Saturday, August 8, 2009

Account Hacked

My World of Warcraft account was recently hacked. Someone had my password reset online, which Blizzard was more than happy to blindly do, and then logged into all my characters, stealing everything out of my personal banks as well as my guild bank. While I was asleep, Blizzard sent me e-mails to let me know:

1. Someone had requested a password change for my account
2. The password was changed for my account
3. My account was accessed by an unauthorized user and was now suspended for 24 hours.

Blizzard suggested maybe I shared my personal information with someone. Or maybe I have a key logger on my system and that is how the person got access to my account. I have never shared my personal information with anyone and, if there was a key logger on my system, why did they have to have my password reset? Wouldn't they have had my password already? All the information they need to have my password reset is available from Blizzard. I find it kind of odd that this happened 2 days after the release of a major patch, 3.2.0, and right when Blizzard is stating they are starting to collect personal information. I also noticed when I logged on to Blizzards World of Warcraft site that I now have a WoW/Battlenet account. I did not sign up for a Battlenet account due to seeing so many people in game discussing how they were hacked right after signing up. They made off with over 1900 gold from my bank alt, 1355 gold I had in the guild bank plus all the gold they received from selling everything I had in all my personal banks.

As far as the key logger goes, I am not buying it. I have virus software that updates a couple times a day, have windows defender set and running every day, have a firewall up and run Adaware weekly. I ran through all of these after waking up and finding the e-mails and none of these reported finding any key loggers on my system. Also if there was a key logger they would have had my password to begin with and would not have had to have it reset. This is the first time ANY online account of mine has ever been breached. The password recovery system Blizzard has in place is so painfully inadequate it is a mystery why my account had not been hacked previously.

Depending on what Blizzard does to resolve this issue, it might be time to find something else to do for recreation.