hacked and closed

[jstanthr]

How come everyone, almost everyone's story that gets their accounts ganked, never ever did anything wrong? Does that make sense?

Did you read the entire post i made before you said that? nowhere in there did i say i did nothing wrong, i mentioned several possibilities, i never said it appeard from thin air.

[Klesh]

You should definately get an authenticator as soon as possible. Everyone should.
Entering a 6 digit code each time you log into the game isn't that bad compared to getting hacked. Especially since you can use one code to login with all of your accounts at the same time.

[warwizard]

I had my main account accessed, know how?

I had logged into a friends computer to show him my account, when you log into another computer it creates a folder under the WTF tree with your account name and character name. From there due to my own stupidness on not changing passwords enough they were able to brute force their way on and wipe my main account clean.

My second account at the time, same password, same computer was not touched. This is how i know where they got in from.


As for the likely hood of that guy hacking the vent server and getting your ip address is very slim, the next fact of getting past your hardware firewall/router is also very slim. It sounds like something on a wow themed website installed and snagged your account info.

Norton is crap, get a mcafee or kaspersky, hell even AVG is better than norton


Along with that are you browsing from IE ? Or Firefox? Firefox + No Script + Ad Block + Flash Block = Secure browsing.

Running Vista with UAC enabled might be a pain in the ass, but it sure as hell works!

[Ualaa]

Set one of the tabs of your homepage to the Blizzard store, specifically the authenticator page.
I'd recommend this for everyone.

As soon as they're available, pick up at least one, a few would not hurt.
They're dirt cheap. It cost more for shipping to Canada then the authenticator was priced.

A guild officer was hacked recently, they cleared out the guild bank.
The hacker actually did a server transfer and sold everything on another server.
Apparently the credit card on file was good enough, did not need to re-enter any information.
So he had to pay for the transfer of his stolen character.

Blizz has restored most of the stuff, but the Orbs and Abyss Crystals they did not restore.
Just the relatively cheap things.
They gave him back all of his gear.

Initially they told him, you can only server transfer once every month.
So it will be a month before you can transfer back to your original server.

The hacker was good enough to go and unlearn his trade skills.
Blizz has restored them, minus all rare recipes, which are permanently lost until re-learnt in game.

Fun stuff.

Get an Authenticator, even if you haven't been hacked.
You don't want to go through this kind of crap.
And its a very easy and cheap preventative measure.

[jstanthr]

ive called about the authenticator almost every day, they finally today told me they should have a batch in around thursday, id get em quick tho, im sure they won't last long.

[Caspian]

you know if these gold hackers were as persistent at going after real money as they are at going after fake money the world would be in trouble.

Wait...
The reason they don't go after real money is that is a crime. Steal enough cash the US FBI starts making calls and even China would be prone to cooperate to an extent - if hundreds or thousands of bank accounts were hacked a day.

Fake money the real world doesn't care about. Try reporting it as a crime in the US - or just about any country. You will get laughed at. You don't "own" it, it is not a crime. Blizzard owns it and even if it is taken from us, it is still in Blizzard's domain and never really stolen.
So in order to really be able to shut it down, it has to be a crime.
For it to be a crime the "thieves" must steal some thing of value.
In order for out gold/items/virtual possessions to have value we must own them.
The only people with any real pull to be able to help us do not want us to own their (our) virtual property.

In order to shut this down. virtual theft must become a crime. In order for it to become a crime, people willing to report it as theft must actually have ownership.

Another thing that gets me about gold thieving is the abuse hurled towards the victim. If you leave your keys in your car and some asshat takes it, they go to jail. You were dumb for leaving your keys in your car but they still committed a crime. If you wanted to get into my house, all it would take is hopping a fence and tossing one of my potted plants through a window. I put the pot there, I did not put bars on my window. Sure my alarm goes off but if you are not a moron, you can still get out of my house with 4k in computer stuff before the cop can put his doughnut down to answer the call to get to your house. Who is more at fault? Me, who generally did the right things - good neighborhood, alarm, double paned windows, pet attack Liger named Sam. Or douche bag who decided he need to break into my house to get his next fix or meal or whatever reason he has?

Gold thieves, no different. The OP, from what he said did most things right. Even if he didn't, why is he being attacked (and this thread is nowhere near as bad as I have seen some) instead of the pent up anger and frustration being focused at the actual thieves or at the the only authorities that can do anything - Blizzard. As bad as this is becoming they either need to start cutting this off at the source, gold buyers and sellers or llet real law enforcement start going after these thieves or


I have been playing WoW 4 years today (well yesterday the 4th of July) I have, as a guess, 400-500 days played across all toons and accounts (a lot of that is multiple accounts at once but still). If I went aywhere and took or destroyed something that was 400-500 man days in creation I would go to jail. Your hobby is making toothpick sculptures? I go play Godzilla, on purpose, on your scale model of the New York Skyline, I go to jail - or at least get a court date and probably have to pay you back for your time.

We need to look at getting the system changed or getting Blizzard to actually fight this proactively instead of focusing on it when it comes time to restore someones account.

[slongz]

I agree with this 100% yea he got hacked but it wasnt his fault some moron is installing viruses to steal info and sell gold. and just to be a arse it sounds like by deleting things that he cant sell seems kinds personal.
Ive never been hacked and hope i dont but you can do anything you like to protect yourself and your never 100% safe.

you know if these gold hackers were as persistent at going after real money as they are at going after fake money the world would be in trouble.

Wait...
The reason they don't go after real money is that is a crime. Steal enough cash the US FBI starts making calls and even China would be prone to cooperate to an extent - if hundreds or thousands of bank accounts were hacked a day.

Fake money the real world doesn't care about. Try reporting it as a crime in the US - or just about any country. You will get laughed at. You don't "own" it, it is not a crime. Blizzard owns it and even if it is taken from us, it is still in Blizzard's domain and never really stolen.
So in order to really be able to shut it down, it has to be a crime.
For it to be a crime the "thieves" must steal some thing of value.
In order for out gold/items/virtual possessions to have value we must own them.
The only people with any real pull to be able to help us do not want us to own their (our) virtual property.

In order to shut this down. virtual theft must become a crime. In order for it to become a crime, people willing to report it as theft must actually have ownership.

Another thing that gets me about gold thieving is the abuse hurled towards the victim. If you leave your keys in your car and some asshat takes it, they go to jail. You were dumb for leaving your keys in your car but they still committed a crime. If you wanted to get into my house, all it would take is hopping a fence and tossing one of my potted plants through a window. I put the pot there, I did not put bars on my window. Sure my alarm goes off but if you are not a moron, you can still get out of my house with 4k in computer stuff before the cop can put his doughnut down to answer the call to get to your house. Who is more at fault? Me, who generally did the right things - good neighborhood, alarm, double paned windows, pet attack Liger named Sam. Or douche bag who decided he need to break into my house to get his next fix or meal or whatever reason he has?

Gold thieves, no different. The OP, from what he said did most things right. Even if he didn't, why is he being attacked (and this thread is nowhere near as bad as I have seen some) instead of the pent up anger and frustration being focused at the actual thieves or at the the only authorities that can do anything - Blizzard. As bad as this is becoming they either need to start cutting this off at the source, gold buyers and sellers or llet real law enforcement start going after these thieves or


I have been playing WoW 4 years today (well yesterday the 4th of July) I have, as a guess, 400-500 days played across all toons and accounts (a lot of that is multiple accounts at once but still). If I went aywhere and took or destroyed something that was 400-500 man days in creation I would go to jail. Your hobby is making toothpick sculptures? I go play Godzilla, on purpose, on your scale model of the New York Skyline, I go to jail - or at least get a court date and probably have to pay you back for your time.

We need to look at getting the system changed or getting Blizzard to actually fight this proactively instead of focusing on it when it comes time to restore someones account.

[Gramzngunz]

Well this thread and the fact that a friend of mines account was just hacked has caused me to order my own authenticator. The blizzard store was out so i ordered one on ebay for a little bit above the normal cost.
Maybe I should have waited for the Blizz store, but you can't put a price on peace of mind

lol, also to the guy who said he was worried his wife would hide his authenticator, I think you need to put it on one of those cool leather straps around your neck like you see in movies w/ the main character having some strange key sense birth that he always carries w/ him. I plan on using my key chain.

[Cruelty]

I have seen so many of these stories on all wow boards and always the victim claim they were hacked by some pro that knew exactly what they were doing. Now if this were true do you think someone with those skills is going to spend the time and effort to steal wow accounts that are only worth a couple of hundred dollars / pounds at the most.

Now I am not saying this guy is lying about anything but I find it strange that he claims to work for cisco saying he uses his computer to do his work and that is how they may have got his wow account details, now I have worked for a number of various small and big companies in the IT sector and none of them would allow the use of a work laptop to play games or to actually even install your own software. Second none of them have ever used Norton 360 for their anti-virus protection, it is just crap from start to finish. Now I am willing to admit that some companies may allow you to do these things but in my humble opinion they are asking for trouble and I do not think that a company as big as cisco would be one of them.

As for getting a virus / trojan or any other little nasty password stealing software when you claim you never installed anything I still find hard to believe. I am either the luckiest person around or something as I use firefox but dont block adverts or scripts, I only have avast home edition and the built in firewall in my router and have never had anything like this and I visit all sorts of sites daily.

I have five accounts all with same password accounts names only change by a single digit, maybe it will happen to me one day, but I am fairly sure I will know how it happened and am sure it will not be some elite hacker getting into my system because it would not be worth their time and effort.

I do feel sorry for any one that this happens to and hope they get it sorted out soon.
Sorry for the rant and don't take it personally this is aimed at all the people that claim they were hacked by some elite hacker.

[Tonuss]

That really sucks, but I think the account closure thing is part of their standard process for dealing with hacked accounts.

And get an authenticator!

^ ^ ^ This ^ ^ ^

Closing an account is part of the process that Blizzard uses when the account has been compromised. This prevents the thief from continuing to mess with the account, and it forces you to make sure you've got the account and your computer secured before you log in again. It sucks, but it's better than getting your account back, logging in, and having it stolen all over again. And again, and again.

And yeah, get an authenticator as soon as possible, though that could be a while. I got lucky, when I wanted to buy mine the Blizzard store had just announced that they were restocked, so I got it very fast. Keep checking to see when they have them available again. You only need one for all of your accounts. It does add an extra step to the login procedure, but if you're using keyclone or similar software you can enter the authenticator key once for all accounts upon login.

As for "whose fault is it," I don't think that applies anymore. There was a time when getting a virus or trojan from surfing the web meant you went to one of several specific types of sites (porn, warez, etc). But nowadays so many sites get content fed through them from other sites that even if the site you visit is 'clean' you can get infected through a flash or animated banner ad. I still think it is beyond retarded that a browser app can drop executable files on my hard drive and modify my startup files WITHOUT TELLING ME A THING. That should never happen, period.

I browse using Firefox with AdBlock Plus and NoScript. The downside is that I wind up blocking legit advertisements that help sites like this one keep operating. But the risk of malware infection has gotten so high that I don't have a choice. (And I also do not regret blocking any of those seizure-inducing flash ads that some sites display.)