…if you haven’t already. I’m referring of course to a Battle.net Account Authenticator. I have one now and you should too.
One by one, members of my guild have been getting picked off over the past several weeks. The only thing consistent with all of the attacks was that the accounts were not protected by an authenticator.
If you have an iPhone or other compatible mobile device, please download the authenticator app for it. If not, then pay the $6.50 for the Battle.net Authenticator. It is a very small price to pay for the peace of mind it brings.
Seems if you don’t have one these days, you’re just asking for it. If you’ve read this post and you don’t have one, I urge you… go get one now.
I’ve been a authenticator advocate for some time, having the iphone app and instructing my RL playing buddies, my fiancé and my brother to do the same. But something strange happened yesterday… While my fiancé was entertaining her niece (nowhere near a computer), her main character logged on to WoW. We were both quite shocked as her character jumped into Warsong Gulch to play a match. She was able to log on herself after 4 attempts (with authenticator) and found nothing missing from the personal or guild banks, but she was 3000 honor points richer.
After opening a ticket a GM told her that Blizzard randomly checks accounts/characters. They said not to worry about it nothing is missing. This sounds fishy to me. Any thoughts?
BTW, this will help keep your account safe but is not 100% effective. It is still possible for your account information to be stolen if there is a key stroke logger installed on your machine. Due to the way the one time token is generated there is a brief time span when they can replay your credentials, knock you offline, and log into your account. You have to be very careful what files you open, links you click on and websites you browse too to make sure your computer is not compromised. Be sure to run antivirus software and keep your machine patched and up to date.
–Turll
We had two members hacked within 24 hours, one being a guild officer. Pain in the butt sorting all the crap out again.
cheap amount to protect your entire WoW livelihood, and now with a pet!
I happen to be one of the members that Gar is referring to. I think they booted me just in case, and hopefully temporarily…
In any case, assuming this gets squared away I will definitely be ordering one of these. Though I don’t know if they ship to APO, Gar a lil help?:) I’ll email you about that one.
These guys will stop at nothing. The extent they went through to hack my account:
1. Got my password somehow prior to January of this year (I haven’t logged into WoW since I deployed to Iraq in December).
2. Associated an authenticator with my account, which of course prevented me from logging in when I had been notified my account my be getting hacked.
3. Used my account to refer a friend, which subsequently upgraded to a full account.
4. Then proceeded to relieve my two level 80s of all their goodies.
On the upside I got a free month of WoW and a Core Hound Pet….
The good thing is I have the account associated with my refer a friend for them to look into, and they foolishly added a friend to my friends list.
All in all, really stupid, but it might actually bring me back to play the game…go figure haha!
Recent hacking victim here. Stripped the 5 80s and a couple of other misc toons of their gear and gold, but the account was closed for gold selling before they could stick an authenticator on it or transfer toons away.
Authenticator is ordered. Toons are restored. (Thanks Blizz, but the emails with tons of attachments sucks to sort through.)
Btw how said is it that I have four toons with a 5k plus GS?
Oh damn… w/ four geared 80s and all that gold, it’s a good thing you’ve got that added layer of protection. 😉
What other toons do you play besides hunter?
I have a blood DK tank with a 5.4 GS, I have a Resto Shaman that just cracked 5.0 GS, I have a Shadow Priest with a 5k GS, and Destro Lock with a 5k GS….hmmmmwait that’s 5 toons…wow I have no life lol. I am leveling a Warrior btw….and saving a rogue for Cata.
I just got mine a week ago I have over 30k gold between all my toons…..I’ll pay $6.50 gladly to keep it that way.