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wow security problems and picking on players
cmann40
Member Posts: 9
I need to ask if anyone else is experiencing these problems with blizzard. I recently came back to wow and found that my account was compromised. After many calls where you couldn,t even get through and a couple of emails I finally got my account back. Funny thing not a thing was missing. The blizzard rep told me over the phone that i should spend 6.95 on an authenticator which would protect my account. A few weeks went by with no problems I went to log in after a 2 hour break to find that they wanted me to change my password and said that my account was used for gold farming. they suspended my account for 3 hours and put it under review. I now have no chat or mail priviledges. When is enough enough blizzard to me its a sham to get more money out of players. If others have had the same thing happen to them please reply
Comments
Like Zy said, regardless of the money grab ... it is highly common. Spend the 7 bucks, its well worth it.
Don't be surprised if its found out later the holes in security are on purpose to force players into buying authenticators and what ever new security BS they have lined up. Ever since I merged my account with battle.net I get dozens of scam emails and so do many more players and the email account is solely a game email address and never used for anything else. Battle.net weakened security and that is a fact any security expert can vouch for.
Just in case you have an Iphone you can download the mobile authenticator on that for free on the app store, unsure about other phone makes though.
Keyloggers ... drrrrr
I have had tons of problems with Blizzard's security. To the point where I lost my account and was unable to recover it. I eventually bought back all the software and got an authenticator (u can get a free iphone authenticator app).
I eventually figured out after having fumed for a while that it was partly my fault and I will admit that. The last time it was stolen, was my fault entirely. I responded to a phishing email that lead to a duplicated site that was used to record log in info. After they had the info they tied the account to a a battle.net account (this was before it was mandatory) and this is what made it tough to recover. Well that and the next part.
After calling a blizzard hotline, the employee said to respond to the next email i got from them that would be coming in the next five mins prompting me to change the password...and guess what...another phishing email came through at the same time. I replied to the wrong one and lost my account after recovering it, before ever getting to play it.
Bottom line, DO NOT REPLY TO EMAILS FROM BLIZZARD* regaurdless of how authentic it may appear. Second if you have an iphone get the free app if you don't, then spend the 7 bucks for the authenticator....
or do what I did in the end (even though I do drop in on wow from time to time) find a game to play that simply has better security.
*and on that note avoid ncsoft, they tend to ban inoccent accounts for fraud etc, in mass wipes targeting the real bad guys, but sweeping up poor players like myself in the midst, and if you think getting an account back from blizzard is hard....nc soft wants all product codes you have ever purchsed from them and every credit card you have ever used with them...*
Humans are creatures of habit. If a hacker knows youre email address that is half the job done all they have to do is start guessing at your password. Names of family members important dates such birthdays and whatever info they find by looking up the email address on google. If people could remember a password such as 8tmc603 it would'nt be a problem but most people can't and use something simple they can remember which can be found out.
I've had similar thoughts to the OP.
I cancelled my WoW account some time back. Within the time span between me suspending payment and the account actually deactivating, my account was hacked ( characters deleted, created, etc ) and disabled by Blizzard.
Now, I have NEVER given either my email address or password to anyone. I've been using/developing for various environments since I was 8 years old ( I'm now 36 ). Not trying to boast but I'm internet savy and security concious. My passwords are 8+ nonsensical characters with #'s, symbols, capitalization, etc. Without some sort of keylogging, virus like monitoring behaviour, I consider it EXTREMELY ( like worse than 1 in a trillion chances ), that anyone could guess my email and password combination ( no this isn't an invite
).
I consider it infinitely more likely that Blizzards security was compromised.
Regardless, I feel the OP's pain and am suspicious of the business implications as well.
How was the warning communicated to you? Scammers will often spam whispers/mails pretending to be an official message, attempting to refer you to an imitation website to harvest your password.
A $6.95 dongle is probably cost them more in helpline/production costs/goodwill than it would ever return in profit - I think it's safe to leave the conspiracy theories out of this one.
When it comes to corporations and the pursuit of greed, no conspiracy theories should be discounted
Similar thing happened to me. I canceled by WoW account about a year ago. And about 6 months ago I got an email saying that my account was banned for "corrupting the economy" (gold selling). I actually contacted Blizzard about 3 or 4 times asking that they un-ban my account, but each time I got the "we'll put it under investigation, please wait 2 weeks" line and then nothing happened. So my WoW account is still banned...I really have no idea why they think I possibly would have participated in gold selling...I live in the US, it's not economically viable.
The whole ordeal really soured me towards Blizzard's CS. And, like you, I think that their security got compromised. I have an alpha-numeric password that is not easy to guess.
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