World of Warcraft

1. Your friend has little knowledge of what is going on, so most likely he infected all 3 computers in his house. 
2. Blizzard detected his account being hacked so quickly for a few reasons.

• It logged on from an IP address that was geographically impossible for him to log into the game within the 15 minutes he was logged out.  Lets say he lives in Arizona and 15 minutes later he logs in again from China. 
• The hackers more often than not run bot programs on hacked accounts to farm gold and blizzard caught them.
• Combine the above two is an automatic suspension until review.

All these are valid points, it flushes the "Blizzard has something to do with it" idea down the drain.

Daffid011, you have a good point about the third party downloaders. I'm going to go home and delete orbit downloader asap, never thought of those. we all downloaded it around the same time.

I remember when we were first downloading our addons, he was the only one out of the three of us that had serious problems with the downloads and 2-3 months after that is when it started. Since then he has removed those addons and tried new ones so I'm guessing even if you delete the addons responsible for the corruption, the virus is still going to stay on the system.  Does anyone know if curse.com is safe? or is wowmatrix better?

keylogger.   if it has happened 4 times with changed passwords it has to be a keylogger.

Originally posted by Pappy13

Originally posted by Scripture1

Originally posted by Pappy13

Originally posted by Scripture1

Awesome advice! the only problem is everything you just wrote I have told him to do the third time it happened. The third time he got it back he totally erased everything from his PC and reinstalled the entire thing, in fact WoW is the ONLY thing he said he has on it, he made that his WoW lap top, thats what leads me to think it's a Content ID thing.

He's not reinstalling from a backup is he?  He should install from the original CD's or download from the internet.  Do NOT make a backup of anything and then bring it back from the backup after formatting the harddrive.  The only thing that you should backup on your PC is your own content files, never backup program files or at least do not recover them from a backup if you think your PC has been compromised.
 

 

Yeah I asked him and he said the guys in the IT department from the company his wife works for gave her some kind of disk to clean his system completly and he reinstalled from the disk and not a backup. Infact he got so upset the third time this happened that he took all his WoW disks and snapped them in two, then cleaned the system and used the original backup CDs and re-installed. Needless to say he had to go back out and re-purchase th WoW disks after we convinced him not to quit.

 

Don't tell him this, but he didn't have to do that.  You actually don't need the disks for anything, all you need is the key.  You can download the client straight from Blizzard's website if you have your account info....oops. :)

LOL! yeah I won't tell him that now. He may really get a case of the quits.

About going to bestbuy, I was going to go to try and find the AV program you all were talking about but I just realized that I can, get that for him on the website.

Thanks!

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by wolvie3131

lots of great advice here, I will go one step further and add my own.

if you want to download and maintain safe mods, use this nifty tool wowmatrix

It lets you update and install mods, and even browse for them with a push of a button, and they are all pre scanned to be virus and keylogger free!

you can run it everyday before logging into WoW and it will let you know which mods need to be updated, you click the update all button and its done!

was a godsend on patch days!

you can find the tool here www.wowmatrix.com

enjoy!

 Mods by their very nature are safe, there is no account hacking abilities in mods and they are just scripts that don't even run until the game is loaded.  The problem is that people download files they think are mods and run executable programs that install viruses. 

This is exactly why you would want to use WoW Matrix.  WoW Matrix guarantees that the files you are downloading are NOT viruses.  It only downloads the files from official sources and scans the files for viruses and/or keyloggers.  With this little tool you don't have to go to searching all over the web for your add-ons, it's already done it for you.  On top of that it guarantees you have the latest version and it automatically installs all the add-ons for you, you NEVER run an executable to install addons.  The only executable you ever run is WoW Matrix itself.  WoW Matrix has been tested by CNET's download.com and certified that it doesn't contain any malware.  I have been using it for months without incident.  You're much more likely to get a virus/keylogger searching all over the internet for the latest update for your addons then getting one from using WoW Matrix.  Read the following from WoW Matrix's website and from CNET's Download.com and see what you think.

http://www.wowmatrix.com/safe-computing.html

http://www.download.com/WowMatrix-WoW-Addon-Updater/3000-2121_4-10759558.html

Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Your friend is not invulnerable to getting a keylogger.  There is no magic disk that ensures his system is clean.  Blizzard isn't hacking his accounts and xfire didn't download a keylogger on his system.

Honestly if all he wants to do is try to figure out ways to blame everyone but himself, he will never find out the problem and thus never fix it.  Either beat him upside the head with a heavy object or give up on him.  After getting hacked 4 times it is safe to say that blaming other people isn't going to solve his issues.

Originally posted by Pappy13

This is exactly why you would want to use WoW Matrix.  WoW Matrix guarantees that the files you are downloading are NOT viruses.  It only downloads the files from official sources and scans the files for viruses and/or keyloggers.  With this little tool you don't have to go to searching all over the web for your add-ons, it's already done it for you.  On top of that it guarantees you have the latest version and it automatically installs all the add-ons for you, you NEVER run an executable to install addons.  The only executable you ever run is WoW Matrix itself.  WoW Matrix has been tested by CNET's download.com and certified that it doesn't contain any malware.  I have been using it for months without incident.  You're much more likely to get a virus/keylogger searching all over the internet for the latest update for your addons then getting one from using WoW Matrix.  Read the following from WoW Matrix's website and from CNET's Download.com and see what you think.

http://www.wowmatrix.com/safe-computing.html

http://www.download.com/WowMatrix-WoW-Addon-Updater/3000-2121_4-10759558.html

Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

There are no perfect programs.  All virus checkers miss viruses.  All programs have errors, flaws and bugs and report false positives.  There is no magic disk that will make your bulletproof.  If a hacker sets their sites on circumventing this program, odds are they will find a way.

Maybe the program is the bees knees, but you are essentially taking control of your computer and putting it into the hands of some automated program that can fail to do its intended purpose.  If you know how to extract files from a .zip file and put them in the correct directory there is no need to every worry about malicious files.

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Originally posted by Scripture1
I will make this as detailed and short as possible.
I have a friend that plays WoW and he has a high lvl toons that has been hacked 4 times so far, every time they hack him blizzard tells him they will not release the account back over to him until they investigate it. Thet first time blizzard returned the account to him, many of his alts were deleted and lost, only his lvl 70 hunter was left and they took all his gold and tossed many of his BG armor (That's just evil).
The second time his account was hacked was a shock because he changed his passwords and everything but they still hacked it. They made him wait 2 weeks both times they hacked it and he had to fax a lot of documentation to blizzard just to get his account back, everytime he gets his account hacked he has to go through a lot of faxing stuff to get it back. It has happened four times, the latest it has happened was lastnight.
We were both lvling out deathnights and I logged out for bed before he did. He logged out at 12:00am. Another friend we play with (we are friends in RL) logged in and saw his hunter exploring the new area, my other friend whispered him and said "Hi bro" because thats how we address eachother, we never just say "hello" but this person responding with a "hello" and when my friend caught on that it was not him he started questioning him but he never got a response. He called him in the morning to ask him if that was him or not and he was just as shocked as anything; he said it wasn't him and when he tried to log in after my friend told him, he was told that his account is under investigation.
This guy is a good friend of mine and he wont even give me his info (not that I want it) and I asked if he ever shared his info with anyone he said no. I'm tired of this happening to him as I know he is as well but blizzard won't do anything about it. I think who ever is hacking his account is doing so easily because they have his "Content ID" when we played FFXI we never had this issue because of the security and privacy of the game. I'm telling him to ask blizzard to change his Content ID but he was told they won't do that. I think they should be obligated to do so since there is nothing that he can do to stop the hacking, and that is a breach of the privacy agreement. I don't want to make this too long so basicaly I'm asking if this has happened to anyone else on WoW, and if so then what is the permanent solution if there is one?
I would hate to see him give up and quit because of this.
THNX!

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Get good antivirus software such as avast!.
Type your password in text file and copy and pass it into the password box each time you login (keyloggers usually cant read the clipboard).
Use a strong password with atleast 2 numbers and doesn't contain any info such as your DoB, name, etc.
Not sure if blizzard can but you can request to get your account name changed.

Not visiting malicious sites for porn, hacks, etc etc also helps. eh

Originally posted by Scripture1

I will make this as detailed and short as possible.

I have a friend that plays WoW and he has a high lvl toons that has been hacked 4 times so far, every time they hack him blizzard tells him they will not release the account back over to him until they investigate it. Thet first time blizzard returned the account to him, many of his alts were deleted and lost, only his lvl 70 hunter was left and they took all his gold and tossed many of his BG armor (That's just evil).

The second time his account was hacked was a shock because he changed his passwo