WoW! Pun Intended

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.

I thought I had read somewhere that they were easily hacked. I could be wrong, its been a while.

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.

This.

I feel if your account was hacked, 99% of the time it's nothing more than said 'x' user being a retard and either clicking on a link that has a logger, or simply having a retarded password or something of the such. I've never had any account stolen ever, so I can't realate. I feel bad, but at the same time it probably is slightly your own fault somewhere along the line.

I did notice yesterday when I logged into WoW in-game they had a message about Hackers figuring out more and more ways recently to get into people's accounts. Good times.

I thought I had read somewhere that they were easily hacked. I could be wrong, its been a while.

That seems highly unlikely but if you have an article or something on it I'd love to read it.

As far as I've heard, they are nearly impossible to hack if at all. Like K_A said, you would have to actually have the authenticor itself given that it's a random generated code that updates itself regularly and you cannot change account information without having that code. It's basically a refreshing encryption that is only visible on the thumb drive looking thing.