Account suspended for 72 hours.

[Fef]

Hi,

Three of my five accounts (accounts 1, 2 and 4) have been suspended yesterday evening. Type of Violation : Involvement in online trading activities.

So I will say it : I never sold or bought gold, characters or power levelling, or did anything against the TOS. Now you don't have to believe me. I know that I tend to be suspicious when people write (even on these boards) that they got banned by mistake. Hehe, just like I thought people getting hacked had been sharing password or buying gold at one point. Until it happened to me ...

I will call Blizzard as soon as their offices open. Until then, I try to think about what could have triggered that.

- I started doing PVP few days ago for the first time, perhaps this got me more attention and reports.
- I initiated the transfer between account 2 and 4 (both banned) of a level 70 rogue, to create a new group. I had this character for years, levelled the classical way.
- My first account (only) was hacked some months ago. Since then I bought an authenticator, regretting I didn't do it earlier. Blizzard refounded all my stolen gear/gold, so I guess they must have investigated it.

Quite frustrating, indeed.

Here is the copy of what I received :







Greetings,

We are writing to inform you that, unfortunately, we have had to temporarily suspend your World of Warcraft account and place a final warning on it.

Account Name: *****************
Type of Violation: Involvement in online trading activities
Investigation Concluded: 10/06/2009
Consequences for Account: Account suspended for 72 hours, Password Reset and Final Warning issued.

It is with regret that we take this type of action, but it is in the best interests of the World of Warcraft community as a whole, and for the integrity of the game. After your suspension has expired, you will be able to access the World of Warcraft servers again.

Please note that should any further violations of our Rules and Policies occur, this will almost certainly lead to the permanent closure of your account.

Online trading refers to the exchange of in-game content for real world money, and includes, but is not limited to, the sale or purchase of gold, the sale or purchase of experience in the form of powerlevelling, and the sale or purchase of honor points, reputation or items.

Account access is the responsibility of the account owner and account sharing is against our Terms of Use (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/termsofuse.html). Therefore, should you believe someone other than yourself (the account owner) has committed this violation of the Terms of Use with your account, these sanctions would still apply, as our action is taken against the account, not the individual.

To protect the account’s security, we have also reset your password and issued you with a computer generated one, which you will receive in a separate e-mail. You will be able to change this password at your leisure, using the Account Management feature on our web site, located at: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/

Your password will be sent from noreplyeu@blizzard.com. If you do not receive it after one hour, please add this address to your email address list so that it is not rejected by any spam filter you are using, and reply to wowaccountrevieweu@blizzard.com informing us that you have not received the password.

Please do not disclose your new password to anyone, including Blizzard staff, or change it back to one of your previous passwords as this could result in your account becoming compromised.

As a precautionary measure we have also removed your recurring subscription details from the account; if you wish to continue your subscription you will need contact our billing department, via our webform: http://www.wow-europe.com/support/we...lt.html?lan=en or by phone http://www.wow-europe.com/en/support...ntbilling.html

We strongly suggest you review our current Rules and Policies to avoid further action in the future, they can be found at:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/

Regards,

Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe

[Otlecs]

So, I was all ready to jump in with "it's a scam you fool - we've had three threads on it already!", but this one's obviously legitimate so I'll save that for another day

Are all of your accounts in the same name? I mean absolutely identical. No abbreviations, etc? Perhaps they incorrectly identified the rogue transfer as a transfer between people rather than just between accounts owned by the same person?

In the absence of a hack, and taking your claims of innocence at face value, that's the only thing I can imagine would have triggered it

Keep us updated, won't you?

[Fef]

The "Billing and Accounts" service I had by phone told me they could not do anything because my accounts are currently locked.

I have to fill in a request through the web service. The form requires a CD key, which of course I don't have with me here at work .... Pfff ... I will have to wait until I come back home tonight.

[edit] Oh, and yes, all accounts are in my real name, same address, same credit card for payment, etc ...

[Otlecs]

The form requires a CD key

Oh dear.

I suppose I'd better start thinking about getting all my CDs - or at least a note of the keys - in one place in case I ever find myself in the same position!

[Klesh]

That's what I'm scared of each and every time I need to mail large amounts of gold to alts for epic flying or stuff.
Been talking to a GM about it. He said I should use ingame mail to transfer gold, instead of the guild bank or trade window. And in case of suspension, to mail wowgm@blizzard.com (or something like that, can't remember the exact address right now). There isn't much else you can do i guess. :(

[KvdM]

I suppose I'd better start thinking about getting all my CDs - or at least a note of the keys - in one place in case I ever find myself in the same position!

I hope you remember which cd keys belong to what accounts...

[Fef]

Fortunately, I had a way to identify which code belonged to my first account. So I filled the form only in the name of this specific account and explained about all three bans. Yeah, I went back home during lunch time to do that, could not wait until tonight

For the rest, I have an hypothesis about why accounts 1,2 and 4 were banned and accounts 3 and 5 were not.
These days, I have been playing my farming/PVP group, 4 hunters and 1 druid. I started this group under RAF with 5 hunters and my usual naming convention : identical names, except for the first letter that is A for account 1, B for account 2, etc ... So my characters were called Aineal, Bineal, Cineal, Dineal, Eineal. At 60, I swapped two hunters for two level 70 characters I already had, a hunter, Fef, and a druid, Sharah. So now the group looks like Aineal, Bineal, Fef, Dineal, Sharah. The three character which names follow the convention were banned. Perhaps just a coincidence, or a horde player noted down the names for report, and only picked these three.

[Otlecs]

I suppose I'd better start thinking about getting all my CDs - or at least a note of the keys - in one place in case I ever find myself in the same position!

I hope you remember which cd keys belong to what accounts...

No. And I have absolutely no record of that either. In fact, the truth is that I'm not at all sure I even have the keys for my very oldest account!

I think I was living in England when WoW hit the shelves.

Which means the original DVD (and account key) is either still in my UK house or has been chucked out in one of my infrequent clean-ups of my "office" there!

Now, if I can just give them WotLK keys then we're in business - they're all in my apartment in Frankfurt!

I suppose I'd better have a good snuffle around next time I'm in the UK. This could be a bit of a time-bomb for my WoW time!

[Smoooth]

I never kept my cd-keys, didn't know I was supposed to. Should I be worried about this ever happening to me?

[Otlecs]

I never kept my cd-keys, didn't know I was supposed to. Should I be worried about this ever happening to me?

I think the biggest problem looming for the likes of you and I is that we're going to be forced to use a battle.net account at some point, and that process requires the keys!