A few weeks ago I was sitting in a meeting when my cell phone started vibrating. Once we were done I pulled my phone out to see that I had a miss call from one of my fellow guild officers. I called my guild mate back and the conversation went a little something like this:
Uhh, hey man, whats up?
Why aren’t you responding to my tells in game?
Ummm…I’m at work, not playing right now. This is where I start to freak out in my mind. It had already hit me what was going on, I didn’t want to believe it but knew it was true.
Well, you are raping the guild bank, taking everything out…I think you are getting hacked.
Well shit! Let me see whats going on.
I hung up and went back to my desk. Sure enough I was unable to log into my battle.net account and I had a nice little warning when I logged into gmail saying that there was some suspicious activity on my account. Sure enough someone from China had logged into my gmail account, reset my battle.net account info and was doing whatever they wanted to MY stuff.
After 38 (I kid you not) calls to blizzard I was finally able to get my account back. It took another six days before my gear and gold were returned to me and a day or two more for the guild mats to be returned. I was out of commission for a week, totally useless to my guild. I couldn’t help with any of our 10 or 25 man runs, couldn’t run heroics with the new guys, couldn’t farm mats or do dailys. The best I could do was sit in guild chat and talk to people. The feeling of being totally helpless was awful.
Chris! This isn’t a blog about getting hacked. This is a blog about raiding and leading raids and all that jazz…right? Well…you know it is but like I said, I was totally out of commission. Useless to my guild, couldn’t do anything at all.
So with that, lets talk security. Blizzard has a great guide on account security but since I have been recently hacked, I figured I would reiterate what has already been stated and throw my two cents in.
In Game
- Don’t give your password out. Sure, it may be a proven fact that your friend down the street will never give up your password to someone else, and he would never mess around with your stuff but the fact remains that he could have a key logger on his computer that steals YOUR information.
- Have a safe word. I know it might sound funny but when something suspicious is going on that quick second that it takes to find out if its you or some asshole with your information is the difference between 100 flasks being taken out and all of them being stolen.
- Have your Guild Leader double check the permissions for each rank. As guilds expand and change things up guild permissions may get changed. Don’t let a simple change be that “in” where an account thief can take what isn’t his.
- Your computer is constantly at risk for infection, whether it be from a virus, key logger, malware etc. You need to protect yourself against all of these threats. Some programs don’t protect against all different types of infections so it’s good to know what is needed for each type of infection. If you are looking for a anti virus program, I would suggest AVG. The free version has served me well for many years without any problems. For malware I would suggest MalwareBytes. If you are looking to protect yourself against adware I would suggest Ad-Aware from Lavasoft. All programs are free and easy to setup and run.
- Regardless of what program you use to scan for a virus or a malicious file, ensure that it is updated. If you are trying to scan your computer with a program that hasn’t been updated in weeks or months, its the same as having no protection at all. Many programs have an auto update feature, ensure that it is configured correctly and is working.
- Ensure that your computer has been updated. Microsoft and Apple put out a good chunk of updates for their operating systems. Don’t assume that because your computer is working fine that it doesn’t need to be updated. Schedule time to update your system, before you go to bed or before work is a great time, that way you are downloading and installing updates without having to lose precious WoW time.
- Update your browser! I don’t care which one you are using, just make sure that it is updated.
- Watch where you go and what you download. Sure, downloading all that tranny dog porn may sound like fun but when you open the file covered in viruses you will cry. If you frequent the ghetto section of the Internet (pornographic websites/unsecured and suspicious download sites etc) then you are increasing your risk of unknowingly downloading something bad. I’m certainly not here to tell you where or what on the Internet you should go, just be careful.
- Buy an authenticator. For the love of all that is good in this world, spend the six dollars to get one. It it totally worth it. Sure, it sucks that you have to carry around a little hunk of plastic everywhere that you play WoW, but what sucks even more is when you get your account stolen and are helpless to do anything. Spend the cash and suck it up. In the end it is worth the trouble.
- Learn what phishing is. You hear about it all the time, and I am sure that some of you guys reading this have had it happen to you; you check your email or in game mail and you have a message from someone claiming that they are giving away a free mount in game or some type of prize. Sounds too good to be true right? Well that is probably because it is. Remember that Blizzard doesn’t ask for your account information (it even says so on the loading screen) so any site that you go to that requires you to put it in to claim a prize is full of poop.
Oh and for real…buy an authenticator. It’s worth it!
A few handy links: