Account security

is important. Since physics, logistical proofs and python are stopping me from Eveing and therefore stopping me from failing horribly, here’s one of my old failing stories. From WoW.

For all two of you who are still reading this, I’ll continue.

I WoWed back in high school, had heard of security, had a decent password that was mostly numbers. I figured account hacking was something that happens to people who paid for internet porn or something.

On that ominous note, I played a warlock. There’s really no Eve equivalent to that so I’ll abandon any attempt at a metaphor besides “it had the tank of a rook and the sig radius of a domi, but the dps of a pulse geddon”. Anyway, I got sick of being weaker than magical tinfoil when punch led to more punches, so I asked my super-special-awesome best friend if I could play his 80 paladin, probably the equivalent of a faction nighthawk with a really expensive fit.

(Yes Klann, that was for you.)

Anywho, good times was had despite the grievous breach of the Warcraft EULA which I assume said “no account sharing” but am too lazy to read. Unlike my super awesome friend, however, I’ve never given anyone passwords to anything I own, stemming off a few traumatic childhood incidents and a psychiatrist whose advices was “stop being a fucking pussy”.

Usually this next paragraph ends with “and then my ships exploded again”, but since this is hello kitty island adventures, there will be no exploding. So, I was mining on the paladin one day during lunch period, when I see in my friends list

“chaaos has come online”, where chaaos was my warlock.

Words shrivel in an attempt to rationalize the “OSHIT” feeling I felt at that moment. All my time in Eve, all the itty V losses(25), the BS losses(12), the orca loss(1), I have NEVER felt the “oshits” more than that moment.

Leaping into action while five minutes of time remained on my lunch break, I sent a mail to big blizz saying, paraphrasing:

“My word, I feel that someone malicious has gained access to my Warcraft account and intends HORRIBLE shenanigans! Would you kindly deactivate my account so that this miscreant can do no further harm?”

Remember that this was in five minutes, so remove half the consonants and double the exclamation marks and you’ll probably be closer to the actual message.

Anywho, a day or two later I got a mail saying “hello! we changed your account password to this! Also the dude stole a bunch of stuff so we magic-wanded that all back into existence!” (I was the equivalent of a director in a 100-ish corp so this was kind of a big deal).

I promptly logged back onto my account, changed the password, and was hacked, again, the next day. Petition, wait a day, ecetera.

So, with a newly wiped hard drive, I checked the damage. There were several angry mails from my CEO asking why I had removed all the…superflaming tastyfish (it’s been three years, no idea what WoW stuff is called) from the corp hangar and would I please put it back. Right next to this mail was a pile of stuff from the GMs labeled “this probably came from your guildbank”.

So, everything got fixed forever. Also, when I logged onto my WoW mining character which was in the equivalent of a covetor at the time I got hacked, he was now in a fully fitted hulk.

Apparently my account had been used for gold farming via mining.

Yeah, I kept the ore.

Oh also this post is about that post the eve devs made about account security.
It’s important.

Also Capsuleer shutting down? Dangit, now I’ll never be able to claim internet fame.

And finally, the new character creation looks sweet as…. metaphors fail me.


5 Comments on “Account security”

  1. Kala says:

    Could do with those authenticator majiggers that Blizz have, but for Eve. Given it is that much more of a big deal if your Eve account gets nicked – there are no soulbound items!

  2. Klann Schreck says:

    probably the equivalent of a faction nighthawk with a really expensive fit.

    (Yes Klann, that was for you.)
    ———————-

    I see what you did thar.

  3. Latrodanes says:

    So if I’m tracking you, the answer was to completely wipe your HDD? Seems you caught a keylogger somewhere and could have found/deleted it.

  4. Kename Fin says:

    On the gripping hand are the number of times that overzealous GMs have banned my account because ‘malicious hacking attempts have been made on your account’ all because I used my corporate VPN to access them while travelling. Seems that anyone using a corporate VPN must be working for the Accountants League of Isk Farmers: Local 542 and needs immediate banning.

    While I applaud their diligence in dealing with the issue and there eventual reinstatement, it was confusing when less than 12 hours later to get another email from them that my account had again been banned for the same malicious hacking attempts. Seems I had logged on from the corporate VPN again and was acting all suspicious by training skills and shooting Sleepers in wormholes and not spending billions of isk from the corporate coffers.


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