Authenticators? I think not.

So, I'm sure there's been a story here and a story there about people being hacked even though they owned authenticators. I've even read a few myself. But I hadn't experienced anything like it until two guildies were hacked within two weeks of each other.

Guildie One was able to cancel his authenticator, change his password and recover his items within a week.

Guildie Two however has been given the run around by Blizzard, and I'm appaled. Though it honestly doesn't surprise me. Guildie Two was away this weekend. A fellow guildmate knew that and when he saw him toon hopping, reported it to Blizzard with no response. Once Guildie Two realized his account was hacked, he contacted Blizzard. By that time however, the hackers had changed his email address, his password, and put a new authenticator on his account.

Guildie Two has a second account, and signed on to see what kind of damage was done to his personal and guild bank. It looks like the guild bank is okay. However, his own personal bank was cleaned out of quite a large sum of gold, and four bank tabs worth of ore, gems, and cloth.

When Guildie Two contacted Blizzard, and provided a photo identification and his credit card, they claimed that he was not the rightful owner of the account, and that he was trying to gain access to an account that was not rightfully his.

GMs claim that the logs look fine (even though the guildmate reported the hack within the first fifteen minutes), and that his REAL STATE ID is a false ID that he is providing them and that he is trying to hack said account.

Really? Is Blizzard Customer Service that brilliant?

We're not sure what will happen to the guildie. Luckily we have his contact information, and he is in our EVE Online corporation. And the guild site of course. But he feels completely jaded by the entire fiasco.

So please! If you have an authenticator, make sure that it is not your only line of defense against hackers! Clean your computer of Spyware, and change your password often.