So I got hacked...my own fault but damn what a pita

[Zamok]

Oh so I got hacked sad thing is it was right as I was transfering my toons to accross accounts before I moved to battlenet to set up my new authenticator.

My email I used for Wow was hacked/keylogged whatever not sure how but thats beside the point. (PS I dont have a habit of clicking links or visiting sites I should not but somehow I still managed to F'up.). The IT guy at work cannot find anything on my PC except a AV warnign 3 months ago that was supposedly caught, so a reformat and a re-install of everything soon followed.

All I can say is these feckers are patient and fast.

1. Authenticator arrives, yay wont get anymore shit for not having one.
2. I decide to transfer one of my pallies to a different account so I can use him as part of the new team.
3. Transfer confirmation email arrives with account name listed in it.
4. I log into blizz to do the confirmation thing. hmm password isnt working.
5. Try to do a password retrieval/change error "you have done this to many times in a short period"
6. I log into an alt account in game and see the guild bank being looted. Kick my other toons from guild to stop the process.
6. I quickly start zapping account with new passwords.
7. I go to log into email again and I start to think I should have learnt cantonese as the default language on the email account is no longer english.(Edit: Not a shot at chinese but I can tell you what a brilliant piece of work this was on their behalf, the turn me back to english button was in another language and I had a hell of a time finding it)
8. I return to game screen to see I have been kicked from server.
9. I manage to save 4 of 9 accounts with email changes from my laptop and petition a GM.
10. GM responds quickly somewhere like 40 minutes (which is good considering it was PM aussie time) and does his thing. All accounts are being locked down for the night until I can get hold of billing in the morning US time.
11. go through all the processes on Blizzard site etc etc

End result. In that time they had they managed to

Delete all my raid toons accross 5 accounts. Strip the guild bank of about 30k worth of mats and cash and create toons on one account on near every US server called ASDHGEE or similar.

So what a lovely day yesterday was. I now have control of the accounts again and they are registered on the authenticator. Now to wait and see if they can recover my main raid toons.

[Drommon]

Holy cow!!! How did they do that?!?! That is very organized and very fast! Glad I got an authenticator when they first came out. I wish all the best for you!

Drommon

[thinus]

When they catch people that do this they should chain them in town squares so we can throw rotten fruit and vegetables at them and generally beat the snot out of them.

Hope you get everything back.

Are you sure your email was hacked? Did they log into your email account? Is your email with your ISP or is it with hotmail/gmail/yahoo, ie webmail type interface?

Does Blizzard ask a secret question before emailing you a reset password?

The reason I ask is that they could possibly be screwing with the DNS and your domain's email could be directed to their mail server.

EDIT: So I went and checked, on the account retrieval page it asks for your account and email address. So somehow they must connect the account name with the email address.

I can't think of a reason why they would request the password (causing you to be locked out of doing it) if they already had the password so logically they must have used that service to gain access and somehow they must have intercepted the email. Maybe you can ask Blizzard if the email address on your account was changed. Not sure if they would give out that information but it would be handy to know if you were keylogged or whether they somehow made a connection between your account name and email.

They may even have packet sniffers along the route somewhere that picks up the wow login information packages. If they can get the account name and email from those packages then there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, it is completely reliant on how secure the encryption of the login communication between the WoW client and server is.

[Zamok]

Was a hotmail account and oh yeah they were in it deleting emails from Blizz so that I did not know what was going on, at the same time I was trying to change the email password.

What basically happened was I transferred some toons and the email I got for confirmation had an account names on it. Well I beleive it did since its been deleted now.

Since they had access to my hotmail and now the account name. Simple password reset. Click the link put the new password in and your set to loot the account. The emails on the accounts were not changed until I managed to change the email password but by then it was a bit late.

Here is a copy of the subsequent emails sent to the compromised email.


Greetings!

Account Name: BILLYBLOGS123

It has come to our attention that your account security may be at risk. In an effort to combat this, we have reset your password as a preventative measure.

To limit the amount of interruption this may cause, we have taken the liberty of sending a new password to this account's registered email address.

We have also forwarded your account information to our character specialists for further investigation and potential restoration. Please keep in mind that, due to the nature and complexity of these investigations, it may take several days for us to contact you with the findings of our investigation. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter and apologize for any ensuing delay.

- As account security is crucial we recommend that you take the following steps to ensure the security of your account:
- Make sure to scan the computer system you are using to remove all viruses, Trojan files, and key loggers. For more computer/Internet safety and security tips, please visit (link)- If you wish to change your password, please do so at your Account Management page at the World of Warcraft website (www.worldofwarcraft.com (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com)). To further enhance your accounts security, you may also wish to change your email address from this same page. If you have trouble with either of these measures you may contact our Billing personnel directly at 1-800-59-BLIZZ (1-800-592-5499) Monday to Friday between the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific Standard Time to update the email address on the account. Customers in Australia should call 1-800-041-378.
- Delete any UI modifications you may be using, and ensure that all UI modifications you wish to install in the future are obtained from a reputable source.

Helpful tips and information on securing your account can be found by visiting: (link)
For more information about unauthorized account access, you may also visit (link)

Should any other questions or concerns regarding World of Warcraft arise, please do not hesitate to contact us either via the in-game petition system or via E-mail at about:WoWGM@Blizzard.com.

*** Please do not respond to this email as all conversations on this matter would be best handled online. ***


Regards,

Galtics
Game Master
Blizzard Entertainment



another email I still have in the inbox for all my accounts.



Greetings,

This notice is being sent to inform you that we are currently processing the recently purchased electronic upgrade for your World of Warcraft account BILLYBLOGS123. Once your account is fully upgraded you will receive a confirmation email with additional information.

Effective immediately, the leveling restriction on the account has been lifted and you may begin leveling freely during this processing phase, though communication options will still be limited until the upgrade is complete.

Thank you for your purchase, and enjoy your time in Azeroth!

Blizzard Entertainment

www.WorldofWarcraft.com (http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com)


So once they had access to the email the accounts were not hard to find. I have put in a suggestion that they do not use the account name on compromised account emails for obvious reasons. Still all in all my own fault for messing up my email somehow and I have now followed some advice I found here and created a new clean email for WoW accounts.

[Ualaa]

Sorry to see this shit happen.
I really wish we could find the people who do crap like this.
And meet them face to face, instead of them being an anonymous piece of shit, living somewhere on the internet.
Of course, they'd then have a legitimate aggravated assault charge against us, which wouldn't be too fun.




I really don't understand why a hacker would delete characters.

Sure, DE or sell any gear which they can get gold for.
But something like PvP gear which won't vendor or DE, why destroy it?

From their point of view, the account is stripped of everything that can be taken from it.
And the person clicked whatever, resulting in the compromised account.
So leaving the high level and the pvp gear, trade skills etc...
Means the person can gear back up faster.
And they have already done something to compromise their account once.
So there's a decent chance of it occurring again.

[thinus]

Ok, thanks for the info. Time for me to remove all references to my account names from my email :)

[Zamok]

I really don't understand why a hacker would delete characters.


Besides being embaressed and the pride thing thats what hurts most. The gear is easy enough to replace these days and plenty of freinds to help out there including the 15 or so that mounted up and stacked on mailboxes in Dalarn to try to stop them mailing my stuff. Why bloody delete the toons.

[Ualaa]

The best solution is to go to: http://us.blizzard.com/store/?rhtml=y

Type Authenticator, into the search box.
Select the US or Canadian/Australian option.

They're both in stock.

Once the authenticator is associated with your account or B.Net email, no changes are possible without the code.
The code changes every 30 seconds, and is six digits long.. so one in a million chance of guessing the right code.

You can associate the authenticator with multiple accounts or B.Net accounts.

So if you don't care about the new Account Management features for having all your accounts on one B.Net account, you can use one authenticator for 5 B.Net accounts (with one wow per B.Net account), and still log into each game at the same time with one code.

Or alternatively have the accounts on the same B.Net account, gain all the new features they're implementing, and have the one authenticator associated with the B.Net account. Which means a 30 second delay between each account logging in. A small price for the security.

I personally prefer 5 B.Net accounts, and logging them all in at once, on one code.

[Zamok]

Yeah sadly thats what I was setting up to do when this happened. After being politely smacked up the side of the head here the other day because I had mis-information about accessing one in Australia.

[Khatovar]

I really don't understand why a hacker would delete characters.


The *only* thing I can think of for deleting the characters is maybe, possibly they think they can get more business that way? I guess they think people are stupid enough to say "I got all my shit taken and my toons deleted because of some random asshole, I don't want to start all over, so I'll pay this power leveling company to level a new toon for me." *shrug* Never underestimate the lengths people will go to to be utterly and mindnumbingly stupid?

Unless it takes longer to get toons back from a full delete as opposed to just restoring gear? I don't know, never been through it. I guess they could think that if the Blizz GMs have to spend X amount of time restoring a deleted toon and replacing the gear/money whatever, they {the account thieves} have longer before Blizz tracks them and the stolen currency down? Though I was under the impression that restores of that magnitude ended up as pretty much just toon rollbacks instead of having to research and replace.

[Seldum]

Holy shit. Im gonna get me an authenticator... im not as far as you guys, but I don't want to risk 1 year of work because of some lamer hackers :(

Im very sorry to hear your story, but thanks for sharing!

[Hurricane]

Last night i was under "attack" aswell. I was loading wow and then wow actually warned me that it had found a trojan thing and informed me that i should not try to log in.

I had downloaded ventrlio mix from the first site you get when you search for ventrlio mix on google. And this ventrlio mix thingy was the one thing that brought in the trojan to my computer.

I installed AVG and it found troajner call ord.exe or something, also some other shiat.

They have not attacked my accounts yet, think i stopped it before it got far enough.

one tip from me, always use latest version of software and always download it from the softwares legit site.. cant believe how incredibly stupid i was when downloadin ventrilo mix.. never again!

[Seldum]

I have just ordered an authenticator and setup a battlenet account with an email which cannot be connected to my wow account names, new longer more difficult passwords and so on.

All inspired by your loss :) Again thanks for sharing.

[Otlecs]

I really don't understand why a hacker would delete characters.
It's sheer bloody-mindedness, and gives an interesting insight into the mindset of the people who do this. They're not just doing it for business reasons - they really are nasty bastards who want to hurt people.

I personally know somebody who had their account hacked and all of their toons were logged in falling to the ground from Dalaran. Naked, obviously.

I've also heard anecdotal evidence of people logging in to find themselves deep under water with a couple of seconds' breath left, and dying of fatigue because they've been logged out so far from land.

It's just the final twist of the virtual knife from the cowardly scum-sucking pieces of shit that do this sort fo thing because they can't get a real job.

Honestly, IF I would ever have considered buying gold in the past, there's no way I would EVER even give it a moment's consideration since I first starting hearing about account hacks a couple of years ago.

So, yeah, really bad luck there Zamok, and even more worrying when you don't know exactly how they got the information to move that fast.

I hope Blizz manage to restore everything for you, and I hope the sweat-shop-dwelling, yellow-bellied losers who did it burn in hell.

[Fef]

I had one of my accounts hacked some months ago. The job was done very "cleanly". All that could be sold or DE'ed had been, and one of my characters (level 80 hunter) was apparently used for illegal stuff (teleporting here and there, I could "track" him from another account). For the rest, everything was left intact.

I still don't know how they could not get all my five accounts, though. They had plenty of time, account names were (still are actually) almost identical, passwords were the same ...

Anyway, Blizzard did a great job at restoring everything, and it went fairly fast. In 3 days, i was up and running. So, message of hope to the OP : it will end good :)

[Oswyn]

It's been a couple years since I got my accounts hijacked. I now have the authenticator, but I'm still so paranoid that I don't use my gaming computer to log into any email or banking sites.

[Gadzooks]

It all depends on who steals the account. Most keyloggers are from China or Indonesia, it seems, while the e-mail phishers are US based players (and Canada, they think they're immune from prosecution).

I could see the US thieves deleting characters, because if you go to sites where they hang out, they're all 13-18 year old anti-social snots.

The Chinese thieves are efficient. It's just a job to them. They tend to keep the high level toons to run bots in Wintergrasp, but I could see them deleting characters because the established characters would be too noticable to guildies and friends?

Anyway, sorry to hear you got hacked. This is the number one reason I have not installed WoW on my Windows Bootcamp yet, because I need to sit down and work out the best security plan I can. I have the WoW Authenticator on my iPhone, too, but after the last round of screwups, I'm holding off on that too.

[Marious]

Never click on an email link unless you know for sure what its about, if you have even a spec of doubt, dont do it!!! That's how they get most people, I only look at emails from people I know and I do not click on anything in them! And they say I am paranoid, well I am but that's neither here nor there, stuff that happens to my fellow boxers makes it ok for me to be paranoid :)

[daviddoran]

My guess s ther they delete toons after stripping to mark which they have already been to, so they can move faster.

I was a young newb once and bought powerleveling, then got hacked, probably from the same people, so I learned my lesson. People who still buy gold at this point are just as guilty as the sellers and hackers. String em up I say!

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The *only* thing I can think of for deleting the characters is maybe, possibly they think they can get more business that way? I guess they think people are stupid enough to say "I got all my shit taken and my toons deleted because of some random asshole, I don't want to start all over, so I'll pay this power leveling company to level a new toon for me." *shrug* Never underestimate the lengths people will go to to be utterly and mindnumbingly stupid?

Unless it takes longer to get toons back from a full delete as opposed to just restoring gear? I don't know, never been through it. I guess they could think that if the Blizz GMs have to spend X amount of time restoring a deleted toon and replacing the gear/money whatever, they {the account thieves} have longer before Blizz tracks them and the stolen currency down? Though I was under the impression that restores of that magnitude ended up as pretty much just toon rollbacks instead of having to research and replace.
Coming from a PC software background, I would guess the character deletion is probably done to increase efficiency. Let us postulate the following about account hackers and their methods:


Efficiency is king.
The more accounts they can hack and process into adbots or gold-accumulation bots the better.
A person is much slower than a software-automated process.
Software automation for fixed GUI elements is easy. Software automation for randomized GUI elements is much harder.

Presuming that, it follows that they would write their post-hack account processing software so it does a few things:


Find all current characters in your character list on your most populated 10 servers (the game automagically sorts the server list so they show the ones where you have the most toons)
Log into the level 80s, disenchant or sell all BoP stuff or worthless BoE stuff to the nearest vendor and send any resulting gold to a designated level 1 "clearinghouse" alt for that server.
Repeat for the level 80's guild if they have access.
Rinse and repeat for all other characters on those top 3-10 realms. Hell, might only need to do the top realm as most people only play on one realm. (Remember: efficiency is king.)
Delete the char from slot X (whichever the processing software is set to use for its advertising/transferring) on every realm where a char exists in that slot.
Create level 1s with random gibberish names in slot X.
Advertise or transfer gold/gear/etc. on the level 1s on as many servers as possible.

I'd presume that's the basic method for generating the most "work" from a hacked account as possible within the short time period they usually last before getting banned.

[heffner]

You know what's sad? My WoW account has better security than my online bank account.

[thinus]

How do they "launder" the gold/gems though? Do they send the gold by mail to lots of different characters? Trade in game with other characters?

Theoretically Blizzard must be able to retrace the flow of the stolen property and ban all accounts involved. You would think they would examine the way in which they operate and come up with changes in how we trade in the game to complicate, block and easily track the techniques these bastards use.

I can see how a large amount of micro transactions can be generated to complicate tracking them and if they randomly include some legitimate accounts then you cannot just wield the ban stick with wild abandon. But they can also have only so many accounts under their control and once Blizzard flags an account as compromised all trades with that account becomes suspicious immediately.

They should also be able to detect a pattern in compromised accounts (the systematic stripping of characters) and if that is combined with a recent password reset on the account then maybe they should put a 24hr or 48hr block on that account to see if they are contacted about the account being stolen.

But instead of addressing the issue on their side they push it down to us requiring us to buy hardware from them. Much like their AFK flagging solution in BGs.

[Gorkette]

Just thought I would add another point to consider. Authenticators will still not 100% protect you. The code on the authenticator is valid for about 20-30 seconds. Logging into non-official websites using your authenticator can compromise your account, if they are fast enough to log in before the code resets.

[Solon]

Authenticator ordered, now that I actually have someone around to receive it when it arrives. I have been told that even typing delete and deleting a character from the realm does not delete it from the servers for quite some time. I'm sure Blizz will be able to restore your toons.
Somehow I felt that a Battlenet account was less secure than 5 old accounts.
Good Luck

[Jaws5]

So when you move your accounts to Battle.net , do you go to battle.net to lanuch your toons?

[Ualaa]

Instead of entering account name and then password.. and then authenticator if you have it.
You enter B.Net email and then password... and then authenticator if you have it.

If there is more then one account on the B.Net account, there's a drop down box to select between them.

[Iceorbz]

your characters dont get deleted, only hidden and rolled down off the page. They have to be innactive forever and under level 10 i believe to really be dleeted.

[Drizhal]

They launder the cash but the problem is, as many have said people are incredibly dense. They do not report things for multiple days/weeks, or they rarely play and don't report it. They were doing something against the rules so they don't report it for fear of being banned. So out of every lets say 50 accounts 10 people don't report it due to multiple reasons. They still have hijacked 10, in my case they charged my CC to xfer my 80 DK and unload all the crap (Also got a name change....why i ono...)

But anyways none got deleted, just fast and efficient ransacking. I think as others have said deleted toons are a proverbial twist of the knife...Toons 60+ Are never actually deleted off their servers (blizzards) even if you deactive your account (though I would be very hard pressed to test their claim). Anything under 60 will EVENTUALLY disappear but takes months.

But I am stalling converting the rest of my accounts into a BNet, I plan to use 2 bnets...why...I dono just cause 5 is to many and 1 seems to few but there is a silver lining to the Bnet, With a keylogger before hackers owned you completely once they got your pw and you retrieved it with the secret question, because it is impossible to change it, even through blizzard customer support. SO, if you ever do get hacked, you know you can actually change that secret question to help lock them out. Somewhat comforting....somewhat


Also I received this morning an email from blizzard report thanking me for submitting my ticket however....my email was changed away from my hotmail emai labout 5 months ago...it looked completely legit too ;)

[Dramoth]

As I said elsewhere, a close friend of mine got hacked somehow...

He noticed it when he tried to log in (he plays every day) and he doesnt check his email account all that often tbh.

He did notice that he received an email from blizzard saying that they had merged his account with his battle.net account and gave his email address login name as XXXXXXX@yahoo.cr.

I said to him that it sounded like he had been hacked so we checked his armory profile for his level 80 toon and checked on wow-heroes.com to see what had happened to his toon... he only had a few epics left (mostly pvp and badge stuff, they didnt DE those). I had logged in to try and draw the attention of a GM to it because my mate doesnt get in until after 6pm GMT every day. I still had my mate on the phone talking to him as I logged in and shortly after logging in, I got a system message that [character] has logged in.

Told my mate that and he was going 'that aint me'... so I really ramped up trying to get hold of a GM and I think that I did get a GM who was playing his normal toon on a different server because I told him my mates toon's name and he came back and said that it looked like it was a bot.

Next thing that I know, my mates account has been logged out and new passwords have been sent to his email address. It appears that they didnt manage to compromise his email account.

I logged in to check and see if the hackers had got into a GB banker that he has and fortunately they didnt even try and access the low level toon... because everything was still in the GB.

In the end, he came out of the whole experience a wiser and (in game) richer man... they had been using his lvl 80 as a mining bot and he had about 100 stacks of saronite ore and 20 stacks of titanium ore. He got all his gear back minus the gems and chants.

I do believe that he has now setup his own battle.net account, but I dont know whether he has gone for an authenticator as well... next time I see him, I will talk to him about it

[Gadzooks]

Coming from a PC software background, I would guess the character deletion is probably done to increase efficiency. Let us postulate the following about account hackers and their methods:


Efficiency is king.
The more accounts they can hack and process into adbots or gold-accumulation bots the better.
A person is much slower than a software-automated process.
Software automation for fixed GUI elements is easy. Software automation for randomized GUI elements is much harder.

Presuming that, it follows that they would write their post-hack account processing software so it does a few things:


Find all current characters in your character list on your most populated 10 servers (the game automagically sorts the server list so they show the ones where you have the most toons)
Log into the level 80s, disenchant or sell all BoP stuff or worthless BoE stuff to the nearest vendor and send any resulting gold to a designated level 1 "clearinghouse" alt for that server.
Repeat for the level 80's guild if they have access.
Rinse and repeat for all other characters on those top 3-10 realms. Hell, might only need to do the top realm as most people only play on one realm. (Remember: efficiency is king.)
Delete the char from slot X (whichever the processing software is set to use for its advertising/transferring) on every realm where a char exists in that slot.
Create level 1s with random gibberish names in slot X.
Advertise or transfer gold/gear/etc. on the level 1s on as many servers as possible.

I'd presume that's the basic method for generating the most "work" from a hacked account as possible within the short time period they usually last before getting banned.

You may be right, a lot of the gold spammers lately have been <charactername>wsjdka, which could be software tagging a level 80, stripping it, then erasing it and creating a spammer character.

[Gadzooks]

They launder the cash but the problem is, as many have said people are incredibly dense. They do not report things for multiple days/weeks, or they rarely play and don't report it. They were doing something against the rules so they don't report it for fear of being banned. So out of every lets say 50 accounts 10 people don't report it due to multiple reasons. They still have hijacked 10, in my case they charged my CC to xfer my 80 DK and unload all the crap (Also got a name change....why i ono...)

But anyways none got deleted, just fast and efficient ransacking. I think as others have said deleted toons are a proverbial twist of the knife...Toons 60+ Are never actually deleted off their servers (blizzards) even if you deactive your account (though I would be very hard pressed to test their claim). Anything under 60 will EVENTUALLY disappear but takes months.

But I am stalling converting the rest of my accounts into a BNet, I plan to use 2 bnets...why...I dono just cause 5 is to many and 1 seems to few but there is a silver lining to the Bnet, With a keylogger before hackers owned you completely once they got your pw and you retrieved it with the secret question, because it is impossible to change it, even through blizzard customer support. SO, if you ever do get hacked, you know you can actually change that secret question to help lock them out. Somewhat comforting....somewhat


Also I received this morning an email from blizzard report thanking me for submitting my ticket however....my email was changed away from my hotmail emai labout 5 months ago...it looked completely legit too ;)

Name and server changing was a favorite thing of snot nosed US players, so they could sell the character - Bnet has pretty much put that market in the toilet, thank god.

If you have ANY plans to move characters around your accounts, use one Bnet. It's fine, I use one for all of mine. It will be a lot easier with one.

[Dramoth]

I am thinking of creating a 6th .eu account and moving all my important toons to that and having that under a different b.net account...

However, I like having all my toons on my current account setup as it makes it nice and easy to boost other toons easily.

[Iceorbz]

I wish that they would just allow authenticator for specific functions: ie anything that charges money to the cards.

Its annoying for me to login for the amount of times I open and close things I dunno.

[zaren]

Hey, I'm brand new to this whole multiboxing thing, but I already ordered a authenticator myself!!!

I only have 3 accounts (so far) :) but I would go NUTS if I was compromised! You guys got me to spend 6.50 american for a very good cause in my book!

Battle on!

[Marious]

There is the choice of the mobile app authenticator they sell for a lot of phones so you do not have to get a physical one at all.

[Ualaa]

I've now got 5 physical authenticators.

At the moment, I can use one to simultaneously access each of my 5 B.Net accounts.

If you can always use one to access all 5, then its 4 x 6 and change wasted, which isn't much.

If they change it so one authenticator can only do one code then its done (instead of one per B.Net account), then I'd need to use all five, but that's still a lot faster then a 30 second wait between accounts logging in, within the same B.Net account.

[thinus]

There is the choice of the mobile app authenticator they sell for a lot of phones so you do not have to get a physical one at all.

The iphone authenticator app is free. I am just slightly worried about the phone breaking or being stolen, how do you get back into your accounts?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

The iphone authenticator app is free. I am just slightly worried about the phone breaking or being stolen, how do you get back into your accounts?
It's easy but tedious. You have to basically prove to them you're the account owner. Documents like driver's license, etc.

[Flekkie]

Wow, if my e-mail was hacked I would be worried about more than just my WoW accounts!

[Zamok]

Status update

6 accounts fully restored including the un-deleting of the raid toons. Whoot I wont miss this weekends raids.

[Khatovar]

Wow, if my e-mail was hacked I would be worried about more than just my WoW accounts!

That's why your Battle.Net e-mail should be a brand new e-mail, never used for anything but Battle.Net.

[Zamok]

Well all toons and gear restored bar a few bits and peices from the Ah.

Thanks for the support.

[zenga]

That's why your Battle.Net e-mail should be a brand new e-mail, never used for anything but Battle.Net.

I second that. I basically do it for most sites that require an account:/registration I make a brand new gmail address and then forward it to my main/normal email address. The advantages for me are simple:
- I can read all mails on 1 central place (main/normal one), without having to switch between email accounts
- If needed I can login to the alt email and I have a perfect overview of the mail history
- If something goes wrong with a certain site/account, it has only consequences for that site (cause my passwords for the email accounts are obviously completely different) as there is no reference to my main email account)
- If for some reason I'm no longer interested in a site/account I just remove the forward, if I for some reason want to be active again after a year, I just enable forward again + I have an overview of the emails they have been sending me while i was inactive

You can even extend this concept by using some *gateway* emailaddress in case your email address contains your real name or w/e:

1) Make a new gmail account for every site where you need to register/create an account. Any obfuscated email will do. Forward all accounts to 2)
2) Make another email address (preferably something that makes no sense at all) with a different password than the ones under 1). The setup of this account is such that all incoming email is forwarded immediately to your main/normal email account and that all emails will be deleted permanently. You might want to check this account regularly and delete all mail manually.
3) You can read all your email from your main email account, and there is no link at all between a subscription and your normal email account. Even if your account under 1) gets hacked, there is only the reference to 2) as a forward. So they'd need to hack account 2 as well to learn your main account.

Basically you can repeat the forward trick under 2) 10 times if you are paranoid.

This approach has served me well over the years, however it takes some organization to get used to it. But once you get the hang of it, it makes virtual life simple and way more safe.

[Flekkie]

Thanks, that is an incredibly good idea.

[Seldum]

Well all toons and gear restored bar a few bits and peices from the Ah.

Thanks for the support.

Good to hear.