Hacked then Banned

[zenga]

Really you're blaming the wrong people. You're blaming Blizzard for people trying to hack their game which they have no control over.

He said: "I created the problem with getting a keylogger on my system".

It costs Blizzard tons of time and money undoing what the hackers do to people like you.

Ain't that part of the service & support any decent company should offer to it's clients? To your analogy, if you enter your bankcard into a 'compromised' ATM or when fraude happens with your creditcard, the bank shouldn't do anything. "You entered your card into the atm, so it's your responsibility". Don't think so. You will expect your bank to refund you and undo any damage done. Moreover it's in the law in several countries.

While I won't say Blizz doesn't milk people out of money- the authenticator is one thing I don't feel they try and use to make money from. That's why they're like 7 bucks with free shipping,

Agreed to a certain extend. I bought my games back in november. 5 bc's, and 5x cataclysms and 5 gamecards to start with. Like 500 euro? At no point upon purchasing or upon creating my account i was told i'd need an authenticator to play the game in a safe way. The fact that you are 'forced' to use it while it's only available by using a credit card or by owning a fancy phone (in the bigger part of the 'civilized world') is what bothers the people, not actually using it.

Simple solution?
- ship any new box, be it vanilla, bc or wotl with an authenticator included
- make auth. available at any place where they sell wow products (i've seen the wow mouse in plenty of stores, but never an authenticator), so people can actually buy it with cash

[MiRai]

I will argue for the sake of arguing as well then.

3 minutes a day say on average 2-3 logins a days say 200 average days played a year.

3*3*200= 1800mins a year/60 = 30 hours a year of login time That is being generous most will have much more.

Separate your Battle.Net accounts for ease of logging in. Oh wait...that's another inconvenience like using an authenticator.

I do not charge my customers extra to protect thier accounts it is assumed as part of the service we provide.

Why should Blizzard follow your company's policy?

Ain't that part of the service & support any decent company should offer to it's clients? To your analogy, if you enter your bankcard into a 'compromised' ATM or when fraude happens with your creditcard, the bank shouldn't do anything. "You entered your card into the atm, so it's your responsibility". Don't think so. You will expect your bank to refund you and undo any damage done. Moreover it's in the law in several countries.

What about car insurance? I don't have to have full coverage insurance...it's my choice. If I don't pay extra for the full coverage then I shouldn't expect to get reimbursed for anything that's not covered. Blizzard never stated "you're 100% covered if you get yourself hacked."

[zenga]

I will argue for the sake of arguing as well then.
...

What about car insurance? I don't have to have full coverage insurance...it's my choice. If I don't pay extra for the full coverage then I shouldn't expect to get reimbursed for anything that's not covered. Blizzard never stated "you're 100% covered if you get yourself hacked."

The example i gave, was a reaction to the quote to give an example that this is part of a service a company offers. Insurance is a whole other thing. If blizzard was to offer a premium service with a guarantee your statement was correct. Now they offer nothing but an extra (paid) lock that should enhance your security but without any warranty. Dealing with hacked accounts(and solving them) is part of their service (the way i see/feel it at least), just as developing an authenticator is part of their service.

I'm very well aware that using examples to prove us right has double standards. For some products/service we lay the responsibility to deal with our shit in the hands of the provider, and for others we take action ourselves (insurance, ..). However I work in IT for over a decade as a free lancer, and haven't come across 1 single company where account troubles are not considered as part of their service. So I dare to say it's more or less a standard in this industry.

I find this topic very interesting and kind of an eye opener for myself (as in trying to see the whole picture rather than my own pov). Way better than any discussion i've come across where it usually tend to end up in a flame ware.

[Tonuss]

Ain't that part of the service & support any decent company should offer to it's clients? To your analogy, if you enter your bankcard into a 'compromised' ATM or when fraude happens with your creditcard, the bank shouldn't do anything. "You entered your card into the atm, so it's your responsibility". Don't think so. You will expect your bank to refund you and undo any damage done. Moreover it's in the law in several countries.

I think that in this example, the bank has much more to lose than Blizzard does, if it turns out that their security is so poor that theft is rampant. That's why so many banks and credit card issuers spend so much time and money on systems and services that provide assistance in the event of card/account/ID theft. My banks will call me if they see activity that they deem suspicious, instead of waiting for me to report a problem.

I think it's really about cost benefit. If the cost of dealing with account theft at the GM/CM level became bad enough, Blizzard would probably require authenticators and provide them free with new battle.net accounts. I'm sure it costs my bank less to have a pre-emptive system in place (track activity and have a real person call me when they think there's a problem) than it would be to deal with the losses from ignoring the few times when unusual activity was due to theft. Then again, once one company offers a service like that, the others may be forced to do so in order to keep up appearances. Blizzard's account security will never be as tight as that of a bank*, because it doesn't have to be.



* Or at least, I hope that there are no banks with security on the level of battle.net logins...