I’ve decided to start taking the steps to re-secure my account to the point I can play again. It will take 6-12 hours (maybe longer) before the account is unlocked and available for play again (I should had just stayed on the phone and waited the 25 minutes to speak to a person to get it done, but I probably would still have to go through this). Had to reset my password (now using my old one before I went to battle.net), and then optionally sign up for the Dial-In Authenticator.
As extra security to make sure this never happens again, I’ve purchased the Keychain Authenticator which gives you the Corehound pup. It costs $6.50, which is more than reasonable to protect your account.
During the automated account recovery process, it says it may ask me to fill in a form as proof I own the account with my ID and get that faxed. Not liking this, but if I have to do it.. then I have to do it. It’s my responsibility to make sure the account is secure.
This time I did what I didn’t do; I set up my PIN and.. that was pretty much all I had to do. Now, I have to wait until I can play. However I can still log into my account to verify my password has been changed, which worked, then I saw Benie’s character page…
First off, Benie (the character) seems to be the reason why my account was locked. There was alot of activity since I left on Christmas of last year, with the hacker gaining the “Got My Mind On My Money” achievement between February to March, which means s/he was gold farming.
Then, five days ago (the day Blizzard closed my account), the hacker used Benie to run The Botanica in Outland, constantly, to get more gold to sell.
How do I know he was doing constant runs? It says the final boss was killed 751 times, and I remember killing the final boss only one time, which was when I was a Level 70.
The hacker also got alot of Darkmoon Faire cards, that I saw when my characters were restored on Friday. Apparently he was going to sell them to get even more gold, so he could sell that.
My other accounts also saw activity, but they weren’t involved in the gold farming. Beefhunter wasn’t touched at all, it looks like. It shows the last activity being December 2nd, which sounds right since I haven’t taken the time to get him up to 85 yet.
Some of my inactive alts were touched when I was gone. It appears my DK has been grinding achievements. All of these seem to be happening in mid to late February.
And also, a new character was made on my account, and on a new server. “Zcck” is the name, which is usually a random name gold farmers use.
The thing that bothers me, is my password wasn’t changed to lock me out of my account.. ever. It’s like whoever it was knew I was on hiatus, and knew I don’t check my email that often!
This shit scares me. I guess it’s time to start pointing fingers…
It could had been Troy. He’s the only one I’ve shared my password with, but that was years ago, and that was for my second account which no longer exists. I doubt he would still remember it. Plus he wouldn’t stoop so low as to gold farm.
I seriously doubt it could had been angry. He wouldn’t do something so low. And Cooleow.. he doesn’t know my password, and seems too nice to want to do something like this.
Why am I concerned? It scares me. The hacker got me stuff I didn’t legitimately collect. So I reported my findings to Blizzard to piece together what happened.
It seems the hacker compromised my account on February 16th, but it could had been sooner than that. That’s why I need Blizzard’s help.
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However, a thought just came up. The hacker did Bot, 750 times. Does this mean he soloed it, using my account? Or did he have help with other bots? Does this mean I can finally solo Outland instances? 😀 He used Benie, so it might be possible. But yet I also find it hard to believe that he solo’d a 70+ dungeon, 750 times.
It’s just, as an 85, Level 70 Elites are 15 levels lower. Anything 20 or above, to me, is soloable. Such as most 60+ dungeons. The other ones still require you to be in a raid group to enter, like Kara and Ahn’Qiraj (which is now a zone instead of a dungeon).
Apparently you can make alot of money doing Outland dungeons, and that’s why the hacker was going for it.