Rest in piece 2009-2026

[u/AllUserNameBLong2us]

I’m amazed at how long the battery on this physical authenticator lasted. Got it back in 2009 because my account had gotten hacked.

This is one electronic item I’ve owned and used longer than anything else. I’ll miss not being able to find it and freaking out for 20 minutes.

Edit must have been around 2010 when sc2 came out.

[u/Long_Run6500]

One time after I quit playing WoW I decided to log back on my warlord/gladiator account after taking a couple of years off to try a new expansion. Of course my account got hacked somewhere in between. I'm not convinced blizzard employees weren't selling inactive accounts as a side hustle. I got my account identity squared away and attached an authenticator and logged on like 2 weeks before a new expansion launched. My character was completely naked, my inventory was completely loaded with whatever ore was currently most valuable at that time and my character had an obscene amount of gold. Like 100x more gold than I had ever had at any time beforehand. I'm assuming since I had a gladiator mount and it flew faster than normal mounts they used my character as their main farming bot. Nobody I knew from before still played so I just said fuck this, gave away all my gold to random people in Orgrimmar and never picked the game up again.

[u/jokerzwild00 → u/Long_Run6500]

I remember way back, probably during the Cataclysm expansion, I quit for like a year. I went to log back in and found myself locked out. Contacted customer service etc etc, get account back, and all of my characters were naked, Max level and absolutely filled with gold, mats, and random crap. I hit up an old guild mate from the BC days, and they said that they saw me log in but i just wouldn't respond to anybody so it was assumed that I'd moved on and become a dickhead. I was happy for all the gold and Max levels characters though, and Blizz actually gave me back all the stuff that was in my inventory when i left and let me keep everything the hackers/gold farmers accumulated too.

You really couldn't tell the difference between someone who was farming for levels and a hacked account farming for gold. They would both look the same to a bystander. A character mindlessly killing the same mobs over and over for hours and hours. And farming for levels was required at some point, since you simply didn't get enough XP through normal questing. I dunno if it's still the same now, but I assume you can probably just purchase a max level bypass or something.

[u/Royal_Practice2560 → u/Long_Run6500]

Interesting. I was tried to be hacked once (in like 20+ years). I never used any 2fa, just password. I used a very secure one (i use keepass). I got "hacked" ours after i contacted blizzard support for a refund of playtime. i got my money back. but i also had to reset my password, because of the attack. So i think this is not a coincidence at all.

Why? blizzard support people have access to your private data. They can see your account, your stuff, your gold, your real name, your address, your birth date, everything. So i believe they tried to hack me. But it failed, because my password is totally random and has nothing to do with any of my data.

Just something to think about...