Knock on wood I‘ve never had a security problem, however plenty of my friends have. So why is it that people still don’t have basic security and authenticators for their computers?
Free vs 15 Hours of Heartache
At this point I would like to make the safe bet and say that a large chunk of WoW users have a smart phone, be it Android based, or IPhone, which means that to have an authenticator is 100% free to you.
Those that don’t have a smartphone it is only $10 dollars for the key ring version.
So what happens to your life if you get hacked? Allow me to share what a good friend of mine had to go through rather recently. Listed in the order he did them.
- Email password change
- Change WoW password
- Reboot the security on his computer
- Change all the passwords for his bank account
- Change his email password AGAIN
- Get EVERYTHING back on his WoW account
- Change WoW Password AGAIN
All of this actually took place over a week, just when he thought he’d got everything on lockdown, “they” hit him again. Eventually it all got fixed, but a chunk of it at least could have been avoided with an authenticator.
Level 1 Clearance
So imagine if you will that you log into your account, and everything is great, you select your character, you load in, and you see your guild leader online.
/g: Hey AllMighty! How’s your day goin?
No response, try this a couple more times, and get a little confused.
/shrug Maybe he’s just AFK. So you decide to do some farming, and later go to drop stacks of herbs into the gbank. You open it, lo and behold there is NOTHING in the bank.
NOTHING. No Items. No Enchants. No GOLD.
That’s when you realize something has gone HORRIBLY wrong.
Hopefully you have some sort of alternative way to contact said GL, and he will have to go through all the joyous steps to get things fixed. Though I’ll be honest, does WoW give back what was taken out of the gbank?
Nevertheless this scenario is why I firmly believe, as it is in our guild, that any officer/guild leader is required to have an authenticator attached to their account. Blizzard has actually made this easier on on us putting a little box that we can check so that certain ranks require it. (Thanks Blizz!)
Nothing in the gaming world sucks more than getting hacked and having all of your shit screwed with, so please please PLEASE get an authenticator.
/Cheers
Here are some good links that can help your readers out:
Security Checklist- follow these steps you’ll help reduce the probability of having your account compromised.
http://us.battle.net/en/security/checklist
Types of Account Theft- knowing how your account can be compromised will help you protect yourself.
http://us.battle.net/en/security/theft
What people have to realize is that a compromised account affects much more than just the person who is hacked.
A must have I agree. Everyone I know who’s been hacked didn’t have authenticators. I’ve heard of the rumored hacks to those with authenticators but yet to meet one.
I agree 100%. A year ago I was hacked. I wasn’t an officer in the Guild at that point but had fairly high access to the GB.
It was very, very messy. I couldn’t get an authenticator for two weeks after, as Blizzard had taken it out of the iTunes Canadian store for a while.
As far as the guild bank and items, they (blizzard) will generally do everything they can to return what they can verify through their logs, in the case of being hacked.
Most of my long time members have my cell number and can contact me on facebook and most of my newer members, are long time friends of long time members
I also tend to throw inactive (over 3 months) members down into the “applicant” rank that has no bank access, because it’s been my experience that, its usually the person who hasn’t logged in in months that gets hacked!