It is amazing how I've had a WoW account for years, 5 years of 4+ EQ1 accounts, 2 Eve accounts for 6 years, LOTRO for as long as it's been around, WW2 Online since 2001, etc.... never been hacked.
Of course, I don't download addons and I don't tell people my account name or password ever (not even roommates). Now, I am getting fake blizzard spam mail for the first time for the past couple of months, but they're all obviously bogus, and it makes me sad people fall for them. I get a lot of facebook spam too, but since I'm not on facebook, that makes them pretty easy to spot as fake lol.
Keyloggers can be embedded in anything.. JAVA, FLASH, and a host of other multimedia plug-ins can be used to extract information from your PC. Just be glad you have not been targetted yet, because once you've been violated, it will make you kinda paranoid about everything on your pc..
I've been hacked three times over 5 years. First time took forever to get my account back and then took forever to get my stuff back. I was so happy to have everything back I didn't care. I thought they were lost for good my alter egos. The last 2 times things went a little faster but those actually happened just days apart. I've never had to go through and make the phone call thankfully. When everything was restored I had all my enchants and everything on my gear even though they warned me that probably wouldn't happen. After that last bout of fighting off the forces of gold farming I got the authenticator. This was when they first came out and I've never had a problem since. I've always been happy with wow's customer support. I've had issues in other games where things get lost or taken and they just tell you to be smarter about it next time. Wow fixes it. For all the whining and groaning people do about Blizz they do care about their customers.
I would be much more impressed if Blizzard gave out the authenticators with the new ex-pac or any physical copy of the game. As it stands now I hear, <INSERT HACKED STORY HERE> ...and then I bought an authenticator.
I had a good experience with Blizzard when my account was hacked, had went almost 4yrs.... not one problem during that time and then one day I get signed out the game and goto log back in and then bam it won't accept the password.
I was lucky because from that moment on I was fighting the hacker and making it tough for him to stay logged in because I reset the password, but then he reset it and then I changed the email but because of how Blizz does and it was delayed he was able to get a password and keep me out.
Blizz restored my account and more than took care of my toons they some how sent me my items and gold back in the mail, but sent me twice the ammount back even my gold.
The phone support and the rep I talked to was nice and very good, as was the people I talked with ingame and the emails I got. They followed up and even weeks later emailed and asked how things was going.
I got an authenticator after that and sleep good at night knowing because of it my account is safe.
just my .02
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE Waiting on: Lost Ark Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
I've been hacked for MapleStory once, and Nexon did nothing to help it. In fact, only people who complained about their account with Nexon Cash on it got help. I've had a problem with Guild Wars before about an email from the Taiwanese Guild Wars saying I needed to reset my password (I confirmed the email's sender, too). They helped me reset my password on the same day and everything went smoothly.
One, have not heard of one account with an authenticator being hacked. Banks use those devices and never had a problem getting hacked when I worked for one. So that is a sure fire way to prevent getting hacked.
Had a different problem, had not played since they changed logins to a battlenet account and I obviously could not log into my account so I had to call them to get my account transfered to my battlenet account, took about 5 calls to get through and about a 40 minute wait. I also had a bad key for my expansion pack, but they would not do anything about that even though whoever was using it had obviously stolen it. Had to return the package to the store and get another.
You can get hacked with authenticator as well. Though it is more difficult. Essentially the keylogger sends your password and authenticator code to the hacker while at the same time killing your connection to wow. They then have seconds to input your info. It happens. It's also rare.
Never once been hacked. I know people who have but I never have.
Keep in mind that these things and not limited to wow. An authenticator may offer protection for wow but if you can get a keylogger so easily you can get hacked anywhere. Your usernames and passwords for any site or service are also being reported back to the hacker. Even if blizzard returns all your stuff, even if you have an authenticator, you may still have a keylogger and it may be stealing your other info.
There is no substitute for common sense. And you know the stupid stuff you do online that got you that keylogger in the first place.
My account got hacked too. THe INACTIVE account, believe it or not. I wonder how the hackers use inactive account. I guess they pay for it and just use as mule or farmer. I cared less, but I did have some money so I bet they used it for their evil purposes. Since account is inactive for years I didnt bother to try to call Blizzard again. First time waited for 30 minutes and decided that its not worth it. I don't play the game anyway. So let them hack it.
I wonder why a lot of inactive accounts get hacked? I mean I can play a game forever with the same password and no hacks. If my accout becomes inactive for a while - there is a huge chance that it will get hacked. I had 2 inactive accounts hacked. And never any of the active ones. I wonder if that has anything to do with games' database itself. Oh and WoW has thousands of gold farmers if not hundreds of thousands. I think half of Korea and China use WoW to make $$$ .
When I got hacked, the gold farmer used my paladin for farm ore. I got my account back before they could send the ore over to their account. I ended up getting 8k gold worth of saronite/titanium, so my experience with getting hacked wasn't too bad, lol. Never got my arena points refunded though...had to wait an extra week to get my loots. :[
I called Blizzard about six months ago after recieving "Thank you for your recent purchase of Celestial Steed" whatever thingy. Needless to say I hadn't played WoW in almost two years so I was curious.
Called them, waited about 30 minutes (during an early afternoon hour) and finally got a guy. He was EXTREMELY helpful and told me no, I wasn't hacked my account was still pristine. The email was from goldbotfishers looking for suckers to click on their links. I even had trouble remembering the toon's name but I got one of them and told him particulars about it, then backed it up with personal info (that hadn't changed).
I must say after playing tons of MMOs, the Blizzard people really should be proud of their customer service people. Courteous, fast and cheerful through I can't imagine all kinds of irate customers who have to wait through the automation.
I realized they must have lines like that due to the sheer amount of customers they have and not some barebones CSMs so it made sense that it would be a long wait.
There was a long forum debate a while back that cataclysm should have authenicators with it.They have put in a new system in the guild rank where you can set the rank "must have authenticator".
Basically when an unusual login happens on your account (like multiple wrong passwords, an ip you do not usually login from ... etc) happens a phone number pops up on screen. You must call that number from a preselected phone, enter a pin and a code displayed on the screen to login. Nothing happens if you login from your normal ip and you pw is correct. I really think accounts beieng hacked costs blizz lots more than they take in with authenticators, and that they want them to stop as much as we do. Cust Service folks don't work for free.
I get constant emails that my account info has been changed, the emails look legit, well they are for all intesive purposes, they are identicle to real ones. I emailed Blizzard about it but have yet to hear back, , but the emails are pissing me off.
There literally is nothing to suggest they are not from Blizzard, all the link when you hover over them are real Blizzard pages, just don't know if that's where they actually take you.
The emails are pissing me off tho - i asked them if it's some kinda of hard advertising just to get me to go to the site since the expansion is comming, lol.
I can log into the battlenet web page just fine, so i don't know.
Yeah, when I got hacked, it's actually getting intouch with someone is hardest part, but once you do getting everything restored just flies. Now I use one those ID Authenticator and I report any of those people selling gold. Because that was what they used my account for as well as selling everything in our guild bank...needless to say I was not on top of the happy list in my guild for awhile even though everything was replaced ...DOOOOOH!!! :-(. Oh well live and learn ;-).
To answer the add on question. Yes. I used Quest tracker back when it was needed. Deadly Boss mods, Healbot (shaman), Recount. and eventualy gearscore.
After seeing a couple posts about using the Windows Virtual Keyboard, I want to add a few warnings about using this.
It MIGHT thwart a few keyloggers, but not many. Most keyloggers work by listening for Windows events. For you non-programmers and techie types, these are the things that allow Windows to wait for your input before doing anything. Any time you press a key, let up on a key, click or move the mouse, etc. generates an event. The Virtual Keyboard works by sending the keypress events just as if you pressed the key on the actual keyboard. The only virtual keyboards that work to avoid keyloggers are ones with randomly located keys and/or screen locations built into the program.
It makes me sad to read this. What an evil world we live in that people do such things. There is so much scam, robbery and harrasment in the internet these days, that sometimes I wonder if it's worth all it.
I myself was recently robbed €600,- by someone who managed to steal my credit card info online. I am still fighting over it, no matter if I am going to see that money ever again.
What a sad world. *sigh*
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
odd, when my gf's account got hacked (while inactvie for months), bliz said I had to get something notarized and snail mailed to them. they never said once that I could call to get it restored.
I think they're pretending that accounts are getting hacked, and they randomly choose which accounts that should under-go the "hacked" status. That way you'd be apt to buying the authenticator.
I am having almost the exact same problems you has , I have been away from WOW for a year & decided to come back for the expansion when I tried to log into my battle.net account it said wrong password , at the time I didnt think much of it as I play Many many MMO's So i went thru the password retrival using my email & secret question & reset the password alls good ?
Well not exactly as when i went to reactivate my accounts I got a message that there suppended due to supicious activity so Now i am in the process of sending emails trying to get this resolved X fingers
Comments
Keyloggers can be embedded in anything.. JAVA, FLASH, and a host of other multimedia plug-ins can be used to extract information from your PC. Just be glad you have not been targetted yet, because once you've been violated, it will make you kinda paranoid about everything on your pc..
I've been hacked three times over 5 years. First time took forever to get my account back and then took forever to get my stuff back. I was so happy to have everything back I didn't care. I thought they were lost for good my alter egos. The last 2 times things went a little faster but those actually happened just days apart. I've never had to go through and make the phone call thankfully. When everything was restored I had all my enchants and everything on my gear even though they warned me that probably wouldn't happen. After that last bout of fighting off the forces of gold farming I got the authenticator. This was when they first came out and I've never had a problem since. I've always been happy with wow's customer support. I've had issues in other games where things get lost or taken and they just tell you to be smarter about it next time. Wow fixes it. For all the whining and groaning people do about Blizz they do care about their customers.
I would be much more impressed if Blizzard gave out the authenticators with the new ex-pac or any physical copy of the game. As it stands now I hear, <INSERT HACKED STORY HERE> ...and then I bought an authenticator.
I had a good experience with Blizzard when my account was hacked, had went almost 4yrs.... not one problem during that time and then one day I get signed out the game and goto log back in and then bam it won't accept the password.
I was lucky because from that moment on I was fighting the hacker and making it tough for him to stay logged in because I reset the password, but then he reset it and then I changed the email but because of how Blizz does and it was delayed he was able to get a password and keep me out.
Blizz restored my account and more than took care of my toons they some how sent me my items and gold back in the mail, but sent me twice the ammount back even my gold.
The phone support and the rep I talked to was nice and very good, as was the people I talked with ingame and the emails I got. They followed up and even weeks later emailed and asked how things was going.
I got an authenticator after that and sleep good at night knowing because of it my account is safe.
just my .02
Played: MCO - EQ/EQ2 - WoW - VG - WAR - AoC - LoTRO - DDO - GW/GW2 - Eve - Rift - FE - TSW - TSO - WS - ESO - AA - BD
Playing: Sims 3 & 4, Diablo3 and PoE
Waiting on: Lost Ark
Who's going to make a Cyberpunk MMO?
I've been hacked for MapleStory once, and Nexon did nothing to help it. In fact, only people who complained about their account with Nexon Cash on it got help. I've had a problem with Guild Wars before about an email from the Taiwanese Guild Wars saying I needed to reset my password (I confirmed the email's sender, too). They helped me reset my password on the same day and everything went smoothly.
You can get hacked with authenticator as well. Though it is more difficult. Essentially the keylogger sends your password and authenticator code to the hacker while at the same time killing your connection to wow. They then have seconds to input your info. It happens. It's also rare.
Tribes 2 is back!!!! http://www.tribesnext.com/
And from the makers of tribes: Fallen Empire: Legions http://www.instantaction.com/
Never once been hacked. I know people who have but I never have.
Keep in mind that these things and not limited to wow. An authenticator may offer protection for wow but if you can get a keylogger so easily you can get hacked anywhere. Your usernames and passwords for any site or service are also being reported back to the hacker. Even if blizzard returns all your stuff, even if you have an authenticator, you may still have a keylogger and it may be stealing your other info.
There is no substitute for common sense. And you know the stupid stuff you do online that got you that keylogger in the first place.
Tribes 2 is back!!!! http://www.tribesnext.com/
And from the makers of tribes: Fallen Empire: Legions http://www.instantaction.com/
My account got hacked too. THe INACTIVE account, believe it or not. I wonder how the hackers use inactive account. I guess they pay for it and just use as mule or farmer. I cared less, but I did have some money so I bet they used it for their evil purposes. Since account is inactive for years I didnt bother to try to call Blizzard again. First time waited for 30 minutes and decided that its not worth it. I don't play the game anyway. So let them hack it.
best best is to change password each month and use lasstpass
I wonder why a lot of inactive accounts get hacked? I mean I can play a game forever with the same password and no hacks. If my accout becomes inactive for a while - there is a huge chance that it will get hacked. I had 2 inactive accounts hacked. And never any of the active ones. I wonder if that has anything to do with games' database itself. Oh and WoW has thousands of gold farmers if not hundreds of thousands. I think half of Korea and China use WoW to make $$$
.
When I got hacked, the gold farmer used my paladin for farm ore. I got my account back before they could send the ore over to their account. I ended up getting 8k gold worth of saronite/titanium, so my experience with getting hacked wasn't too bad, lol. Never got my arena points refunded though...had to wait an extra week to get my loots. :[
I had my 2nd account hacked awhile back. Had a lvl 14 hunter on it. That was it. No gold, nothing on it.
I called Blizzard about six months ago after recieving "Thank you for your recent purchase of Celestial Steed" whatever thingy. Needless to say I hadn't played WoW in almost two years so I was curious.
Called them, waited about 30 minutes (during an early afternoon hour) and finally got a guy. He was EXTREMELY helpful and told me no, I wasn't hacked my account was still pristine. The email was from goldbotfishers looking for suckers to click on their links. I even had trouble remembering the toon's name but I got one of them and told him particulars about it, then backed it up with personal info (that hadn't changed).
I must say after playing tons of MMOs, the Blizzard people really should be proud of their customer service people. Courteous, fast and cheerful through I can't imagine all kinds of irate customers who have to wait through the automation.
I realized they must have lines like that due to the sheer amount of customers they have and not some barebones CSMs so it made sense that it would be a long wait.
"TO MICHAEL!"
There was a long forum debate a while back that cataclysm should have authenicators with it.They have put in a new system in the guild rank where you can set the rank "must have authenticator".
There is a new free (and better in my opinion) security system at battlenet
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=35806&pageNumber=1&searchQuery=phone+call+authentication+when+unusual+login
Basically when an unusual login happens on your account (like multiple wrong passwords, an ip you do not usually login from ... etc) happens a phone number pops up on screen. You must call that number from a preselected phone, enter a pin and a code displayed on the screen to login. Nothing happens if you login from your normal ip and you pw is correct. I really think accounts beieng hacked costs blizz lots more than they take in with authenticators, and that they want them to stop as much as we do. Cust Service folks don't work for free.
edit for spelling (some prolly still wrong)
If Ya Ain't Dyin, Ya Ain't Tryin
I get constant emails that my account info has been changed, the emails look legit, well they are for all intesive purposes, they are identicle to real ones. I emailed Blizzard about it but have yet to hear back, , but the emails are pissing me off.
There literally is nothing to suggest they are not from Blizzard, all the link when you hover over them are real Blizzard pages, just don't know if that's where they actually take you.
The emails are pissing me off tho - i asked them if it's some kinda of hard advertising just to get me to go to the site since the expansion is comming, lol.
I can log into the battlenet web page just fine, so i don't know.
Yeah, when I got hacked, it's actually getting intouch with someone is hardest part, but once you do getting everything restored just flies. Now I use one those ID Authenticator and I report any of those people selling gold. Because that was what they used my account for as well as selling everything in our guild bank...needless to say I was not on top of the happy list in my guild for awhile even though everything was replaced ...DOOOOOH!!! :-(. Oh well live and learn ;-).
Hi Everyone,
To answer the add on question. Yes. I used Quest tracker back when it was needed. Deadly Boss mods, Healbot (shaman), Recount. and eventualy gearscore.
I think I avoided all of the others.
After seeing a couple posts about using the Windows Virtual Keyboard, I want to add a few warnings about using this.
It MIGHT thwart a few keyloggers, but not many. Most keyloggers work by listening for Windows events. For you non-programmers and techie types, these are the things that allow Windows to wait for your input before doing anything. Any time you press a key, let up on a key, click or move the mouse, etc. generates an event. The Virtual Keyboard works by sending the keypress events just as if you pressed the key on the actual keyboard. The only virtual keyboards that work to avoid keyloggers are ones with randomly located keys and/or screen locations built into the program.
It makes me sad to read this. What an evil world we live in that people do such things. There is so much scam, robbery and harrasment in the internet these days, that sometimes I wonder if it's worth all it.
I myself was recently robbed €600,- by someone who managed to steal my credit card info online. I am still fighting over it, no matter if I am going to see that money ever again.
What a sad world. *sigh*
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I think the icing on the cake for me was when the Hacker, though a 3rd party, asked for the ebonweave gloves It had left on my main :-)
===========================
If you woke up breathing,
congratulations! You have another
chance.
===========================
odd, when my gf's account got hacked (while inactvie for months), bliz said I had to get something notarized and snail mailed to them. they never said once that I could call to get it restored.
lol, that's crazy
I think they're pretending that accounts are getting hacked, and they randomly choose which accounts that should under-go the "hacked" status. That way you'd be apt to buying the authenticator.
I call shenanigans!
~Webby "This MMO needs more dead bird."
I am having almost the exact same problems you has , I have been away from WOW for a year & decided to come back for the expansion when I tried to log into my battle.net account it said wrong password , at the time I didnt think much of it as I play Many many MMO's So i went thru the password retrival using my email & secret question & reset the password alls good ?
Well not exactly as when i went to reactivate my accounts I got a message that there suppended due to supicious activity so Now i am in the process of sending emails trying to get this resolved X fingers