Sharing is caring!

This is part Public Service Announcement (PSA) and part Operation: Cheer Up/Comfort.

*sidetrack* I used to have a goofy little informal timeslot on my college radio station and I remember we were required to do a certain number of PSA's per show.  Some were pre-recorded and some I had to read.  However, the ones I read usually had an interesting twist of commentary attached.

Ok, back to the message.  Security.  Safety.  The things we hold dear in the World of Warcraft include many things: our toons, our gear, out loot, our gold, our guildies, our friendships.  We cherish these things and thus want to take care of our accounts.  But sometimes, something bad happens.  And bad people do Bad Things.

Yesterday we found out that one of our officers had his account hacked and that person cleaned house on him during the day, and grabbed a bunch of stuff from the guild bank as well.  A couple guildies took notice of the unusual emptyness of the guild bank (even after I reorganized it on Saturday!) and looked at the logs.  The logs were full of “unknown withdrew <insert goodies here>.”  Of course, Bad People aren't always smart.  A fellow guildie noticed that many of the items taken were recently listed on the auction house and all by the same toon.  Screenshots were taken and the information shared on our forums.  Another guildie initiated contact with Blizzard in-game.

So I wanted to offer this little poem to my fellow officer:

teddybear2They can take away your gear, and they can take away your gold

But your friends will help you rebuild and regain all that sevenfold.

Please don't despair, even though the hack was quite unfair.

Blizzard is working to patch  you up as good as new

And you know I'll have a hug waiting for you!

Oh right. PSA. (If they are ever in stock…) Keep an eye out for one of these badboys.  I know I would like one.  Even if you are careful with changing passwords and all that (which everyone should do anyway), these are a great way to keep your toons safe when they are at home alone.

Image courtesy of RobertFrancis.

Join the newsletter

Subscribe to get family gaming tips, reviews and our latest content by email.

We won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

Sharing is caring!

4 comments

  • Eugh, I’m sorry to hear about the Officer being hacked.

    I was hacked myself, in FFXI last august. It was not fun, especially given it happened as I was online, and I was powerless to watch as I got disconnected the told I had the wrong password. When I finally got the account back, I was on another server D:

    -thinks- On the upside, had that not happened, I wouldn’t be playing WoW and blogging about it, so maybe it was for the best.

    Anyway, I hope your officer gets his account back intact, and that the stolen items are returned. -crosses fingers-

  • It’s hurtful and frustrating when any kind of attack happens…but they can’t take away the friendships!

  • It’s interesting, according to some theories of criminology, there are three things needed for a crime to take place.

    1. a motivated offender
    2. a soft target
    3. lack of a guardian

    Wow is pretty much the perfect world for this. Anyone can be a motivated offender if they see an opportunity, so we aren’t talking bad ass people, we are talking everybody, all you need is the account user name and password to get into someone elses account, relatively easy to obtain, and there are no guardians because it’s the internet.

    Due to this environment people will be more likely to commit a crime on say wow then they would in the real world. That’s my little addition to the topic, since I have been away so long I thought I would make a longish comment

  • Well a good news update is that our GM received a TON of mail from Blizz today to restore items stolen from the gbank by the hacker and most of the money withdrawn. (Which wasn’t a whole lot, but still.)

    So, hopefully his account will be restored soon!

Welcome

We are a family of gamers. Mom (Darcy/Syrana) and Dad (Brian/Sideshow) have been gaming for as long as they can remember back when you only had a joystick to use and saved your games to cassette tapes.

They've been gaming together since they met in 2002. Sometime after 2006, they both started playing World of Warcraft and did that for many years. They started this blog, originally called Sideshow & Syrana which has now transitioned to the new Stay-At-Home Gamers site, while keeping all of the original content.

Starting in 2010, two more gamers came along (now known as Princess Boo and Mr. X) and they are now old enough where they both enjoy playing games and watching others play games. They are both excited to have others to watch them play their favorite games. Come along with us and let's enjoy these games together!


Archive