Can't log into game or access account online

[Loudghost]

So last night I was playing Warcraft and I fell asleep and got disconnected, no big deal, happens all the time when I fall asleep. So I got to bed, get up this morning, go to sign onto Warcraft, and it says my info is incorrect. So I try a few more times and figure maybe I just need to reset my password. I try logging onto my account on Warcraft's website and it says there's no account with that email or that username. Now I know I didn't do anything to get my account banned or even suspended. No one played my characters to level me up and I never paid for gold or anything like that, so what the hell man? And just in case you're wondering if my sub ran out, I have auto billing so they withdraw the amount for sub every month outta my account automatically. ANd the crazy-ass thing - my girlfriend has her own account that I also pay for each month via auto-billing, and she logged onto her account in the game and on the site no problems. So I am at a loss here as to what in the hell happened to my account. I emailed Blizzard but probably won't get a response til Monday at the earliest. So I figured I'd just post this and ask if anyone has any comments and/or suggestions as to what happened to my account. Thanks.

[Khab]

I would guess keylogger and stolen account. Boot into Safe mode in Windows and scan for virus' and spyware.

It should be easy enough for Blizzard to see if the email was changed but as I recall, the email can't be changed without the original email account confirming it.

You may want to have your GF log into her account and see if any of your characters are online.

[Loudghost]

Dude my girlfriend just logged on and saw that one of my characters is online right now so what the hell do I do? Blizzard isn't there til Monday and apparently my friends see him on my character online and he changed my professions and is logging onto my other characters. So I emailed Blizzard but I just feel so helpless right now so I'm thinking I might just keep emailing them repeatedly today so when Blizzard opens on Monday they'll have no choice but to see all my emails and then they can't gimme the runaround to "they'll get to my account problem when they can". Any ideas for how to deal with this until Blizzard returns tomorrow?

[Tetamesh]

a GM might do something if you have your GF open a ticket, other than that, just wait. Blizz should restore most if not everything you lose.

[Loudghost]

Waiting on the GM to respond which probably won't be til tomorrow anyways, but what sucks is the guy is just playing around doing whatever while I sit here feeling helpless. This sucks man, I checked my pc for viruses and any keyloggers and that sort of thing. Nothing. I use letters and numbers for my password, it's kinda lengthy, so I just don't get it. Where did I go wrong? I gave no one my password or anything like that. Hell my damn girlfriend who lives with me didn't even know my password. So that's all I'm left with really at this point - where did I go wrong and why would they hack my account when I don't even have epic gear or anything that makes my account worthy of selling.

[clevins]

Ouch.

First off, your scans missed something. Unless you gave someone your password, there's no other way that they could get access to your account.
Sadly, not all scanning stuff is equally good - a few people here have been hacked and found stuff that they missed earlier. Do a search for hacked, scanning etc on the forums. I think you'll want Spybot search and Destroy and Kaspersky, but I play on a Mac so I don't keep up as well as I used to on PC security packages.

[Loudghost]

Well I scanned with AVG and Spybot Search & Destroy but they found nothing. So I might try Kaspersky and see if it catches anything unsual on my pc.

[clevins]

Do search here too - the issue's come up before.

The thing is, there's only 3 ways for someone else to have your login info -
1) you gave it to them
2) you were hacked
3) you used a powerleveling/gold service (a variation of 1).

Well or 4) it's really easy to guess is possible. Since you say you didn't give it to anyone, the only explanation is #2, which means you have a keylogger on your PC. BTW, don't bombard Blizzard with emails - you're not the only person with the issue, you're basically going to have to wait your turn. Think if how you'd feel if someone bugged you hour by hour to fix something when other folks had the same issue... yeah.

Oh and consider buying an Authenticator - pretty much makes the account unhackable.

[Loudghost]

Do search here too - the issue's come up before.

The thing is, there's only 3 ways for someone else to have your login info -
1) you gave it to them
2) you were hacked
3) you used a powerleveling/gold service (a variation of 1).

Well or 4) it's really easy to guess is possible. Since you say you didn't give it to anyone, the only explanation is #2, which means you have a keylogger on your PC. BTW, don't bombard Blizzard with emails - you're not the only person with the issue, you're basically going to have to wait your turn. Think if how you'd feel if someone bugged you hour by hour to fix something when other folks had the same issue... yeah.

Oh and consider buying an Authenticator - pretty much makes the account unhackable.

Well I decided against bombarding them with emails because it wasn't the smart thing to do, but as far as my password being guessable I don' think so. So I'm gonna talk to them tomorrow and thank you for the idea of the Authenticator as I really am gonna look into that after having this problem occur. It's one of those things I guess you always hear about but then when it happens to you ya just feel so helpless and violated to be honest.

[clevins]

Yeah I imagine you do. Never been hacked and being on a Mac my odds are pretty low, but I would hate it.

Oh! Don't log in to online banking etc until you figure this out - if there's a keylogger on your system it could log all of that too and that would suck MUCH more.

[Loudghost]

Yeah I won't log into online banking or anything until i find out how to fix my account with Blizzard. And it sucks - I looked at the Authenticators online to buy, and they're sold. Go figure.

[Mollymog]

Yeah I won't log into online banking or anything until i find out how to fix my account with Blizzard. And it sucks - I looked at the Authenticators online to buy, and they're sold. Go figure.

They sell out pretty quickly now that players have learned how easy to use and helpful they are. It took me about a week to find some on sale (and next day when I checked just out of curiosity they were all gone). So persist. They're a bit of a pain to use and for goodness' sake don't lose or misplace it as it also controls your online access to your account on the official site. You can use only one, too, for both your and your girlfriend's accounts. We use one here for two accounts.

[Loudghost]

Yeah my only concern though is when I try to get this straightened out with Blizzard later today, what's stopping this guy from doing this again ya know? Say I change back the account's email address, change my secret questions and password, and have the authenticator, what's to say he can't just come back and do it again?

[Mollymog]

Yeah my only concern though is when I try to get this straightened out with Blizzard later today, what's stopping this guy from doing this again ya know? Say I change back the account's email address, change my secret questions and password, and have the authenticator, what's to say he can't just come back and do it again?


The authenticator generates a random six-digit number for each access to your account. So you put in account name, then password, then generate this number and enter it and then gain access. The number is different each time and there's almost an infinite range of possible numbers, so it's a big step towards increased security. Once you have an authenticator and have 'attached' (a simple procedure done on the official website) it to the account, there's no other way of getting into it.

[triplex]

there's almost an infinite range of possible numbers

How close is 1 000 000 to infinity? I would say not so close. But it's good enough for account security.

[Loudghost]

Well I contacted Blizzard yesterday and they reset my account password and email, and so when I logged in after I got off work it booted the guy off. :D And here's the best part - he changed my professions to mining and herbalism, and as unreal as it seems, maxxed them out completely in just over 1 day and also managed to get numerous amounts of herbs and ores and whatnot, so I posted it all on the AH and so far last night I made 1,400 gold in about 4 hours. Man he must be seething. lol

[clevins]

Yeah my only concern though is when I try to get this straightened out with Blizzard later today, what's stopping this guy from doing this again ya know? Say I change back the account's email address, change my secret questions and password, and have the authenticator, what's to say he can't just come back and do it again?

If you have the authenticator that will stop him. But unless you remove the keylogger then there's nothing to stop you from losing the account info again. In fact, YOU WILL. Had an ex-GM of my old guild gethacked, gdisbanded, etc... Got his information again, but was an idiot and hadn't cleaned his computer off... got hacked AGAIN. Note the EX in ex-gm.

[zerlikjr]

There was an article about a bug in IE.
www.wowinsider.com/2008/12/16/internet-explorer-exploit-targets-game-passwords/