I was just reading Colin Brennan’s account on Massively about getting hacked.  Of course it was a WoW account.  Account hacking has become so common that Blizzard started offering authenticators.  I’ve played a lot of different games online for quite a few years now, and I’ve never had an issue with having my account broken into.  Have I just been lucky?  It also seems to me that 99% of the hacking stories I’ve heard in the last year or two have been for World of Warcraft.  So I wonder, is it really primarily WoW that has this problem?  Maybe the reporting rate is so low that we only hear about the WoW hacks because it has so many more subscribers than other games.  Could it be the pervasiveness of add-ons in the game?  Maybe it’s just the fact that WoW being so large makes it more of a target than any other game, I mean why focus on a niche game when you have so many more targets in Warcraft?
Regardless, I’m feeling a need to change all of my account passwords and do a couple of virus scans.
It’s the same reason why there are more virii for Windows then for Macs: The most damage (and hysteria) is done to the community with the largest population. I think, then, that it’s not really being LUCKY so much as hackers haven’t really felt that there was much of a reason to hack other game accounts. They hack, steal the goods, farm the gold and sell it all back to the community. WoW’s got such a big community that there’s going to be SOMEONE who will pay and make it worth their while.
Well, answering the “secret question” on WoW accounts was not exactly difficult for hackers who are usually much more shrewd when it comes to information digging and social engineering.
I could “hack” several friends I knew only over the internet. They were quite shocked and now use a different answer on the question of their mother’s maiden name for instance.
What is interesting is I have never been hacked…until WoW. My account had been dormant for almost 2 years, then I went back for a “return users” trial…yet, it was already active…and with a credit card that was not mine.
I reported it, and had the account closed again.
Then Blizzard BANNED me for non-payment…lol
Idiots
@Templar – That’s the kind of excellent customer service I’ve come to expect from Blizzard.
Hmmm, maybe I should get onto my account page and make sure my account is still closed.