She informed me her hack was from a virtually undetectable "keylogger" that way missed by updated virus programs.. The keylogger was piggyback upon a "ADDON".. I and 2 friends all use the same addons, 2 of us auto update our addons, the other scans and self installs.. In any case, what happens is the keylogger is browser activated.. So when you go to use the Blizzard Armoy or Forums and it sends you to an "account" log in screen.. THIS is where it gets you.. YOU think you are logging into WoW when in fact you are also keylogging your info.. The customer service employee also informed me that such keyloggers are almost inpossible to detect because when you do updates to addons, the virus can be installed and removed befor any anti virus updates can keep up with them..
In conclusion, Blizzard is very aware of this problem, they are very aware that many keyloggers are piggybacked on ADDON's and they are very aware that it is browser activated.. WHICH some suspect was the real cause of the "new" website for WoW and the Battlenet changes.. BTW.. NONE of us.. ALL 4.. never recieved anything in emails from Blizzard prior to the hacks.. All 4 us were ADDON hacked, not fake emails..
PS.. NO matter how good our anti virus is and updated.. New hacks are always one step ahead.. It is always possible to get infected by new viruses before your computer even knows it.. Anti virus programs are REACTIVE, not proactive
Happy Holidays