So, I've been informed by friends that still play WoW that my WoW account is logged in and playing. This is the second time this has happened in 6 months. I don't play WoW any more and haven't for 2 years, I don't log in to my Battle.net account, I don't have malware on my computer, and I don't fall for the phishing emails. This literally just happens with no interaction on my part.

So what is going on over at Blizzard? Am I some isolated case or is this common? This never happened before the switch over to Battle.net. It's pretty annoying too, because I have to waste time getting the account back...

/endrant

 Ive had no problems what so ever and been playing since beta. Same with my fiance, she has never been hacked either. However we see countless people week after week getting hacked. I assume most of it is user end, even though msot people want to deny it. But while I think most are on user error, I do think employees at Blizzard are doing something fishy as well.

 Im not sure how their employee structure is set up, So I'm jsut assuming they have employees who may be a little underhanded and want to make a little extrra cash. I'm sure Blizzard isn't wastign much money on wages for hourly associates. I mean how hard could it be If you have access to everyone in WoW's accounts. You know who is active and who isn't ... it seems alot of inactive accounts get taken over active accounts. Makes me wonder, and I'm not generally a conspiracy guy ...

I don't think the problem is on blizzard's side as after I changed my wow E-mail to a wow only one which I don't use anywhere else I've never recieved anymore spam so It's probably another big site that got hacked and has user information. Also you might just have spyware on your computer, trust me it happens to the best of us and you only find out when your either called by your credit card company or you get an E-mail from blizzard.

When you're a big company like that you are a big target. I've had my account hacked and people call me to ask if it was me playing that night, when I wasn't. I've also seen fully decked out level 80 in a guild at the auction house start spouting web links to gold spammers and hack sites. You know someone just got pwned when a guy is standing there level 80 full epics and starts spamming web links. Ouch!!

VERY few people really get hacked.

A lot of people get phished/scammed/betrayed by friends or something else.

In most cases, it's on the users end. Most people will say "but I didn't do anything or haven't been logged in for years", but it's usually their own fault somehow.

It's like people who buy gold or use bots to level up and then all of a sudden get banned. They all say "I didn't do anything" aswell.

What I'm trying to say is that it's almost always on the users end.

Originally posted by Bama1267

....

 Im not sure how their employee structure is set up, So I'm jsut assuming they have employees who may be a little underhanded and want to make a little extrra cash. I'm sure Blizzard isn't wastign much money on wages for hourly associates. I mean how hard could it be If you have access to everyone in WoW's accounts. You know who is active and who isn't ... it seems alot of inactive accounts get taken over active accounts. Makes me wonder, and I'm not generally a conspiracy guy ...

I agree with this guy.  Yes I am aware most accounts simply get phished, I think it is also very likely that some low level blizz employees sell off info.  My wife works for a call center that takes calls for different clients.  At least every couple of years a group of employees gets busted for vairous privacy infractions. This kind of stuff does happen elsewhere so I have to believe that it happens at blizz as well.

I've been a player since open beta myself. I watch porn, torrent movies, and everything else on my PC. Been using my PC for a good 15 years now. Never got a virus...until about 5 months ago. I was at work and got a text that a character of mine logged in and took some items out of the gbank, logged off, and apparently got transferred. I have no idea where I got the keylogger. Don't feel comfortable using SpyBot and AdAware on my work PC because I don't want it to interfere with the software I have on it, but cleared my PC at my house. That night I went out and got Win 7, wiped my PC, and started over. Then ordered my authenticator. Haven't had a problem since

Still now I have no idea where that keylogger came from. For all I know, its still on my work computer.

Originally posted by maacaaviityy

VERY few people really get hacked.

A lot of people get phished/scammed/betrayed by friends or something else.

In most cases, it's on the users end. Most people will say "but I didn't do anything or haven't been logged in for years", but it's usually their own fault somehow.

It's like people who buy gold or use bots to level up and then all of a sudden get banned. They all say "I didn't do anything" aswell.

What I'm trying to say is that it's almost always on the users end.

Do you have any evidence for anything you just claimed or did you make that all up? Simply spewing what you "believe" out into the internet ether doe not make it true. Please reference statistical data or or anything that can validate what you claimed.

Originally posted by Rhevin

I've been a player since open beta myself. I watch porn, torrent movies, and everything else on my PC. Been using my PC for a good 15 years now. Never got a virus...until about 5 months ago. I was at work and got a text that a character of mine logged in and took some items out of the gbank, logged off, and apparently got transferred. I have no idea where I got the keylogger. Don't feel comfortable using SpyBot and AdAware on my work PC because I don't want it to interfere with the software I have on it, but cleared my PC at my house. That night I went out and got Win 7, wiped my PC, and started over. Then ordered my authenticator. Haven't had a problem since

 

Still now I have no idea where that keylogger came from. For all I know, its still on my work computer.

Facebook.

Originally posted by Razgul

Originally posted by Rhevin

I've been a player since open beta myself. I watch porn, torrent movies, and everything else on my PC. Been using my PC for a good 15 years now. Never got a virus...until about 5 months ago. I was at work and got a text that a character of mine logged in and took some items out of the gbank, logged off, and apparently got transferred. I have no idea where I got the keylogger. Don't feel comfortable using SpyBot and AdAware on my work PC because I don't want it to interfere with the software I have on it, but cleared my PC at my house. That night I went out and got Win 7, wiped my PC, and started over. Then ordered my authenticator. Haven't had a problem since

 

Still now I have no idea where that keylogger came from. For all I know, its still on my work computer.

Facebook.

Huh. How so? Ads? Social engineering? Because come to think of it, there is a correlation between when I started my Facebook account and me losing my Warcraft account.

Originally posted by motorun

Originally posted by maacaaviityy

VERY few people really get hacked.

A lot of people get phished/scammed/betrayed by friends or something else.

In most cases, it's on the users end. Most people will say "but I didn't do anything or haven't been logged in for years", but it's usually their own fault somehow.

It's like people who buy gold or use bots to level up and then all of a sudden get banned. They all say "I didn't do anything" aswell.

What I'm trying to say is that it's almost always on the users end.

Do you have any evidence for anything you just claimed or did you make that all up? Simply spewing what you "believe" out into the internet ether doe not make it true. Please reference statistical data or or anything that can validate what you claimed.

If there really were people out there able to hack for real, don't you think they'd go for people in top guilds or people with shitloads of gold?

Most of the times when someone gets "hacked", it's some guy who is somewhat new to the game and doesn't have anything of value on his account.

It's common knowledge.

The only thing you need to gain access to someones account is thier email that's associated with the account.  With that email you can change someones password, and gain access to the account.  Blizz doesn't require you to verify that you're changing the account password before it takes effect; you only do something if you didn't change the password.  You don't even have to have access to the email itself. 

If the email gets dumped into spam, or if you don't check your email often, it's quite easy to lose control of your account.

This happend to me several months ago.  It wasn't a virus, it wasn't phishing, it was as simple as someone changed my password. 

I recieved a notice from blizzard that my account had been suspended for spamming.  When I went to log into the account the password had been changed.  I went back and looked; sure enough there was an email from blizzard telling me that my password had changed.   I then changed the account password again, and was shocked to find that I didn't have to verify that it was even me doing it.  Changed the password, cancelled the account; which in itself was odd considering I didn't even activate it. 

Never had this happen until after I linked my wow account to the battle.net account. 

When i tried to call blizzard I got a message to call back because their call volume was to high and they didn't have enough people to handle it. 

Blizzard has history of stuff like this happening, and it's not entirely the end user, people just refuse to believe that a lot of people lose control of thier WoW accounts through absolutely no fault of thier own. 

There is a reason that they now have the authenticator, and ti's not just because of phishing and viruses.

Originally posted by Uhwop

The only thing you need to gain access to someones account is thier email that's associated with the account.  With that email you can change someones password, and gain access to the account.  Blizz doesn't require you to verify that you're changing the account password before it takes effect; you only do something if you didn't change the password.  You don't even have to have access to the email itself. 

If the email gets dumped into spam, or if you don't check your email often, it's quite easy to lose control of your account.

 

This happend to me several months ago.  It wasn't a virus, it wasn't phishing, it was as simple as someone changed my password. 

I recieved a notice from blizzard that my account had been suspended for spamming.  When I went to log into the account the password had been changed.  I went back and looked; sure enough there was an email from blizzard telling me that my password had changed.   I then changed the account password again, and was shocked to find that I didn't have to verify that it was even me doing it.  Changed the password, cancelled the account; which in itself was odd considering I didn't even activate it. 

Never had this happen until after I linked my wow account to the battle.net account. 

When i tried to call blizzard I got a message to call back because their call volume was to high and they didn't have enough people to handle it. 

Blizzard has history of stuff like this happening, and it's not entirely the end user, people just refuse to believe that a lot of people lose control of thier WoW accounts through absolutely no fault of thier own. 

There is a reason that they now have the authenticator, and ti's not just because of phishing and viruses.

To change the password of an account, you have to click an "okay" link, so what you're saying is false.

Originally posted by Uhwop

...

When i tried to call blizzard I got a message to call back because their call volume was to high and they didn't have enough people to handle it. 

 ...

There is a reason that they now have the authenticator, and ti's not just because of phishing and viruses.

Hah. I hit dial, put the phone on speaker next to my face, and took a nap. Five hours later I got a person that actually spoke English and she sounded cute to boot. =D

As for the authenticators, I think all games that look to become the next big thing should include an authenticator in the box.

Me my gf and her brother have al playe wow 5 + yrs and never been hacked not once. I dont follow email links i dont respond to in game whispers other then to report them for spam. I dont buy gold. If u ever bought gold or paid a power leveling service u will probably get hacked.

Other ways to get hacked is if other people know your info and somehow have spyware on there account but u have let them use your account on there comp. Not a good thing etierh. Blizz has alot of diffrent ways to avoid being hacked on there website.

Yea most of the hacks are use error. There was a vulnerability in flash player and acrobat reader but they updated those so that isnt there anymroe but if u have the older version of these things that could of got u hacked also.

I now have an authenticator. As does my gf and her brother but its a recent thing. I played up until 2 months ago no authenticator. And never got hacked. There are just so many ways to get hacked . And most of them are our fault. I dont believe that garbage about low level blizz employees for one reason.

they are the ones who have to deal with wow players yelling at them for behing hacked. Get my account back. Stuff. What incentive and dont tell me money would they have to do that? Also most people who work at blizz are gamers themselves. I just dont see gamers messing with other gamers accounts like that.

No one wants to be hacked. Anyone who has been hacked would never do it to another person unless theya re pure evil.

Originally posted by maacaaviityy

Originally posted by Uhwop

The only thing you need to gain access to someones account is thier email that's associated with the account.  With that email you can change someones password, and gain access to the account.  Blizz doesn't require you to verify that you're changing the account password before it takes effect; you only do something if you didn't change the password.  You don't even have to have access to the email itself. 

If the email gets dumped into spam, or if you don't check your email often, it's quite easy to lose control of your account.

 

This happend to me several months ago.  It wasn't a virus, it wasn't phishing, it was as simple as someone changed my password. 

I recieved a notice from blizzard that my account had been suspended for spamming.  When I went to log into the account the password had been changed.  I went back and looked; sure enough there was an email from blizzard telling me that my password had changed.   I then changed the account password again, and was shocked to find that I didn't have to verify that it was even me doing it.  Changed the password, cancelled the account; which in itself was odd considering I didn't even activate it. 

Never had this happen until after I linked my wow account to the battle.net account. 

When i tried to call blizzard I got a message to call back because their call volume was to high and they didn't have enough people to handle it. 

Blizzard has history of stuff like this happening, and it's not entirely the end user, people just refuse to believe that a lot of people lose control of thier WoW accounts through absolutely no fault of thier own. 

There is a reason that they now have the authenticator, and ti's not just because of phishing and viruses.

To change the password of an account, you have to click an "okay" link, so what you're saying is false.

If they have access to your email, they can click the link for said confirmation email.

So what they said is actually true.

And that's why Battle.net using an e-mail as username for login authentication is a dirt stupid thing to do. It used to be that even if you knew someone's username and requested a password change/reset, you still didn't necessarily know where the e-mail went. Now they know exactly where it goes because the e-mail the battle.net account is tied to, is the username of the account.

Not to mention, it's significantly easier to track down an e-mail account than it is a private username... even if it's an email used for a single purpose.

Derp.

IT security at it's worst, brought to you by Blizzard.

Originally posted by Abrahmm

So, I've been informed by friends that still play WoW that my WoW account is logged in and playing. This is the second time this has happened in 6 months. I don't play WoW any more and haven't for 2 years, I don't log in to my Battle.net account, I don't have malware on my computer, and I don't fall for the phishing emails. This literally just happens with no interaction on my part.

So what is going on over at Blizzard? Am I some isolated case or is this common? This never happened before the switch over to Battle.net. It's pretty annoying too, because I have to waste time getting the account back...

 

/endrant

 i realy dont see WHY you are getting so upset about your wow account man......if dont play it then what's the freaking problem that somone hacked your wow account???

silly

I usually get 3 emails a week from their official email stating my account has been hacked or some such nonsense. The links don't lead back to the official site, are you sure that's not what you're getting? I can't even block the damn things since they use the official email addresses and I don't want to not get them in case one happens to be real.

Originally posted by Purplesaurus

I usually get 3 emails a week from their official email stating my account has been hacked or some such nonsense. The links don't lead back to the official site, are you sure that's not what you're getting? I can't even block the damn things since they use the official email addresses and I don't want to not get them in case one happens to be real.

 we all get those mails.....even friends of mine who never played wow.....haha

Originally posted by Purplesaurus

I usually get 3 emails a week from their official email stating my account has been hacked or some such nonsense. The links don't lead back to the official site, are you sure that's not what you're getting? I can't even block the damn things since they use the official email addresses and I don't want to not get them in case one happens to be real.

Protip: It's not Blizzard's official email. Hover your mouse over it and you'll see.