HuntsmansLodge.com  »  General   »   You’re not going to believe this one

{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }

1 zelmaru May 14, 2010 at 6:35 pm

Getting hacked is awful. It happened to me a few months ago, and right after that I got an authenticator. The hacker DELETED my characters and the ones he didn’t delete he attempted to transfer. Which meant I couldn’t even get online and hang with my guildies, because if I created a new toon, that might take up a slot which belonged to the old toon, and hell, I didn’t want to mess with my restoration.

The good news is that they returned everything, give or take. I might have lost a stack of icethorn and gained a stack of goldclover here and there. Whatever. I was hacked in the wee hours of Wednesday morning and my characters appeared back in my account (first transferred ones and then deleted ones) on Sunday. Not bad!

If you look at the customer service forum you’ll see why there’s such a wait. These hackers are awful. But even worse, there are these nasty little kiddies who do something intolerably stupid like delete their main, and then cry that *they* have the emergency. I was about to rip their noses off like – seriously… I have a problem through no fault of my own and you are an idiot and deleted your toon, and you want to CUT THE LINE? STAB!

Don’t panic. The account restoration people are good at what they do. And when you get the e-mail saying “your stuff is here and if you want to submit feedback…blah blah…” definitely go ahead and tell them how much the CSR roxxored in getting your stuff back (if he didn’t, ya know, suck). I bet they get so many whines and complaints to the feedback line that they’d be thrilled to receive a thank-you.

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2 Garwulf May 14, 2010 at 7:13 pm

Thanks for chiming in zelmaru. I feel confident that they’ll have me sorted out pretty quickly. In the meantime, I’ll just have a little extra time for posting and updates I suppose. :)

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3 Martbenzak May 14, 2010 at 10:13 pm

I don’t understand why Blizzard doesn’t just include an authenticator with WoW and require people to use it. They would save a lot of time and money recovering people’s accounts if they were never hacked in the first place.

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4 Garwulf May 14, 2010 at 10:36 pm

…because then they wouldn’t be able to sell authenticators, silly…

$6.50 x umpteem tens of thousands of people that need them = gazillions of $$$

I see where you are coming from though. Hacking seems to be so rampant now, that Blizzard should probably take precautions like that. Based upon my phone conversation with the guy from Blizz, there can be hundreds of people waiting in the queue for compromised account restores at a given time. Being that we’re paying fifty cents per day to be able to play this game, you’d think at some point they’d bump up the default security.

I imagine that things will be headed that way eventually. As you hinted though, I think it would be wise to just include the Authenticator in the Cataclysm package. These days, it seems as if without an authenticator, you’re just asking for it.

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5 Martbenzak May 14, 2010 at 10:48 pm

Or raise price of the game by $6.50 and sell one to every single person that plays the game.

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6 Garwulf May 14, 2010 at 10:50 pm

Yep. I was editing my comment as you were writing this.

Seems you and I are on the same page. I really think the authenticator should be a default part of the WoW subscription.

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7 PingHansen May 15, 2010 at 1:27 am

Many of my guildies have been hacked through time. Most of them were relying on complex passwords and scuffing at the idea of an authenticator.

Surprisingly, the argument that works best in convincing people to use an authenticator, is the Core Hound vanity pet. That pet is even useful in a very real way – I know of guilds that won’t allow people access to the guild bank, unless they can show that they have the pet.

BTW: have your guildies checked the guild bank yet?

Fight back against the hackers – report all gold spammers whenever you see them!!!

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8 Garwulf May 15, 2010 at 1:44 am

I logged in via my wife’s account and checked the guild bank. They rifled through it and took some stuff, but got nothing of real value. After a few of the officers had been hacked over the past several months, our GM decided to restrict access to the most precious items in the bank, along with large gold withdrawls. This saved the guild a lot of headaches, considering we’ve had two (including myself) officers hacked within the past 2 weeks. They looted a lot of random crap from the bank, but the only items of any value they managed to get were 60 Abyss Crystals and a TotC epic LW pattern.

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9 Vaeku May 15, 2010 at 5:11 am

When I came back to WoW in November, I made sure I ordered an authenticator as I really didn’t want to take a chance. And it was the best 7 dollars and change I’ve ever spent ($6.50 plus taxes). I now have peace of mind when using it.

Although I’ve come close to accidentally putting it in the washing machine a few times…

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10 Blaquespell May 15, 2010 at 1:25 pm

Any ideas how you got hacked Gar? I’ve been studying Mac OS hacks for a while now in the official Blizzard forums and around the web. To date, no one seems to know of any keyloggers that exist for the Mac platform. Do you think maybe it was a phishing compromise or something similar? I’ve had an authenticator for a while now, but recently I’ve begun agressively blocking ads and running Google Chrome since it seems to be utilizing Snow Leopard’s sandboxing ability. I know us Mac users like to think we’re immune to this, but clearly that’s not exactly the case.

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11 Garwulf May 16, 2010 at 9:13 pm

As I’d mentioned to you yesterday, I haven’t a clue… That’s what’s so worrisome. Hopefully Mac OSX + Blizzard Authenticator will be all I need to keep me secure from here on out. Along with maybe the periodic password change.

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12 Zubby May 15, 2010 at 3:06 pm

I was hacked back before Christmas so I know how you feel. I was always so careful, but evidently, not careful enough. As others have said, Blizzard will make it right and reset your loot and gear. It took a few days for me, but I was pretty satisfied with the outcome.

I’m now rocking an authenticator and I bet the farmers and hackers hate it.!! Wish I had got one sooner.

Great blog btw. Keep up the good work!

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13 Garwulf May 16, 2010 at 9:04 pm

I still can’t believe that I as hacked literally just hours before I was going to attach the authenticator to my account. Truly mind-blowing.

But yea… had I purchased one months ago, I doubt this would have ever occurred. Most everyone I know who has an authenticator as never been hacked.

I spoke with a guildie offline the other day who mentioned that our GM is going to start requiring all top ranking officers (ie: those with the biggest bank privileges) to have an authenticator attached to their account. Seems like a good move to me, considering two of us have been hacked within the past 2 weeks, both with no clue as to how we would have been compromised.

Man, these hackers are not only true scum, but they’re always one step ahead it seems.

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14 Zeijin May 16, 2010 at 6:50 am

Ok so as I am typing this, my order for an authenticator is currently going through. This read-through inspired me to get one (although having been hacked twice already didn’t make me go “geee, I need an authenticator!”).

The last time I was hacked I didn’t even know it had happened because I had not logged into the game in a bit and I was checking my e-mail and received the same 2 e-mails you stated in your post Gar.

Funny thing is, they only sold off some of the stuff in my hunter’s bank, didn’t touch any of my gear, none of my other characters – all they did was spend all my emblems and dal cooking awards and then went to sholazar basin and pretty much skinned everything in sight all day because when I did get to log back in, I had a ton of borean leather and a few arctic furs. Got to keep that stuff along with things that were restored. Being hacked turned out to be rewarding in my case, go figure.

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15 Garwulf May 16, 2010 at 8:46 pm

Oh, that’s funny. Similar thing happened to a guy in our guild a few months back. They used his toon to farm ore for a few hours, so when he got back on he had a bunch of Saronite and Titanium ore waiting for him.

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16 Phoenix Rising July 8, 2010 at 4:35 pm

I’ve just been hacked and guess what’s so funny about it? The device that’s supposed to prevent hacking GOT me hacked. I tryed to log in the afternoon of today and i typed in my password and it said “Enter the generated digital code”. Im i thought i was seeing things… I’ve never had the Authenticator so i was very confused about this… I am being hacked by some using the authenticator against me, and to make things even worse every time I try to call blizzard, it says they have no more space to hold callers, and ive been calling them in 1 hour intervals… I just think this is hysterically unlucky…

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17 Phoenix Rising July 8, 2010 at 4:37 pm

i just really don’t know what to do anymore, any suggestions?

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18 Garwulf July 8, 2010 at 5:01 pm

Hackers stick an authenticator on your account in order to buy them some uninterrupted time while they perform their dastardly deeds.

My advice is just to be patient. Blizzard has their hands full right now, as this problem has seemed to balloon over the past couple of months. Just keep calling and/or sitting on hold – eventually you will get a live support person who will straighten this out for you. Just be prepared to wait a week or so, as it takes about 7 days for an account restoration.

In the end though, they’ll get everything sorted out for you, so don’t worry.

Lastly, make absolutely sure you order a authenticator in the meantime.

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19 laikah July 8, 2010 at 8:11 pm

Phoenix, same exact thing happened to me. I just emailed blizzard and waited it out. They restored everything in only a week, and I got a molten core pup for free :)

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