My account was stolen three (3) seperate times in a 6 month span that ended on June 20th. Nobody had access to my account but me. My system is locked down tight. Daily scans for everything; firewall to keep out unwanted goodies. Still my account was stolen three times, password never changed, just moved all my characters to the newbie area for Trolls and Orcs (Valley of Trials) and CLEANED OUT. I mean, they even sold my goddamn arrows and bags. Nothing was left except for Soulbound quest items and gear that couldn't be sold to a vender.
I played EverQuest for four years and NEVER had these problems. But as soon as I started getting good gear and making a decent amount of money (every time I had between 1k and 3k gold), I would log on and there would be nothing left. I have seen this happen time and time again to people from my guild as well as real life friends. There is no excuse for that kind of thing to happen and as far as I know, this is the only game out right now that has this kind of problem. Judging from what I've seen, it may be as high as 1 out of every 10 players having to have their accounts restored thanks to situations like mine. This is not acceptable.
Thats why I quit playing when I only had a few days left to get my Netherwing mount. 280% speed increase flying mount. Oh and I was about to start Black Temple with my guild. No more Purples for me, thank you very much.
The only way to get your account stolen was to fall prey to one of the numerous WoW keyloggers that cropped up. Not very many every landed on the definitions list for AV vendors.
Now I'm worried... hope you're right about the keyloggers. I'll keep off the downloading enhancements stuff then. Is there a way to save a character in the event something like this happens?
I've been downloading addons for WoW since it was in open beta (Summer of '04, IIRC).. Never got my account hijacked, but there was a bad rash of infected addons on a certain website a while back that nabbed a lot of people.
I personally feel as though it's an overplayed fear, exacerbated by the fact that it's usually only fire and brimstone that gets reported.
Since the first time I had my account taken, I stopped using any third party GUI enchancements. I just used what came with WoW. Even wiped my system (including over writing all my HDDs multiple times) after the second time. Might've been a keylogger, but I doubt it. The first two times they traced the IP to one known to them from Asia, third time they declined to tell me what the offending IP was or where it was from.
I am paranoid enough to say that a large number of these are inside jobs or just ****ty security on the official forums (which use your official account name AND password). Also, I never used my WoW account password anywhere else, so you can rule that out.
Your character is saved on their (Blizzard) servers, you have no access to your character information. What they do in the event of a stolen account is initiate a review process where they check all the log in IPs, transfers of gold and items, and the nature of the complaint. Apparently some people claim their accounts have been hacked just to try and scam free gold and items from Blizzard by transfering their items to another account. Because of this, Blizzard must do a detailed review of your account to make sure you have a legit problem. If your problem really is a problem, Blizzard will attempt to restore your account the best they can, though most times this just means gear and money; most trade skill mats are usually not replaced (I lost 15 stacks of netherweave, a whole bunch of leather (375 skinning), and various other mats that were not replaced).
So just in case something happens, Blizzard does have a process by which they can restore your account. Only problem is that it can take up to 10 days for this to happen from the time you first report the problem. The first time it happened to me, they changed my password, billing information, and registered name (My real name). I had to call Blizzard and prove to them that I was not someone based in Asia and to provide the most recent CC# that had been used in my name. After that it took 6 days to actually get my items back and my character, a 60 Troll Hunter at the time, was respec'd for pure macro farming.
Comments
Care to elaborate?
Did you get "Hacked?"
I played EverQuest for four years and NEVER had these problems. But as soon as I started getting good gear and making a decent amount of money (every time I had between 1k and 3k gold), I would log on and there would be nothing left. I have seen this happen time and time again to people from my guild as well as real life friends. There is no excuse for that kind of thing to happen and as far as I know, this is the only game out right now that has this kind of problem. Judging from what I've seen, it may be as high as 1 out of every 10 players having to have their accounts restored thanks to situations like mine. This is not acceptable.
Thats why I quit playing when I only had a few days left to get my Netherwing mount. 280% speed increase flying mount. Oh and I was about to start Black Temple with my guild. No more Purples for me, thank you very much.
The only way to get your account stolen was to fall prey to one of the numerous WoW keyloggers that cropped up. Not very many every landed on the definitions list for AV vendors.
Accounts don't get hacked out of thin air. :\
I personally feel as though it's an overplayed fear, exacerbated by the fact that it's usually only fire and brimstone that gets reported.
I am paranoid enough to say that a large number of these are inside jobs or just ****ty security on the official forums (which use your official account name AND password). Also, I never used my WoW account password anywhere else, so you can rule that out.
Your character is saved on their (Blizzard) servers, you have no access to your character information. What they do in the event of a stolen account is initiate a review process where they check all the log in IPs, transfers of gold and items, and the nature of the complaint. Apparently some people claim their accounts have been hacked just to try and scam free gold and items from Blizzard by transfering their items to another account. Because of this, Blizzard must do a detailed review of your account to make sure you have a legit problem. If your problem really is a problem, Blizzard will attempt to restore your account the best they can, though most times this just means gear and money; most trade skill mats are usually not replaced (I lost 15 stacks of netherweave, a whole bunch of leather (375 skinning), and various other mats that were not replaced).
So just in case something happens, Blizzard does have a process by which they can restore your account. Only problem is that it can take up to 10 days for this to happen from the time you first report the problem. The first time it happened to me, they changed my password, billing information, and registered name (My real name). I had to call Blizzard and prove to them that I was not someone based in Asia and to provide the most recent CC# that had been used in my name. After that it took 6 days to actually get my items back and my character, a 60 Troll Hunter at the time, was respec'd for pure macro farming.