I'd betcha dollars to donuts he or the missus innocently clicked one of those "tinyurls" or the like and downloaded a nice piece of malware you're not aware of. Remember, FaceBook is malware writers wet dream.
Or you logged on to your WoW account from a computer that was not in your complete control and you got keylogged.
If the author never gave out his account information and never bought gold, then you must have a keylogger somewhere on his computer, which should make more nervous than losing his WoW pixels.
I have been comprimised once in just over 10 years of MMO gaming and that was my fault. Clicked a link I knew I shouldn't have...paid the price.
There are also a number of malicous programs that are very hard to locate and remove effectively. If your AV programme says no virus / malicous software found, that is all it means. It hasn't found any. It doesn't necessarily mean none exists.
The best part about all of this is that those that have (luckily) never been hacked feel like it will Never happen to them, that they are too smart, and that if you are hacked well then it must be your own fault. They are just plain smarter and more savvy and can avoid it at all costs. They are perfect.
Arrogance at its finest.
I, on the other hand, truly feel for those that are hacked. I understand the blatant nakedness you feel after its been done. That, even if it might have been your fault, that Blizz treats you like a moron for not BUYING its device. Which then reeks of an opportunistic scam. I also understand that we are human, we make mistakes, and even the most stalwart of us IT people and whatnot WILL be hacked. Its not just individuals that get hacked, big businesses are much more lucrative targets. Its only a matter of time. That why, although its like bribing the police to protect you, I highly suggest the authenticator, not only to protect you from hackers, but from Blizz as well.
If you use that email and password combination with ANY other gaming site, then you gave someone else your WoW user name and password. In most cases, that's how they get it: through less secure gaming forums and websites.
For example, if you use the same U/P with Guildlaunch.com and that site gets hacked, they'll almost know for certain that you're subbed to at least 1 AAA game. Your info is then worth money to gold sellers. Gold sellers also have a pretty good racket. They have you create an account on THEIR site if you want to buy gold. They'll turn around, after you bought gold from them, and use that email/pwd on the game you bought gold for and steal it right back!!!
When you get back in, you're all too likely to have had all your stuff sold as vendor trash, and all your gold gone.
The people who say it's ALWAYS the end users fault are 100% wrong. MOST of the time it is the end users fault. However companies, even ones that are supposed to be PCI, FISA or HIPAA compliant are far from bullet-proof in thier security. Game companies are no exception..... and it's getting worse not better....as stupid mandates from business exec's to create backend links with 3rd party providers with questionable secrurity archetecture (like Social Networking Services) open up new holes...and hackers grow in sophistication.
Anyone that has worked proffesionaly in the security field recently knows this....often from 1st hand incident investigation. Every day in this country major companies are loosing thier clients personal info to hacker...at no fault of the end user themselves. The VAST majority of these breaches go unreported to the end user....and often unreported to law enforcement or anyone external to the company. Companies don't WANT such breaches publicized and often go to great length to avoid such....especialy in unregulated industries...and sometimes within them. Don't fool yourself otherwise.
4 EQ1 accounts for 4+ years, never was hacked. EQ2 account for a few years, never was hacked. 2 Eve Online accounts for 6+ years, never was hacked. 1 WoW account for 4+ years. Never was hacked. Too many other online games: Never was hacked.
I also don't download mods, avoid crappy parts of the internet, and in general don't do stupid things like click on links I don't know.
So when I hear "I didn't do anything, and I still got hacked, it must have been Blizzard!", I tend to NOT believe it. (Also, as a programmer/developer, I'm forced into doing tech support from time to time, and the lies just pour forth from user's mouths. PEBKAC is the #1 reason bad things happen.
There are a lot of careless or simply ignorant users. But there is also something to be said about sys admins doing their best to 'idiot proof' their own system for users. Making a poor security design choice, and then blaming users for not going out of their way to adjust for it is just lazy IT security.
A perfect example of this is the Battle.net merge. Every account was forced to merge into Battle.net. Every Battle.net account uses it's linked email as the username. So basically user account authentication has gone from using two private pieces of information (username and password), into to using a 'public' piece of information (email) and one private piece of information (password). Now, it doesn't take an IT security genious to realize that when you make one half of your authentication available, you've basically given out half of what people need to breach into your account.
So while some people just blame users, the blame also lies with the admins of the system. It is the responsbility of those administrating the system to make it as secure and easy to secure for their users as possible, as it is for users to do their part in keeping their authentication details private. In short, Blizzard's sloppy IT security has contributed to the issue.
No one said you had to use your everyday about as safe as french-kissing a cobra hotmail/gmail/yahoo/and so on. Just make a new account with a mail you don't use at all... Voila it is again as safe as your username.. heck prolly safer...
Expecting users to go out of their way to do additional steps to avoid a security flaw introduced by the administrators is sloppy IT security. Private usersnames were private, and easily choosen at account creation per whatever the user wanted (if it wasn't already used). Telling users that they have to go to X, Y, Z, because you're too lazy to simply design the system properly, makes it your fault if the users don't do those things and end up getting their accounts hacked.
Blaming the user does not fix the problem, when the problem is poorly designed security.
yea in feb i found out my account got hacked an i notice my main lost all his stuff an things i gave him from my alts an such but one of the alts i seen was new an notice he had over 5k gold an the 20 slot bags so i gotted my account back to normal an then i bought an auth to keep it safe an from then on i havent been hacked once this yr since feb
The people who say it's ALWAYS the end users fault are 100% wrong. MOST of the time it is the end users fault. However companies, even ones that are supposed to be PCI, FISA or HIPAA compliant are far from bullet-proof in thier security. Game companies are no exception..... and it's getting worse not better....as stupid mandates from business exec's to create backend links with 3rd party providers with questionable secrurity archetecture (like Social Networking Services) open up new holes...and hackers grow in sophistication.
Anyone that has worked proffesionaly in the security field recently knows this....often from 1st hand incident investigation. Every day in this country major companies are loosing thier clients personal info to hacker...at no fault of the end user themselves. The VAST majority of these breaches go unreported to the end user....and often unreported to law enforcement or anyone external to the company. Companies don't WANT such breaches publicized and often go to great length to avoid such....especialy in unregulated industries...and sometimes within them. Don't fool yourself otherwise.
All too true, though often it's the user doing the same thing "manually", by using the same user/password combination at, say, this site, and guildlaunch, and file planet, asian MMO's, and so on. Hacker hacks any one of those sites, and they have your U/P for, potentially, every MMO you've ever played.
They'll even try inactive accounts, either by using a trial key or, if the game account memorizes a credit card... scary, no?
My account has been hacked so many times. At least 3 by now. Blizzard must be making a pretty penny on the side or maybe its that new company that handles all the account information....hmmmm..... it never happened until battle.net had control.....hmmmm. Anyway I see now that game is just not an mmo anymore. Its an advanced lobby game, and not worth a monthly fee. Those hackers can have my account and choke on it.
Just get an authenticator and be done with it. Don't cry about account hacking when you don't take a readily available step to protect your account. BTW I believe the app for the phones (iPhone and Droid alike) are free now, so there isn't an excuse.
in my opinion money wasted there, why pay additional money to get back what you already had before the merge with battle.net?
2) one cool pet
nice prize, not 6.95 but have fun with it.
3) piece of mind
You can thank the merge for making you lose that piece of mind in the first place.
-priceless
Master card called, they'd like their catch phrase back.
Please people buy a blizz Authenticator and make hackers christmas's suc.
Thank you that is all ! ^ ^
This is to everyone who thinks paying for this authenticator is the right thing to do.
I hate hackers as much as the next person and i can understand the line of thinking here. I don't think blizz is trying to come up with schemes to take money from people nor do i believe its any kind of conspiracy theory or anything, but when a company makes a mistake like this, i do one of two things, i either demand my refund or stop using the product. The very last thing i do is fork over more money so they can patch fix a mistake they made. (i mess up it cost me, when a company messed up it shouldn't cost me)
Ask yourself this question, if any other company did this, would you pay that 6.95, somehow i doubt it.
What i believed happen here is blizz saw a way to make things easier on themselves by switching to battle.net (not to mention probably cheaper. ), as battle.net wasn't really all that known for their security anyhow (ask the D2 people) hacks started occuring. So the people at blizz needed a way to fix that. enter the authenticator, they COULD have just put this on all the accounts and auto lock all the info (based on what info they had already from the switch) so that when you log back in no security hacks occured. This would have basically cost you nothing. However as business do. they find a way to save themselves money by passing what should have been their cost (as they compromised the security by switching to battle.net) to you for a fee of 6.95. Basically they messed up and you payed them 6.95 for it.
I wish i could say that was money well spent but looking at what i'm seeing i just can't. You should be mad they made you less safe and you had to pay money for it. Not thankful they basically took another 7 bucks from you.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I actually thing that blizzard and the hackers are working together. The reason why my account not been played in 3 years. Now I get emails all the time the phising ones, and we all know better. Then I actually got the real email saying my account had been hacked. How all my passwords are different and user names for each game.
So yes I think blizard is higly supsect into some of the hacking going on.
I got hacked once about 15 months after my account had been inactive. I recieved an email notifying me of my ban for wrecking the server economy. I called Blizzard and told them I hadn't been paying for my account for well over a year so they restored everything and gave me a free month of gametime. The CS rep told me they were having a large number of hacked accounts due to the b.net merger and some loophole hackers had discovered.
I've had quite a few guildies get hacked and they either had no authenticators or they had one and removed it "because its a hassle" at the time of getting hacked. It does suck having to type in another 6 digits each time you want to logon, but never having to worry about getting hacked makes it worth it to me.
Hacking hysteria is a tool Bliizard uses to migrate us to a locked-down MMO police state where your authenticator is used for everything, your "Real ID" is tracking your location and the results are for sale and enforcement.
Adam "MMOFail" Tingle is a godsend for these folks. The more highly publicized hacks that clueless bloggers scream about, the wider the authenticators spread, and the closer Blizzard gets.
Enjoy classic gaming while you have it - the clock is ticking.
After 4 years of playing, my account was also hacked; almost 1 year since I deactivated it. My sub ended on 9/8/2009 and armory says my characters were logged in 9/9/2010. There's even some achievements recently gotten. It's strange how that works, honestly.
I haven't put any effort into getting it back though. I just do not care anymore.
I got hacked recently, too. But since my account has been inactive for over a year, I don't think it'll really cause a problem.
Important facts: 1. Free to Play games are poorly made. 2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals. 3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE. 4. Community is more important than you think.
Mine got hacked as well and i never gave my info out, bought gold or PL's. Dont know how they did it. This is the 2nd account i lost to hackers. I told Blizzard to go shove it and im never playing a blizzard game again. IMO, Blizzard sells inactive accounts to the highest chinese bidder to make you buy their authenicators.
Interesting theory.
Which do you think blizzard wants more. Your $15 a month for many months
-OR-
You to buy an authenticator that costs anywhere from $6 to FREE.
4 EQ1 accounts for 4+ years, never was hacked. EQ2 account for a few years, never was hacked. 2 Eve Online accounts for 6+ years, never was hacked. 1 WoW account for 4+ years. Never was hacked. Too many other online games: Never was hacked.
I also don't download mods, avoid crappy parts of the internet, and in general don't do stupid things like click on links I don't know.
So when I hear "I didn't do anything, and I still got hacked, it must have been Blizzard!", I tend to NOT believe it. (Also, as a programmer/developer, I'm forced into doing tech support from time to time, and the lies just pour forth from user's mouths. PEBKAC is the #1 reason bad things happen.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe ... ... Just maybe.... you have been lucky ? Being an IT specialist does not mean you are absolutely safe from being compromised.
That does not mean you are a bad tech, it just means that there is always some brilliantly twisted shmuck out there to break systems checks that would otherwise be safe for people that are not malicious.
Luck has nothing to do with it. Not handing out my account/passwords to friends, not downloading addons, etc, does.
Heck, until very recently, I didn't bother with anti-virus for 20 years. I've had to remove malware/spyware/viruses/trojans from many computers.... but strangely, never my own.
No, it isn't luck.
Ok .. you have not used an anti-virus for 20 years and have not gotten hacked or any malicious programs in all that time. How could being lucky possibly have anything to do with that. I guess I stand corrected.
Out of curiosity, why did you recently decide on getting an Anti-virus program if you have had such success without one?
It was free (MSSE), and since I use my home PC sometimes for work purposes, they want AV installed.
Mine got hacked as well and i never gave my info out, bought gold or PL's. Dont know how they did it. This is the 2nd account i lost to hackers. I told Blizzard to go shove it and im never playing a blizzard game again. IMO, Blizzard sells inactive accounts to the highest chinese bidder to make you buy their authenicators.
Interesting theory.
Which do you think blizzard wants more. Your $15 a month for many months
-OR-
You to buy an authenticator that costs anywhere from $6 to FREE.
On that thought why can't they have both. that way they can get (it's closer to 7 but whatever) both the 14.99 and the 6.95
also to clarify either 6.95 or free, but to get it free you have to have an Iphone or droid. Not something everyone has.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
in my opinion money wasted there, why pay additional money to get back what you already had before the merge with battle.net?
2) one cool pet
nice prize, not 6.95 but have fun with it.
3) piece of mind
You can thank the merge for making you lose that piece of mind in the first place.
-priceless
Master card called, they'd like their catch phrase back.
Please people buy a blizz Authenticator and make hackers christmas's suc.
Thank you that is all ! ^ ^
This is to everyone who thinks paying for this authenticator is the right thing to do.
I hate hackers as much as the next person and i can understand the line of thinking here. I don't think blizz is trying to come up with schemes to take money from people nor do i believe its any kind of conspiracy theory or anything, but when a company makes a mistake like this, i do one of two things, i either demand my refund or stop using the product. The very last thing i do is fork over more money so they can patch fix a mistake they made. (i mess up it cost me, when a company messed up it shouldn't cost me)
Ask yourself this question, if any other company did this, would you pay that 6.95, somehow i doubt it.
What i believed happen here is blizz saw a way to make things easier on themselves by switching to battle.net (not to mention probably cheaper. ), as battle.net wasn't really all that known for their security anyhow (ask the D2 people) hacks started occuring. So the people at blizz needed a way to fix that. enter the authenticator, they COULD have just put this on all the accounts and auto lock all the info (based on what info they had already from the switch) so that when you log back in no security hacks occured. This would have basically cost you nothing. However as business do. they find a way to save themselves money by passing what should have been their cost (as they compromised the security by switching to battle.net) to you for a fee of 6.95. Basically they messed up and you payed them 6.95 for it.
I wish i could say that was money well spent but looking at what i'm seeing i just can't. You should be mad they made you less safe and you had to pay money for it. Not thankful they basically took another 7 bucks from you.
1) Authenticators were available for over 18 months BEFORE the battle.net merger.
2) There are many software based authenticators that blizzard offers for mobile phones/devices that are FREE.
Mine got hacked as well and i never gave my info out, bought gold or PL's. Dont know how they did it. This is the 2nd account i lost to hackers. I told Blizzard to go shove it and im never playing a blizzard game again. IMO, Blizzard sells inactive accounts to the highest chinese bidder to make you buy their authenicators.
Interesting theory.
Which do you think blizzard wants more. Your $15 a month for many months
-OR-
You to buy an authenticator that costs anywhere from $6 to FREE.
If your account is inactive then they've already lost $15 a month from that person. They can profit from selling the info to a third party to 'hack' the account, then they can also turn around and tell you "oh no, your account is hacked, you better come back and get things sorted out or it will be gone forever." It could potentialy be some sick form of marketing where they get players interested in the game by sparking interest that all of their stuff is being taken away... even after they've stopped playing.
Of course, that's purely speculation, but it's not outside of the realm of possibility... especially with Blizzard's recent behavior otherwise.
in my opinion money wasted there, why pay additional money to get back what you already had before the merge with battle.net?
2) one cool pet
nice prize, not 6.95 but have fun with it.
3) piece of mind
You can thank the merge for making you lose that piece of mind in the first place.
-priceless
Master card called, they'd like their catch phrase back.
Please people buy a blizz Authenticator and make hackers christmas's suc.
Thank you that is all ! ^ ^
This is to everyone who thinks paying for this authenticator is the right thing to do.
I hate hackers as much as the next person and i can understand the line of thinking here. I don't think blizz is trying to come up with schemes to take money from people nor do i believe its any kind of conspiracy theory or anything, but when a company makes a mistake like this, i do one of two things, i either demand my refund or stop using the product. The very last thing i do is fork over more money so they can patch fix a mistake they made. (i mess up it cost me, when a company messed up it shouldn't cost me)
Ask yourself this question, if any other company did this, would you pay that 6.95, somehow i doubt it.
What i believed happen here is blizz saw a way to make things easier on themselves by switching to battle.net (not to mention probably cheaper. ), as battle.net wasn't really all that known for their security anyhow (ask the D2 people) hacks started occuring. So the people at blizz needed a way to fix that. enter the authenticator, they COULD have just put this on all the accounts and auto lock all the info (based on what info they had already from the switch) so that when you log back in no security hacks occured. This would have basically cost you nothing. However as business do. they find a way to save themselves money by passing what should have been their cost (as they compromised the security by switching to battle.net) to you for a fee of 6.95. Basically they messed up and you payed them 6.95 for it.
I wish i could say that was money well spent but looking at what i'm seeing i just can't. You should be mad they made you less safe and you had to pay money for it. Not thankful they basically took another 7 bucks from you.
1) Authenticators were available for over 18 months BEFORE the battle.net merger.
2) There are many software based authenticators that blizzard offers for mobile phones/devices that are FREE.
Assuming of course you own such a device which i stated earlier, some do not have.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
your integreity definitely was comprimised and it wasn't talking about wow again or getting hacked that did it.
it's the fact you wrote this lolzy rant about getting hacked in a heavily targetted game and act like's it's blizzard's fault and din't follow through. i am surprised to learn that blizz phone cs closes at 8pm cst because 4 weeks ago my bro found out his wow email got hacked and his wow pwd changed adn the hacker was monitoring his email as he was logged in to it on msn and deleting pwd change emails from blizz as soon as they cam einto his mail box. so he called up blizz and befor ehe went to bed that night(this was around 8pm mst iirc and he hadn't got the problem sorted out before 10pm mst) his problem was sorted new email address for his bnet account and everything checked to make sure it was intact.
i got hacked last spring. my computer was secure, no falling for phsihing mails. i'm guessing they brute forced my pwd which had no symbols in it. my main was used as a bot for mining(going by my stats page which shows i've had 450 mining when i've never gotten past something like 100 on any toon) and the fact all my gear was broken when i later logged into that toon tell me they were running me through dungeons to farm gold. within 3 days of getting the meail from blizz(which was obvious to tell it was legit as it included my original account login) going through the support site and emails i was fully resotred within 3 days, and blizz left the time the hacker paid for and items they left in my bags on my account. i needed very little info to confirm the account was mine compared to wha ti hear other mmo's require.
you make it sound like the hacking faq blames you. no it gives a run down of common causes of getting hacked, and common sense steps to take whenever any online service you use gets hacked. as for the authenticator, the phone version is cheaper than the physical version and does the same thing.
when you're account gets hacked blizz is very helpful and fast compared to other mmo companies in getting you back into the game and up and running again. i have seen how badly other companies act in regards to hacking going as far as permaing your account because the hacker botted on it or changed your personal info in the master account page. if blizz phone cs does close at 8pm pst, that's several hours later than the number 2 mmo company in the world, ncsoft, who's phone cs closes at 5pm cst and doesn't operate on weekends. nothing is going to happen on your account during the off hours that can't be restored in teh morning.
Comments
I'd betcha dollars to donuts he or the missus innocently clicked one of those "tinyurls" or the like and downloaded a nice piece of malware you're not aware of. Remember, FaceBook is malware writers wet dream.
Or you logged on to your WoW account from a computer that was not in your complete control and you got keylogged.
If the author never gave out his account information and never bought gold, then you must have a keylogger somewhere on his computer, which should make more nervous than losing his WoW pixels.
Very, very true.
I have been comprimised once in just over 10 years of MMO gaming and that was my fault. Clicked a link I knew I shouldn't have...paid the price.
There are also a number of malicous programs that are very hard to locate and remove effectively. If your AV programme says no virus / malicous software found, that is all it means. It hasn't found any. It doesn't necessarily mean none exists.
The best part about all of this is that those that have (luckily) never been hacked feel like it will Never happen to them, that they are too smart, and that if you are hacked well then it must be your own fault. They are just plain smarter and more savvy and can avoid it at all costs. They are perfect.
Arrogance at its finest.
I, on the other hand, truly feel for those that are hacked. I understand the blatant nakedness you feel after its been done. That, even if it might have been your fault, that Blizz treats you like a moron for not BUYING its device. Which then reeks of an opportunistic scam. I also understand that we are human, we make mistakes, and even the most stalwart of us IT people and whatnot WILL be hacked. Its not just individuals that get hacked, big businesses are much more lucrative targets. Its only a matter of time. That why, although its like bribing the police to protect you, I highly suggest the authenticator, not only to protect you from hackers, but from Blizz as well.
If you use that email and password combination with ANY other gaming site, then you gave someone else your WoW user name and password. In most cases, that's how they get it: through less secure gaming forums and websites.
For example, if you use the same U/P with Guildlaunch.com and that site gets hacked, they'll almost know for certain that you're subbed to at least 1 AAA game. Your info is then worth money to gold sellers. Gold sellers also have a pretty good racket. They have you create an account on THEIR site if you want to buy gold. They'll turn around, after you bought gold from them, and use that email/pwd on the game you bought gold for and steal it right back!!!
When you get back in, you're all too likely to have had all your stuff sold as vendor trash, and all your gold gone.
The people who say it's ALWAYS the end users fault are 100% wrong. MOST of the time it is the end users fault. However companies, even ones that are supposed to be PCI, FISA or HIPAA compliant are far from bullet-proof in thier security. Game companies are no exception..... and it's getting worse not better....as stupid mandates from business exec's to create backend links with 3rd party providers with questionable secrurity archetecture (like Social Networking Services) open up new holes...and hackers grow in sophistication.
Anyone that has worked proffesionaly in the security field recently knows this....often from 1st hand incident investigation. Every day in this country major companies are loosing thier clients personal info to hacker...at no fault of the end user themselves. The VAST majority of these breaches go unreported to the end user....and often unreported to law enforcement or anyone external to the company. Companies don't WANT such breaches publicized and often go to great length to avoid such....especialy in unregulated industries...and sometimes within them. Don't fool yourself otherwise.
Expecting users to go out of their way to do additional steps to avoid a security flaw introduced by the administrators is sloppy IT security. Private usersnames were private, and easily choosen at account creation per whatever the user wanted (if it wasn't already used). Telling users that they have to go to X, Y, Z, because you're too lazy to simply design the system properly, makes it your fault if the users don't do those things and end up getting their accounts hacked.
Blaming the user does not fix the problem, when the problem is poorly designed security.
yea in feb i found out my account got hacked an i notice my main lost all his stuff an things i gave him from my alts an such but one of the alts i seen was new an notice he had over 5k gold an the 20 slot bags so i gotted my account back to normal an then i bought an auth to keep it safe an from then on i havent been hacked once this yr since feb
derpy derp derp
All too true, though often it's the user doing the same thing "manually", by using the same user/password combination at, say, this site, and guildlaunch, and file planet, asian MMO's, and so on. Hacker hacks any one of those sites, and they have your U/P for, potentially, every MMO you've ever played.
They'll even try inactive accounts, either by using a trial key or, if the game account memorizes a credit card... scary, no?
Was hacked twice,
1) 6.95
2) one cool pet
3) piece of mind
-priceless
Please people buy a blizz Authenticator and make hackers christmas's suc.
Thank you that is all ! ^ ^
My account has been hacked so many times. At least 3 by now. Blizzard must be making a pretty penny on the side or maybe its that new company that handles all the account information....hmmmm..... it never happened until battle.net had control.....hmmmm. Anyway I see now that game is just not an mmo anymore. Its an advanced lobby game, and not worth a monthly fee. Those hackers can have my account and choke on it.
"cinnamon buns"
- Pickles
Just get an authenticator and be done with it. Don't cry about account hacking when you don't take a readily available step to protect your account. BTW I believe the app for the phones (iPhone and Droid alike) are free now, so there isn't an excuse.
This is to everyone who thinks paying for this authenticator is the right thing to do.
I hate hackers as much as the next person and i can understand the line of thinking here. I don't think blizz is trying to come up with schemes to take money from people nor do i believe its any kind of conspiracy theory or anything, but when a company makes a mistake like this, i do one of two things, i either demand my refund or stop using the product. The very last thing i do is fork over more money so they can patch fix a mistake they made. (i mess up it cost me, when a company messed up it shouldn't cost me)
Ask yourself this question, if any other company did this, would you pay that 6.95, somehow i doubt it.
What i believed happen here is blizz saw a way to make things easier on themselves by switching to battle.net (not to mention probably cheaper. ), as battle.net wasn't really all that known for their security anyhow (ask the D2 people) hacks started occuring. So the people at blizz needed a way to fix that. enter the authenticator, they COULD have just put this on all the accounts and auto lock all the info (based on what info they had already from the switch) so that when you log back in no security hacks occured. This would have basically cost you nothing. However as business do. they find a way to save themselves money by passing what should have been their cost (as they compromised the security by switching to battle.net) to you for a fee of 6.95. Basically they messed up and you payed them 6.95 for it.
I wish i could say that was money well spent but looking at what i'm seeing i just can't. You should be mad they made you less safe and you had to pay money for it. Not thankful they basically took another 7 bucks from you.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
I actually thing that blizzard and the hackers are working together. The reason why my account not been played in 3 years. Now I get emails all the time the phising ones, and we all know better. Then I actually got the real email saying my account had been hacked. How all my passwords are different and user names for each game.
So yes I think blizard is higly supsect into some of the hacking going on.
I got hacked once about 15 months after my account had been inactive. I recieved an email notifying me of my ban for wrecking the server economy. I called Blizzard and told them I hadn't been paying for my account for well over a year so they restored everything and gave me a free month of gametime. The CS rep told me they were having a large number of hacked accounts due to the b.net merger and some loophole hackers had discovered.
I've had quite a few guildies get hacked and they either had no authenticators or they had one and removed it "because its a hassle" at the time of getting hacked. It does suck having to type in another 6 digits each time you want to logon, but never having to worry about getting hacked makes it worth it to me.
Hacking hysteria is a tool Bliizard uses to migrate us to a locked-down MMO police state where your authenticator is used for everything, your "Real ID" is tracking your location and the results are for sale and enforcement.
Adam "MMOFail" Tingle is a godsend for these folks. The more highly publicized hacks that clueless bloggers scream about, the wider the authenticators spread, and the closer Blizzard gets.
Enjoy classic gaming while you have it - the clock is ticking.
After 4 years of playing, my account was also hacked; almost 1 year since I deactivated it. My sub ended on 9/8/2009 and armory says my characters were logged in 9/9/2010. There's even some achievements recently gotten. It's strange how that works, honestly.
I haven't put any effort into getting it back though. I just do not care anymore.
I got hacked recently, too. But since my account has been inactive for over a year, I don't think it'll really cause a problem.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Interesting theory.
Which do you think blizzard wants more. Your $15 a month for many months
-OR-
You to buy an authenticator that costs anywhere from $6 to FREE.
It was free (MSSE), and since I use my home PC sometimes for work purposes, they want AV installed.
On that thought why can't they have both. that way they can get (it's closer to 7 but whatever) both the 14.99 and the 6.95
also to clarify either 6.95 or free, but to get it free you have to have an Iphone or droid. Not something everyone has.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
EVE-ONLINE gets hacked too.
My account was hacked they took all my isk and transfered my main to a differant account.
The GM's just tell me to go away basically.
EVE GM's suck donkey@alls!!!
1) Authenticators were available for over 18 months BEFORE the battle.net merger.
2) There are many software based authenticators that blizzard offers for mobile phones/devices that are FREE.
If your account is inactive then they've already lost $15 a month from that person. They can profit from selling the info to a third party to 'hack' the account, then they can also turn around and tell you "oh no, your account is hacked, you better come back and get things sorted out or it will be gone forever." It could potentialy be some sick form of marketing where they get players interested in the game by sparking interest that all of their stuff is being taken away... even after they've stopped playing.
Of course, that's purely speculation, but it's not outside of the realm of possibility... especially with Blizzard's recent behavior otherwise.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
your integreity definitely was comprimised and it wasn't talking about wow again or getting hacked that did it.
it's the fact you wrote this lolzy rant about getting hacked in a heavily targetted game and act like's it's blizzard's fault and din't follow through. i am surprised to learn that blizz phone cs closes at 8pm cst because 4 weeks ago my bro found out his wow email got hacked and his wow pwd changed adn the hacker was monitoring his email as he was logged in to it on msn and deleting pwd change emails from blizz as soon as they cam einto his mail box. so he called up blizz and befor ehe went to bed that night(this was around 8pm mst iirc and he hadn't got the problem sorted out before 10pm mst) his problem was sorted new email address for his bnet account and everything checked to make sure it was intact.
i got hacked last spring. my computer was secure, no falling for phsihing mails. i'm guessing they brute forced my pwd which had no symbols in it. my main was used as a bot for mining(going by my stats page which shows i've had 450 mining when i've never gotten past something like 100 on any toon) and the fact all my gear was broken when i later logged into that toon tell me they were running me through dungeons to farm gold. within 3 days of getting the meail from blizz(which was obvious to tell it was legit as it included my original account login) going through the support site and emails i was fully resotred within 3 days, and blizz left the time the hacker paid for and items they left in my bags on my account. i needed very little info to confirm the account was mine compared to wha ti hear other mmo's require.
you make it sound like the hacking faq blames you. no it gives a run down of common causes of getting hacked, and common sense steps to take whenever any online service you use gets hacked. as for the authenticator, the phone version is cheaper than the physical version and does the same thing.
when you're account gets hacked blizz is very helpful and fast compared to other mmo companies in getting you back into the game and up and running again. i have seen how badly other companies act in regards to hacking going as far as permaing your account because the hacker botted on it or changed your personal info in the master account page. if blizz phone cs does close at 8pm pst, that's several hours later than the number 2 mmo company in the world, ncsoft, who's phone cs closes at 5pm cst and doesn't operate on weekends. nothing is going to happen on your account during the off hours that can't be restored in teh morning.
KERPLAH!