So, I was hacked.
Posted 04-29-2008 at 12:26 PM by Caoin
Everything is gone... three years worth of work... of virtual, pixellated blood, sweat and tears.
Long story short, if your friend gives you his account, be sure he changes it to your name in case something like this ever happens.
In any case, I have rerolled and am already at lvl 70 and Aldor exalted. My new character's name is Caoni (It's a little mandarin play on words, and those who are privvy find it endlessly amusing.)
I am also running my own guild now, since Ordo Exodus sadly disbanded a bit ago. We're casual for the time being, but are planning on going hardcore once the expansion hits... that is, if we don't all just start playing Warhammer instead. I have some of Ordo's best and brightest in here, and a few of them have been not only instrumental in keeping me from quitting WoW altogether over this hacking business, but have also helped a ton in rep and instance grinding to make me at least somewhat viable again.
I am going to start posting here more often... I have been slacking off far too much, and these days more than ever I need a place to rant.
Cheers for now.
Long story short, if your friend gives you his account, be sure he changes it to your name in case something like this ever happens.
In any case, I have rerolled and am already at lvl 70 and Aldor exalted. My new character's name is Caoni (It's a little mandarin play on words, and those who are privvy find it endlessly amusing.)
I am also running my own guild now, since Ordo Exodus sadly disbanded a bit ago. We're casual for the time being, but are planning on going hardcore once the expansion hits... that is, if we don't all just start playing Warhammer instead. I have some of Ordo's best and brightest in here, and a few of them have been not only instrumental in keeping me from quitting WoW altogether over this hacking business, but have also helped a ton in rep and instance grinding to make me at least somewhat viable again.
I am going to start posting here more often... I have been slacking off far too much, and these days more than ever I need a place to rant.
Cheers for now.
Total Comments 3
Comments
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The name on an account is impossible to change. That along with the secret question/answer. So it doesn't really matter what the e-mail, or billing, or password are. So long as you know the secret question/answer you can get into any account.
Lame, I know, but Blizz isn't going to change their policy.Posted 04-29-2008 at 01:04 PM by Caulle 
- This happened to me on my first account, just before BC was released. I had returned home from a few days with family for Christmas. I was anxious to log in and see what was happening with others in the guild. I logged in, and found all of my toons stripped. The character on bottom of the list was deleted and a new character was created. The name of the new toon was "Imsorry(name)". I was angry. I immediately sent a GM ticket and for a few weeks communicated with Blizzard and finally got my gear back. My five level 60s (pre-BC) had their MC/BWL/AQ gear back, but all items were missing the enchants and improvements. Still I was happy to be able to play again. Within a week of receiving my gear back, my account was permanently closed and I never received any kind of helpful explanation why from Blizzard. As far as I knew, I had certainly done nothing. They only responses from Blizzard indicated that they had a reason, and that was more or less good enough. Sure people can say that I had done something, but I honestly have no idea what. My account was gone and to this day I still don't know why....
I was ready to leave WoW completely. There was no way I was going to level up again. I pretty much posted on the guild website that I was done and leaving for good. A fellow guildie sent me a pm saying that he was actually leaving the game, and that I could take over the account if I wanted to. I refused at first, but with his continued discussion and lots of encouragement from guildies, I accepted. One problem that we had was we lived in different states, and to this day still haven't been able to update account information. So I had lost level a level 60 warrior, shaman, druid, mage, and a hunter, and taken over a level 60 warrior, priest, and mage. Learning to heal on a priest compared to my shaman or druid took a little time. I kept working on my toons and now have level 70 warrior, priest, mage, and warlock characters, and a couple other mid 50s.
About four months ago I was hacked again, somehow. I again submitted a GM ticket. Again, it took a couple weeks, but finally received my gear back in the mail. To my surprise almost every piece was restored, and even had the enchants, gems, and whatever else included. Again, not much of a description as to what had happened. Blizzard did say that they had found fraudulant activity done by someone else, etc.
I guess it just depends on how lucky you are as to what the outcome might be. I've seen others hacked and never heard from them again. Others, like me the second time, are hacked and receive everything back. I don't know what to suggest for Blizzard to improve account security, but something needs to be done.Posted 04-29-2008 at 02:30 PM by Unkn0wn - This also happened to me just before Christmas last year, except I haven't traded accounts with anyone. It took a few weeks to get my stuff back, which was to be expected given the time of year it happened.
I didn't get any gems or enchants back, but whoever hacked my account inexplicably used my warrior to farm SL for several hours according to my guildies who were online when it happened, and the greens/blues they got during this time were also restored, so I sold them to pay for gems and enchants. I got all my gear and most of the crap in my bank back too (with the notable exception of my Wolpertinger pet D: )
Funnily enough, after I'd gotten all my enchants and gems back in order, I went on an AH selling spree and I'm certain that being hacked indirectly led to me getting my epic flying mount.
I still don't know exactly how it happened, but I went on a security binge afterwards, installing a proper firewall, two anti-spyware programs and an anti-rootkit program in addition to my anti-virus, and since than haven't even had a cookie tracker on my computer
One more thing, I'm exceptionally careful about what sites I visit and what links I click, and I use Opera browser instead of IE.Posted 04-30-2008 at 02:47 AM by Arrivan
