Monday, April 26, 2010

HACKED!

My WoW account was hacked this weekend.

As I was playing it, the game froze and then disconnected and when I went to log back in, I suddenly had an authenticator attached to my account. Bugger.

So I had to do two things - first, get rid of whatever miscreant device had infiltrated my system and second, negotiate the choppy waters of Blizzard customer service. The debugging was pretty easy as a quick update and malware scan found the little bugger straight away. That got smushed. For securities sake, I switched to another computer to do my Blizzard business and then things slowed down a little.

I'm sure its not the case, but the Blizz helpline is apparently (according to the part of the website I looked at) only open during office hours on weekdays. Harsh. They do have a webform though, which looked fine, until it asked you for your CD-Key and the answer to your special question. CD-Key was easy ... Mr Pack Rat FTW! I needed to waltz around my battle.net account for a while to get a hint of my secret question. If I hadn't been able to do this, they would have required me to fax over a copy of my passport. Faff!

Anyway, I made my protestations and waited for the wheels to go into motion. Now, I hit the next snag. Phishing emails. I get around 2-3 WoW related phishing mails per day and they are just spam-foldered and daily deleted. How do you differentiate between the phish and the helpdesk? Well, Blizz have a nice way of doing it involving changed passwords and very plain information about each step of the process. Sorted.

So I'm back (now with added authenticator of my own) and everything on my character reimbursed. EVERYTHING. Even the scraps of fur that the twats had sold. I was impressed.

So, how do I feel? Well, a little silly for being hacked - although for the life of me I cannot work out how, considering my lack of internet adventure - and not in the least bit traumatised. I thought I would be, but I'm not. Its just a thing that has happened.

I think, in its own way, thats kind of healthy!

4 comments:

AndrewW said...

If looking for the source of infection first ask the obvious question, are you the only person in yuor household who uses your computer?

Vodkashok said...

Yes. Nobody else uses my office computer ... on pain of death!

Fandomlife said...

Good...teenage girls are a security risk.

DGuk said...

The location of the infection is a worry, as we probably browse the same MMO websites which you probably got it from.

But, at the very least, it made me attach my authenticator which had been sitting on my desk for a few weeks un-used.

Good to hear everything is A-OK, and they quickly replaced everything.