WoW! Pun Intended

Account Name: ***** Account Action: 72 Hour Suspension Reason for Action: Terms of Use Violation -- Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy This suspension happened because one or more characters on the account were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for "real-world" currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy. Even if this behavior is the result of a third party accessing the account instead of the registered user (for example, a friend, family member, or leveling service) then the account can still be held responsible for the penalty because of the impact it had on the game environment. We've found the above behavior is many times directly related to groups responsible for compromising World of Warcraft accounts; we take these issues very seriously. To better understand our position against exploitative activity and the risks involved, please review this article: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/.../antigold.html The exploitative activity that took place on this account violates the World of Warcraft Terms of Use. We ask you take a moment to review these terms at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/legal/termsofuse.html. Note that additional Terms of Use violations may result in more severe actions against this account, up to and including permanent closure. For any disputes of this action, please visit the Exploitative Activity FAQ and Contact page here: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/exploitfaq Regards, Blizzard Entertainment Support

Ok. So I woke up this morning and tried to log on around 5:30 to do a little AHing. Hmm, my account seems to have an Authentication Code put on it. So I do a google search and see it could mean hacker. Uh oh.
So I jump on Armory and check my main. Bam Lvl 80 Protadin stripped clean... Only my 80 rogue escaped with gear intact... 80 hunter also cleaned, and my bank/alts. Over 10k gold total. The little fuck even ran a dungeon on the hunter before he cleaned him.
Then I check my email 6 hours later and he's found out I changed my wow and email passwords, so he tried to reset them both and failed, then as I'm figuring this out, Blizz sends me the above email. Damn! Suckers quick. WoW blackmarket is hot.

Heres my question. If he paid to have the account Authenticator added to keep me out, can't they trace the credit card #?

Yes, I would imagine so. If he used a credit card; however, if the credit card was one of those pre-paid from wal-mart credit cards it would be impossible to trace given the information on the card could be completely false and nobody would ever know.

First: http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=puns

Second: You don't pay to have an authenticator added to your account, you buy the authenticator from the blizzard store and then add it to whatever account you want. It costs like $6 for one. There's no good excuse for you not having one, and getting one would have prevented what happened to you from happening 100%. I suppose technically they could look to see the name of the person who purchased the authenticator, but you could probably get a pre-paid visa or some shit to buy it, and they likely won't do that for you anyway because it's your own stupid fault. See this thread for more information on the Blizzard authenticator.

Third:

1. Duly noted.

2. I didn't even know about authenticators till this happened. It seems like blizzard shouldn't be making a profit off this and it should be a standard that you won't get hacked. (After reading the other post. I can see why it would be a good idea to have one as a hacker and just slip it on any account your using. Buys you more time plus other benefits.)

3. Thanks.

So, I'm going on my third call to Blizz support, first 2 times it was 40 mins and they told me to call back at a later point and disconnected me. Atm, I'm going on a 75min call... This is madness. I've checked Armory again and now the rogue is completely missing from the list. Not a good sign. Even after I do get through and prove it's my account and I had nothing to do w/ it, it'll still be 8-10+ days before they can fully restore my items/gear.

I'm not sure if Blizzard even makes any money off of the authenticators. I think the $6.50 they charge you includes shipping. I agree though, it should be standard. They should stick one in every game box and add $5 to the price. It would completely get rid of hackers, which would greatly reduce the gold seller spam (as gold sellers get their product from stolen accounts and from people selling the gold to them.)

I hadn't heard about hackers putting authenticators on stolen accounts before, that's actually pretty clever. A single authenticator can be tied to as many accounts as you want, so a hacker could simple procure one authenticator and stick it on every account they steal.

I thought the authenticator's were a bust?

I dunno what would give you that impression. The Blizzard Store had sold out of them for a little while a year or two ago, but they're incredibly successful, at least at protecting your account. It generates a 6 digit code that changes every minute. It's pretty much impossible for someone to get into your account without your authenticator, even if they have your username and password. And it's $6.50. If anything, Blizzard just needs to publicize it more. It's ultimate account security at hardly any cost, and like I said, if everyone got one of these there would be a lot less gold spam once the suppliers start running out of supply.

And I think the best way they could go about getting people to use these things would be to make it policy that if your account is stolen, your characters and items are not restored. It would free up a lot of Blizzard's resources for other legitimate problems instead of them having to help dumbasses who get their accounts stolen. But they wont do that because they would probably lose subscribers because too much of their user base is made up of these dumbasses.