Friday, January 9, 2009

Blizzard Authenticator, Sham or Investment?

I was in Blog Azeroth chat today and was talking about the Authenticator with a number of people there. Main question I had is why would a person really invest in one? Is the WoW interface have so many holes that it would be easier for a person to get my account information off my computer using a keylogger than to get my credit card number when I am purchasing something from a website? If I really had a keylogger on my computer would an authenticator really fix the problem?

I have personally had my account hacked. I am not sure how it happened but it was about 2 yrs ago and lost all my toons including ones that I had on an old server. They also emptied and sold everything except a pair of blue pants that I had on my paladin which is the only toon I had left on my account. It took 3 months for me to get my stuff back at which point I had started other toons that I was playing. The main reason that I bring this up is that I scanned my computer back to front and inside out and was unable to find anything that was a keylogger. I was unable to find anything but not long after my paypal account was accessed and used. I then proceeded to wipe my comp and reinstall my os along with the few programs that I needed.

Now the way I see this is that having your wow account is not the disease, it is a symptom. If some one accesses your account then that means you have a security breach that a person can use for something else. They can maybe access your cc info from use on the web, they can access your passwords to various sites that you go to when you have to put them in. So for me I see the authenticator as a way to mask a bigger problem. Also in the back of my mind I can't help but see some dev team and the powers that be of Bliz laughing all the way to the bank for coming up with a little random number generator and having a server that handles them.

For me I say don't waste your money on it and make sure to keep your computer secure using anti-virus software that can sense keyloggers and keeping everything up to date. For the anti-virus software make sure you check because not all of them do, I use AVG and haven't had a problem with it.

Side note Ding 76!

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for your comment.

    I have a friend who got his account hacked three times within one month. Not only that but his brother also got his account hacked soon after. So he broke and bought the authenticator. They never found out why.

    But when you really think about it there is a lot of money in hacking wow accounts. Whats really kind of genius about it is that the only consequence is banning, where as if you stole someones identity and got caught your looking at jail time.

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  2. True and I feel really bad for anyone who has had their accounts hacked. I hate to see it happen and I was highly frustrated when it happened to me.

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