Believe it or not, 3 days ago i got banned for spamming???? i was like WTF
First i got disconnected and i got a message that my password was incorrect then i thought i was hacked so i tryd to change password, well that worked.
So i went back in-game and i was disconnected a few minutes after again!
Now i got banned......
And the fun part is that i payd from begin till catalysm and 1 month extra, thats about 75 euro...
Now i made a ticket about what happend, why the heck should i pay 75 euros and then start spamming around knowing i will get banned.... 3-4 days waiting now still no reply. I wonder if they even bother to look at it.
btw i got no virus or anything, did the check already.
They should open my account back or i want my money back if they won't,
Did they steal your credit card info? No? Then no one has access to blizzard servers. You got keylogged. Moving on.
Yep that's what happened to me once I downloaded Curse handy-dandy automatic downloader. So, I went mining through the files and lo and belold I found an embedded program that was not suppose to be there and proceeded to demolish it. So, definately beware of third party programs.
I don't play WoW nor have I in about 3-4 years. I recently received an email from blizzard saying first: You're account could be compromised. Then they said I had been banned for using a hack. Worst part was, I didn't care. Sure, they probably had some semi-sensitive information...and no I've never handed out any information. It is weird I've been inactive for so long and yet a few months ago was hacked. You think it's worth fixing? No..I'll never play again...but still...I do feel dirty..just a bit.
All those people saying to "just purchase an authenticator", guess what? You can still be hacked with one.
The odds of getting hacked WITH an authenicator are extremely low, probably so miniscule it's not even worth mentioning.
Tell you what... let's see if we can find someone with a legitimate account here (not a shell) that claims they bought an authenticator and STILL got hacked. I doubt you will so your point is basically about as strong a kitten in a burlap sack thrown into a river.
I know it's hard to do, but it is still possible. You seem to be getting pretty upset over this. lol
Read about a diablo security loop hole which prob worked on wow at first. Sending a email to battle net with a certain code to get any accout password you wanted...
Also you know its possible your email was hacked and not just one of em, but a lot of em. Found my friend had both her's hacked and was fowarding all mail to another email. As for staging the whole thing, i'm not going to lie, i believe it. Perfect cover up for more money. As for hackers in first place. Nah, you can't stop them. They can even get through authenticator if they wanted to, just no real hackers are up to it.
i got hacked too.. they used my account to farm ramparts. when blizzard gave me back my gear they sold they also gave me all the mails the farmers had sent.. i had 547 mails and made 18k gold out of it so cheers hackers do me again
Before the authenticator came out, Blizzard was pretty nice about being hacked. Now they just want you to pay for their extra security so they can get some money out of you. I mean, World of Warcraft, although still massive, is a dying game. Their subscriptions are getting smaller every year as F2P games and pay-once-up-front games are being released in better and better quality.
I think that's why they put in special mounts and services like the authenticator. They just want money from a dying game.
Now that's a strange response. One would think that the longer time goes by, the more interesting it would be to revisit an old mmorpg (assuming the game was alive and well). A RL friend encouraged him to do it. Hell, if I had any RL friends that played and they tried to get me to check out the game again while over at their place, I'd probably get some booze and say wth, let's do it. What are you really getting at here, I just don't see your issue?
I played Warhammer Online.
It was the worst game I've ever played at launch. I played the game for about two months, then gave up. I didn't see any redeeming value in it other than PQs and quickly because bored with the bad PvE.
Outside of the facerolling Brightwizards, the PvP was not that thrilling to me either with boring Keep takes and giveaways.
Now, it's been about two years since that game has launched and I've read much about it. It has gotten better in small respects but the population is still probably no more than 80k. Most of the posts on the officials now are about mass quits due to the last "expansion".
There is no way I would want to "re-visit" a game like that under any circumstances this far out, so FIVE years is even more out of the question.
Newer games have better graphics and better gameplay. I think most people are like this as well.. few go back to check in on some game they didn't like at launch five years later.
If he wants to be talked into a game he said was not his thing, fine. But it's silly to think that most peole would just load up a game to check levels when they can simply look it up on the character search.
First of all, an authenticator is not the only way to protect your account, but it is the easiest.. for one thing, no account has been hacked that has an authenticator on it..
but to secure your account without one, you need to change your battlenet username to an email address that is used only for WOW, secondly you need to have a password that isnt your mothers maidenname or birthdate etc.. a combination of 4 lowercase 4 uppercase and a few numbers and special characters, is usually enough to create a strong password.. then, you need to ensure that you have a decent antivirus program that you run, at least every 2 days, along with some anti spyware software, and just to make sure, never ever respond to emails sent to you from people claiming to be blizzard, in fact, just delete the emails without opening them.
or you can buy an authenticator.. because its a hell of a lot easier.
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.
Blizzard arent trying to turn a profit on authenticators, im pretty sure they are selling them at cost, they are even practically giving away the apps for it for smartphones. The reason Blizzard are selling authenticators is simple, they know that a majority of their players do not have the technical knowhow to be able to protect themselves any other way, and as WoW is targetted so extensively, this is the best method of fighting the hackers, of course, the tin foil hat brigade will have their own ideas about this.
Here is a question that I did not see answered (because I got halfway down and quit)...
Once they hack your account, what do they use to keep it running? Your credit card info should have been gone. Did they use another card? If so, couldn't Blizz track who did the hacking that way? They have to pay the bill somehow...
Here is a question that I did not see answered (because I got halfway down and quit)...
Once they hack your account, what do they use to keep it running? Your credit card info should have been gone. Did they use another card? If so, couldn't Blizz track who did the hacking that way? They have to pay the bill somehow...
normally they just use gametime cards to either extend or reactivate.
First of all, an authenticator is not the only way to protect your account, but it is the easiest.. for one thing, no account has been hacked that has an authenticator on it..
.
Actually a few accounts have been hacked that had authenticators. It is very difficult, requires the player to do a lot of things that should be common sense not to do, but it has happened with Man-in-the-middle attacks.
There is no such thing as 100% safe and as long as you are on the internet, there is always a risk of a sercurity breach.
whats becoming of this site when articles like this are written and put into their news discussions?
I mean, thats a long stretch to go to get, what.. maybe a few cents of income off every authenticator? It might surprise most of you to know that blizzard actually makes zero income on these authenticators and would much rather you use one of their free options such as mobile app or their call back method.
If Blizzard really wanted to dip into our pockets they would pay an artist for a couple hours of their time to make an in-game pet to put on their blizzard store for $10 and sell hundreds of thousands of these the first hour they hit the market. ...Ya.. see what I did there?
Did they steal your credit card info? No? Then no one has access to blizzard servers. You got keylogged. Moving on.
Stealing credit card info carrys legal penalties, stealing game info does not.
Try again.
I am one of those who had their account compromised months after I left the game. Having put years into it I had items of value. It was only when I was examining the possiblity of giving some of this to a IRL friend who just started that I discovered the compromise.
Could the hacker have access to my account info as it was when I left, kept it a few months, then use it? Certainly, but thats not the point.
The only reason why someone would take an account like this is that they would profit from it. Paying $15 from their own pocket just to look inside the account won't do it. They would take it from other sources.
Hearing all of these stories of users who discovered thier accounts were compromised months if not years after they left the game tells me that whoever is doing this is doing it on a massive scale. Likely having access to hundreds of accounts and hundreds of stolen credit cards.
The real question is: If the company is not taking the necessary actions to prevent this activity, are they liable?
I havent played WOW since before the Burning Crusade came out but I still get Phishing emails saying i better "Check my account" from the handy link provided in the email.....
Ive never had a mmo account hacked but i can imagine it is a huge PITA to clena up.
Originally posted by Solestran My account was hacked twice. I give up on Blizzard and NCSoft, the only two companies where I ever have this problem. At least Blizzard was willing to try and fix it, but NCSoft would never even respond to my emails. Both are not worth the headache of having to deal with this crap.
NA NCsoft support does kind of suck, the Asia department are much better (duh that's where their market is). At least in Aion they have a seperate key to enter to access your characters, so even if your Aion account gets hijacked they can't create/delete or enter your characters, they have a bunk account.
Anyways, on the subject, no it's not always OUR fault, like many of us has already said- it being hacked YEARS after not playing. I said that I haven't played since 2006, uninstalled the game and haven't touched it nor logged in since then, when I first got the game I used an email address that I later changed and last fall I was getting emails about my account on the email address I originally registered the game with which has no association with it now and no I haven't clicked on any of them since most of them contain bogus addresses when you hover your mouse over it and look in your browser's status bar.
On the internet I have 6 emails and 18-20 different passwords and a handful of usernames, I try not to make my logins redundant, yet my WoW account was indeed hijacked and the hijacker even managed to link it to their battle.net account (when I went to recover I was UNABLE to link it to my newly created battle.net). And Blizzard (I contacted the billing department) were charging me the $14/mo fee and my bank's CC was suspended, I found out because I tried to purchase a plane ticket and was unable to, which I find odd because I always have used PayPal to pay monthly fees for games.
Did they steal your credit card info? No? Then no one has access to blizzard servers. You got keylogged. Moving on.
Stealing credit card info carrys legal penalties, stealing game info does not.
Try again.
I am one of those who had their account compromised months after I left the game. Having put years into it I had items of value. It was only when I was examining the possiblity of giving some of this to a IRL friend who just started that I discovered the compromise.
Could the hacker have access to my account info as it was when I left, kept it a few months, then use it? Certainly, but thats not the point.
The only reason why someone would take an account like this is that they would profit from it. Paying $15 from their own pocket just to look inside the account won't do it. They would take it from other sources.
Hearing all of these stories of users who discovered thier accounts were compromised months if not years after they left the game tells me that whoever is doing this is doing it on a massive scale. Likely having access to hundreds of accounts and hundreds of stolen credit cards.
The real question is: If the company is not taking the necessary actions to prevent this activity, are they liable?
Blizzard is constantly doing something about hackers, but account security is not blizzards responsibility, its the owner of the account, all blizzard can do is give account owners the tools, or, if they do not wish to use them, advice on how to avoid being hacked, and although a great deal of this is probably common sense to those with a decent amount of knowledge of online security, a surprising number, or maybe not so surprising number? aren't aware of them. Blizzard is not liable in any way, though obviously, there are those with a vested interest in making it seem as though they are.. and, yes account hacking is carried out on a massive scale, albeit not by a single organisation, there are numerous gold sellers advertising their 'wares' who are just waiting for the opportunity to gain access to your account, cyber crime is a relatively new field, but its a very lucrative one, and just because a currency is virtual, doesnt mean it doesnt have a 'real' value, and the only way to deal with this is to make it financially prohibitive for them to operate, Blizzard didnt have to create the tools needed to protect accounts (authenticators) and they could have charged more for them if they'd wanted to. personally i do believe Blizzard is doing the best they can for their customers, all 11+ million of them, to do so costs Blizzard money, in terms of man hours for the staff who have to deal with players who have had their accounts hacked, and also in terms of those who endeavour to try and keep the ones found online.. offline, its not in Blizzards best interests either, to have players accounts hacked, as it costs them money too, after all. This doesnt just apply to Blizzard though, all MMO companies have this issue, if to a lesser degree due to the size of their playerbase. It wouldnt surprise me if more companies didnt include an additional 1 shot key generator to their account protection measures, Blizzard is just ahead of the rest in this area, because of their games popularity.
Did they steal your credit card info? No? Then no one has access to blizzard servers. You got keylogged. Moving on.
Stealing credit card info carrys legal penalties, stealing game info does not.
Try again.
I am one of those who had their account compromised months after I left the game. Having put years into it I had items of value. It was only when I was examining the possiblity of giving some of this to a IRL friend who just started that I discovered the compromise.
Could the hacker have access to my account info as it was when I left, kept it a few months, then use it? Certainly, but thats not the point.
The only reason why someone would take an account like this is that they would profit from it. Paying $15 from their own pocket just to look inside the account won't do it. They would take it from other sources.
Hearing all of these stories of users who discovered thier accounts were compromised months if not years after they left the game tells me that whoever is doing this is doing it on a massive scale. Likely having access to hundreds of accounts and hundreds of stolen credit cards.
The real question is: If the company is not taking the necessary actions to prevent this activity, are they liable?
Blizzard is constantly doing something about hackers, but account security is not blizzards responsibility, its the owner of the account, all blizzard can do is give account owners the tools, or, if they do not wish to use them, advice on how to avoid being hacked, and although a great deal of this is probably common sense to those with a decent amount of knowledge of online security, a surprising number, or maybe not so surprising number? aren't aware of them. Blizzard is not liable in any way, though obviously, there are those with a vested interest in making it seem as though they are.. and, yes account hacking is carried out on a massive scale, albeit not by a single organisation, there are numerous gold sellers advertising their 'wares' who are just waiting for the opportunity to gain access to your account, cyber crime is a relatively new field, but its a very lucrative one, and just because a currency is virtual, doesnt mean it doesnt have a 'real' value, and the only way to deal with this is to make it financially prohibitive for them to operate, Blizzard didnt have to create the tools needed to protect accounts (authenticators) and they could have charged more for them if they'd wanted to. personally i do believe Blizzard is doing the best they can for their customers, all 11+ million of them, to do so costs Blizzard money, in terms of man hours for the staff who have to deal with players who have had their accounts hacked, and also in terms of those who endeavour to try and keep the ones found online.. offline, its not in Blizzards best interests either, to have players accounts hacked, as it costs them money too, after all. This doesnt just apply to Blizzard though, all MMO companies have this issue, if to a lesser degree due to the size of their playerbase. It wouldnt surprise me if more companies didnt include an additional 1 shot key generator to their account protection measures, Blizzard is just ahead of the rest in this area, because of their games popularity.
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.
Did they steal your credit card info? No? Then no one has access to blizzard servers. You got keylogged. Moving on.
Stealing credit card info carrys legal penalties, stealing game info does not.
Try again.
I am one of those who had their account compromised months after I left the game. Having put years into it I had items of value. It was only when I was examining the possiblity of giving some of this to a IRL friend who just started that I discovered the compromise.
Could the hacker have access to my account info as it was when I left, kept it a few months, then use it? Certainly, but thats not the point.
The only reason why someone would take an account like this is that they would profit from it. Paying $15 from their own pocket just to look inside the account won't do it. They would take it from other sources.
Hearing all of these stories of users who discovered thier accounts were compromised months if not years after they left the game tells me that whoever is doing this is doing it on a massive scale. Likely having access to hundreds of accounts and hundreds of stolen credit cards.
The real question is: If the company is not taking the necessary actions to prevent this activity, are they liable?
Blizzard is constantly doing something about hackers, but account security is not blizzards responsibility, its the owner of the account, all blizzard can do is give account owners the tools, or, if they do not wish to use them, advice on how to avoid being hacked, and although a great deal of this is probably common sense to those with a decent amount of knowledge of online security, a surprising number, or maybe not so surprising number? aren't aware of them. Blizzard is not liable in any way, though obviously, there are those with a vested interest in making it seem as though they are.. and, yes account hacking is carried out on a massive scale, albeit not by a single organisation, there are numerous gold sellers advertising their 'wares' who are just waiting for the opportunity to gain access to your account, cyber crime is a relatively new field, but its a very lucrative one, and just because a currency is virtual, doesnt mean it doesnt have a 'real' value, and the only way to deal with this is to make it financially prohibitive for them to operate, Blizzard didnt have to create the tools needed to protect accounts (authenticators) and they could have charged more for them if they'd wanted to. personally i do believe Blizzard is doing the best they can for their customers, all 11+ million of them, to do so costs Blizzard money, in terms of man hours for the staff who have to deal with players who have had their accounts hacked, and also in terms of those who endeavour to try and keep the ones found online.. offline, its not in Blizzards best interests either, to have players accounts hacked, as it costs them money too, after all. This doesnt just apply to Blizzard though, all MMO companies have this issue, if to a lesser degree due to the size of their playerbase. It wouldnt surprise me if more companies didnt include an additional 1 shot key generator to their account protection measures, Blizzard is just ahead of the rest in this area, because of their games popularity.
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.
Read the EULA.. in fact, read any games EULA.. i think you'll find otherwise.
Ah just looked at my account out of curiosity and seems Blizzard DID do what I requested last year, if you don't play anymore and have been hacked get them to lock down the account (permanently suspend).
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".
my opinion is that,some of the people who work for blizzard are in on this.i dont go on dodgy sites, i only use pc for legit purposes yet my account was hacked, my friends down the road was at the same time.neither of us are stupid when it comes to givin out details of accounts.so where do these retards come from.sad little people who have no life but to make others miserable.i think blizzard are not in on this but some of the scum that work for them are, great way for extra pay, i mean are they not being payed enough.wot i am suprised about is that blizzard do next to nothing to keep the accounts secure. i play lotro, conan,ffxiv and no problems.so why is it just this game that me and the wife have trouble with.i know a lot more peeps play this game but not the point really. the more money they receive you would expect the security to be a lot better than it is.
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.
Read the EULA.. in fact, read any games EULA.. i think you'll find otherwise.
Ahh yes, the old "It's in the license so we're absolved of any responsibilty" arguement.
That doesn't seem to stop people from complaining about bugs, content issues, lag, servers being down, or any other issues, yet no one throws the "read the EULA they do't have to fix it!" argument at the people who do so.
So sure, I'll conceed to you that Blizzard is not legally obligated to take responsibility for the security of their own system.
But, it's a pretty poor way to run a service oriented business when you can't even be bothered to properly design a secure account management system properly.
Keep defending Blizzard, because they can never do anything wrong, ever.
Comments
Believe it or not, 3 days ago i got banned for spamming???? i was like WTF
First i got disconnected and i got a message that my password was incorrect then i thought i was hacked so i tryd to change password, well that worked.
So i went back in-game and i was disconnected a few minutes after again!
Now i got banned......
And the fun part is that i payd from begin till catalysm and 1 month extra, thats about 75 euro...
Now i made a ticket about what happend, why the heck should i pay 75 euros and then start spamming around knowing i will get banned.... 3-4 days waiting now still no reply. I wonder if they even bother to look at it.
btw i got no virus or anything, did the check already.
They should open my account back or i want my money back if they won't,
Stealing credit card info carrys legal penalties, stealing game info does not.
Try again.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Yep that's what happened to me once I downloaded Curse handy-dandy automatic downloader. So, I went mining through the files and lo and belold I found an embedded program that was not suppose to be there and proceeded to demolish it. So, definately beware of third party programs.
I don't play WoW nor have I in about 3-4 years. I recently received an email from blizzard saying first: You're account could be compromised. Then they said I had been banned for using a hack. Worst part was, I didn't care. Sure, they probably had some semi-sensitive information...and no I've never handed out any information. It is weird I've been inactive for so long and yet a few months ago was hacked. You think it's worth fixing? No..I'll never play again...but still...I do feel dirty..just a bit.
I know it's hard to do, but it is still possible. You seem to be getting pretty upset over this. lol
http://www.mmocrunch.com/2010/02/28/world-of-warcraft-authenticator-hacked/
Read about a diablo security loop hole which prob worked on wow at first. Sending a email to battle net with a certain code to get any accout password you wanted...
Also you know its possible your email was hacked and not just one of em, but a lot of em. Found my friend had both her's hacked and was fowarding all mail to another email. As for staging the whole thing, i'm not going to lie, i believe it. Perfect cover up for more money. As for hackers in first place. Nah, you can't stop them. They can even get through authenticator if they wanted to, just no real hackers are up to it.
i got hacked too.. they used my account to farm ramparts. when blizzard gave me back my gear they sold they also gave me all the mails the farmers had sent.. i had 547 mails and made 18k gold out of it so cheers hackers do me again
Before the authenticator came out, Blizzard was pretty nice about being hacked. Now they just want you to pay for their extra security so they can get some money out of you. I mean, World of Warcraft, although still massive, is a dying game. Their subscriptions are getting smaller every year as F2P games and pay-once-up-front games are being released in better and better quality.
I think that's why they put in special mounts and services like the authenticator. They just want money from a dying game.
I played Warhammer Online.
It was the worst game I've ever played at launch. I played the game for about two months, then gave up. I didn't see any redeeming value in it other than PQs and quickly because bored with the bad PvE.
Outside of the facerolling Brightwizards, the PvP was not that thrilling to me either with boring Keep takes and giveaways.
Now, it's been about two years since that game has launched and I've read much about it. It has gotten better in small respects but the population is still probably no more than 80k. Most of the posts on the officials now are about mass quits due to the last "expansion".
There is no way I would want to "re-visit" a game like that under any circumstances this far out, so FIVE years is even more out of the question.
Newer games have better graphics and better gameplay. I think most people are like this as well.. few go back to check in on some game they didn't like at launch five years later.
If he wants to be talked into a game he said was not his thing, fine. But it's silly to think that most peole would just load up a game to check levels when they can simply look it up on the character search.
"TO MICHAEL!"
First of all, an authenticator is not the only way to protect your account, but it is the easiest.. for one thing, no account has been hacked that has an authenticator on it..
but to secure your account without one, you need to change your battlenet username to an email address that is used only for WOW, secondly you need to have a password that isnt your mothers maidenname or birthdate etc.. a combination of 4 lowercase 4 uppercase and a few numbers and special characters, is usually enough to create a strong password.. then, you need to ensure that you have a decent antivirus program that you run, at least every 2 days, along with some anti spyware software, and just to make sure, never ever respond to emails sent to you from people claiming to be blizzard, in fact, just delete the emails without opening them.
or you can buy an authenticator.. because its a hell of a lot easier.
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.
Blizzard arent trying to turn a profit on authenticators, im pretty sure they are selling them at cost, they are even practically giving away the apps for it for smartphones. The reason Blizzard are selling authenticators is simple, they know that a majority of their players do not have the technical knowhow to be able to protect themselves any other way, and as WoW is targetted so extensively, this is the best method of fighting the hackers, of course, the tin foil hat brigade will have their own ideas about this.
Here is a question that I did not see answered (because I got halfway down and quit)...
Once they hack your account, what do they use to keep it running? Your credit card info should have been gone. Did they use another card? If so, couldn't Blizz track who did the hacking that way? They have to pay the bill somehow...
normally they just use gametime cards to either extend or reactivate.
Actually a few accounts have been hacked that had authenticators. It is very difficult, requires the player to do a lot of things that should be common sense not to do, but it has happened with Man-in-the-middle attacks.
There is no such thing as 100% safe and as long as you are on the internet, there is always a risk of a sercurity breach.
whats becoming of this site when articles like this are written and put into their news discussions?
I mean, thats a long stretch to go to get, what.. maybe a few cents of income off every authenticator? It might surprise most of you to know that blizzard actually makes zero income on these authenticators and would much rather you use one of their free options such as mobile app or their call back method.
If Blizzard really wanted to dip into our pockets they would pay an artist for a couple hours of their time to make an in-game pet to put on their blizzard store for $10 and sell hundreds of thousands of these the first hour they hit the market. ...Ya.. see what I did there?
[Mod Edit]
I am one of those who had their account compromised months after I left the game. Having put years into it I had items of value. It was only when I was examining the possiblity of giving some of this to a IRL friend who just started that I discovered the compromise.
Could the hacker have access to my account info as it was when I left, kept it a few months, then use it? Certainly, but thats not the point.
The only reason why someone would take an account like this is that they would profit from it. Paying $15 from their own pocket just to look inside the account won't do it. They would take it from other sources.
Hearing all of these stories of users who discovered thier accounts were compromised months if not years after they left the game tells me that whoever is doing this is doing it on a massive scale. Likely having access to hundreds of accounts and hundreds of stolen credit cards.
The real question is: If the company is not taking the necessary actions to prevent this activity, are they liable?
I havent played WOW since before the Burning Crusade came out but I still get Phishing emails saying i better "Check my account" from the handy link provided in the email.....
Ive never had a mmo account hacked but i can imagine it is a huge PITA to clena up.
Anyways, on the subject, no it's not always OUR fault, like many of us has already said- it being hacked YEARS after not playing. I said that I haven't played since 2006, uninstalled the game and haven't touched it nor logged in since then, when I first got the game I used an email address that I later changed and last fall I was getting emails about my account on the email address I originally registered the game with which has no association with it now and no I haven't clicked on any of them since most of them contain bogus addresses when you hover your mouse over it and look in your browser's status bar.
On the internet I have 6 emails and 18-20 different passwords and a handful of usernames, I try not to make my logins redundant, yet my WoW account was indeed hijacked and the hijacker even managed to link it to their battle.net account (when I went to recover I was UNABLE to link it to my newly created battle.net). And Blizzard (I contacted the billing department) were charging me the $14/mo fee and my bank's CC was suspended, I found out because I tried to purchase a plane ticket and was unable to, which I find odd because I always have used PayPal to pay monthly fees for games.
Blizzard is constantly doing something about hackers, but account security is not blizzards responsibility, its the owner of the account, all blizzard can do is give account owners the tools, or, if they do not wish to use them, advice on how to avoid being hacked, and although a great deal of this is probably common sense to those with a decent amount of knowledge of online security, a surprising number, or maybe not so surprising number? aren't aware of them. Blizzard is not liable in any way, though obviously, there are those with a vested interest in making it seem as though they are.. and, yes account hacking is carried out on a massive scale, albeit not by a single organisation, there are numerous gold sellers advertising their 'wares' who are just waiting for the opportunity to gain access to your account, cyber crime is a relatively new field, but its a very lucrative one, and just because a currency is virtual, doesnt mean it doesnt have a 'real' value, and the only way to deal with this is to make it financially prohibitive for them to operate, Blizzard didnt have to create the tools needed to protect accounts (authenticators) and they could have charged more for them if they'd wanted to. personally i do believe Blizzard is doing the best they can for their customers, all 11+ million of them, to do so costs Blizzard money, in terms of man hours for the staff who have to deal with players who have had their accounts hacked, and also in terms of those who endeavour to try and keep the ones found online.. offline, its not in Blizzards best interests either, to have players accounts hacked, as it costs them money too, after all. This doesnt just apply to Blizzard though, all MMO companies have this issue, if to a lesser degree due to the size of their playerbase. It wouldnt surprise me if more companies didnt include an additional 1 shot key generator to their account protection measures, Blizzard is just ahead of the rest in this area, because of their games popularity.
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.
Read the EULA.. in fact, read any games EULA.. i think you'll find otherwise.
Authenticator. Get one. Now. Now. NOW!
Ah just looked at my account out of curiosity and seems Blizzard DID do what I requested last year, if you don't play anymore and have been hacked get them to lock down the account (permanently suspend).
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".
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
my opinion is that,some of the people who work for blizzard are in on this.i dont go on dodgy sites, i only use pc for legit purposes yet my account was hacked, my friends down the road was at the same time.neither of us are stupid when it comes to givin out details of accounts.so where do these retards come from.sad little people who have no life but to make others miserable.i think blizzard are not in on this but some of the scum that work for them are, great way for extra pay, i mean are they not being payed enough.wot i am suprised about is that blizzard do next to nothing to keep the accounts secure. i play lotro, conan,ffxiv and no problems.so why is it just this game that me and the wife have trouble with.i know a lot more peeps play this game but not the point really. the more money they receive you would expect the security to be a lot better than it is.
Ahh yes, the old "It's in the license so we're absolved of any responsibilty" arguement.
That doesn't seem to stop people from complaining about bugs, content issues, lag, servers being down, or any other issues, yet no one throws the "read the EULA they do't have to fix it!" argument at the people who do so.
So sure, I'll conceed to you that Blizzard is not legally obligated to take responsibility for the security of their own system.
But, it's a pretty poor way to run a service oriented business when you can't even be bothered to properly design a secure account management system properly.
Keep defending Blizzard, because they can never do anything wrong, ever.