This is part Public Service Announcement (PSA) and part Operation: Cheer Up/Comfort.
*sidetrack* I used to have a goofy little informal timeslot on my college radio station and I remember we were required to do a certain number of PSA's per show. Some were pre-recorded and some I had to read. However, the ones I read usually had an interesting twist of commentary attached.
Ok, back to the message. Security. Safety. The things we hold dear in the World of Warcraft include many things: our toons, our gear, out loot, our gold, our guildies, our friendships. We cherish these things and thus want to take care of our accounts. But sometimes, something bad happens. And bad people do Bad Things.
Yesterday we found out that one of our officers had his account hacked and that person cleaned house on him during the day, and grabbed a bunch of stuff from the guild bank as well. A couple guildies took notice of the unusual emptyness of the guild bank (even after I reorganized it on Saturday!) and looked at the logs. The logs were full of “unknown withdrew <insert goodies here>.” Of course, Bad People aren't always smart. A fellow guildie noticed that many of the items taken were recently listed on the auction house and all by the same toon. Screenshots were taken and the information shared on our forums. Another guildie initiated contact with Blizzard in-game.
So I wanted to offer this little poem to my fellow officer:
They can take away your gear, and they can take away your gold
But your friends will help you rebuild and regain all that sevenfold.
Please don't despair, even though the hack was quite unfair.
Blizzard is working to patch you up as good as new
And you know I'll have a hug waiting for you!
Oh right. PSA. (If they are ever in stock…) Keep an eye out for one of these badboys. I know I would like one. Even if you are careful with changing passwords and all that (which everyone should do anyway), these are a great way to keep your toons safe when they are at home alone.
Eugh, I’m sorry to hear about the Officer being hacked.
I was hacked myself, in FFXI last august. It was not fun, especially given it happened as I was online, and I was powerless to watch as I got disconnected the told I had the wrong password. When I finally got the account back, I was on another server D:
-thinks- On the upside, had that not happened, I wouldn’t be playing WoW and blogging about it, so maybe it was for the best.
Anyway, I hope your officer gets his account back intact, and that the stolen items are returned. -crosses fingers-
It’s hurtful and frustrating when any kind of attack happens…but they can’t take away the friendships!
It’s interesting, according to some theories of criminology, there are three things needed for a crime to take place.
1. a motivated offender
2. a soft target
3. lack of a guardian
Wow is pretty much the perfect world for this. Anyone can be a motivated offender if they see an opportunity, so we aren’t talking bad ass people, we are talking everybody, all you need is the account user name and password to get into someone elses account, relatively easy to obtain, and there are no guardians because it’s the internet.
Due to this environment people will be more likely to commit a crime on say wow then they would in the real world. That’s my little addition to the topic, since I have been away so long I thought I would make a longish comment
Well a good news update is that our GM received a TON of mail from Blizz today to restore items stolen from the gbank by the hacker and most of the money withdrawn. (Which wasn’t a whole lot, but still.)
So, hopefully his account will be restored soon!