Well, it’s happened again, this time to an officer in Aetherial Circle (BRK’s guild on Drenden). The account holder was able to recover the account, briefly, but was once again compromised and the account and Guild Vault were both pillaged. Blizzard, of course, is waiting for a call from the account holder. Meanwhile…nothing.
If you recall, I (and several of my fellow bloggers) addressed the absence of intervention or timely response earlier this month. Since then, Blizzard has done…nothing. Not a word, and certainly no action.
So what’s it going to take before Blizzard decides the well-being of its customer base is a concern? While I absolutely agree each of us has a responsibility to install and maintain firewalls, anti-virus, anti-spam, and anti-keylogger software, so too does Blizzard have a concurrent responsibility to take proactive measures to protect its users.
Blizzard’s evident lack of concern or action remains unacceptable. You’re a Mean One, Blizzard.
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Bah. The officer obviously has a keylogger, and was probably too spaced out (or addicted) to properly clean his computer before relogging with his restored account. Seriously – I have little pity if it happens a second time like this. People – especially officers – ought to learn to freaking protect themselves! Burned once – fine, honest mistake – burned twice – stop being a dolt.
While I completely agree with Karthis, this doesn’t take Blizzard of the hook. Sure, if I were Blizzard, I’d restore nothing, nil. (For 2nd+ time offenders!)
Everyone can fall for it the first time, but if they keep falling, then they’re dumb or playing with fire and should pay for it.
As for “first timers”, Blizzard’s response should be much swifter and they don’t even need 24/7 support for that!
1) Enforce reply-to-mail password change confirmation (this prevents the thief from locking the proper user out of the web-based account management).
2) Implement a “Lock Now” emergency button on said account.
3) Implement a special in-game ticket where users could report a fellow GUILDie as having his account being stolen. Require 3 people and only accept reports for members of the same guild. If 3 Guildies report someone as being hacked right now, instantly log that person off, block the account and schedule that account and reports for processing on next business day. If the report turns out to be a prank, suspend the reporters for a whole month. If they do it again, ban their accounts for good. If it was a real hack in progress, then Blizzard will have less work to do as less items will have been stolen.
All of these can be done with little work and DON’T require 24/7 support. They would stop 99% of the cases. It’s better than 0% and can be done very INEXPENSIVELY…
I wonder how many accounts get broken into on a daily basis. Realize that if Blizzard starts setting up 3 shifts of 24/7 account recovery guys on a hotline, I daresay it would increase the cost of this game per month. We’re already paying $15 a month. I don’t know if I’m willing to pay $20 a month for a service like that when I’m already doing the most diligent of things to protect my account.
I change my password every 2 weeks.
I ensure my username’s already in my client so I don’t have to type it.
I run weekly antivirus checks.
I make sure the addons I download are from reputable websites and not part of some “guild package”.
Is it a hard thing to do? No. Is it time consuming for some people? Well, yeah, maybe it is for some people. I got burned once by a keylogger and I have no intention of allowing that to happen again.
But, they already have those people. It’s simply a matter of giving them the tools to be able to prevent some asswipe from spending hours flaunting Blizzard’s unwillingness to serve their customers.
Instead of providing more service (and they can well afford it, even if they had to add people, without increasing our fees–they simply need to have a broader vision of support for their customers than that focused on the bottom line; believe me, I know the costs associated with such service), it seems they are providing less: When’s the last time you got even an email reply from Blizzard after reporting egregious profanity or gold spammers?
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