Battle.net accounts required by November 11th

[fuser]

The authenticator is not currently available for the iphone. Something about 3.1 or somesuch broke it.

It was pulled down for about two weeks. It's back in the app store.

[Drubear]

re: two accounts on one email: As was said, they account for this. You end up adding them both to the battle.net account and get a dropdown when you logon via your email.

Pretty painless, actually.

[Musashi]

I wholeheartedly approve of this move.  Although I do think there should be a way to opt out of the social thing.  Like an invisible mode or something.

[Signe]

Except for not remembering what I did and trying to log in with my old info when I started the game up again, I don't see any real issue with it.  Maybe there is.  I'll have to think about it more.  Ouch.

[Sjofn]

Quote from: Ingmar Sjofn
It's the only complaint I have about the merge (which I had to do before to claim my BlizzCon pet anyway). Maybe I don't want my guild to know I'm ignoring them because I'm playing Diablo 3! Well ... maybe I don't want them to know for SURE. I am pretty sure they'd suspect anyway.  

Yeah, cause we haven't worked out you knackered your PC playing Sims 3 during your recent bout of FORSAKING US.

One of my Sims was totally about to throw a birthday party for himself when my computer died. :( Now he will NEVER SEE ADULTHOOD.

[Lantyssa]

Think of it as him gaining eternal youth.

[Ratman_tf]

You can be "nameyouwant@plaync" or something similar if you want.  It doesn't have to be your e-mail address.

Considering how many people I've known to get hacked, some of which were competant computer users, I would rather be the one to make that decision than Blizzard.

I used my yahoo mail account, which is my expendable spam mail. And I got an authenticator. It's up to about once a month one of our guildies gets hacked. And so far it's always been someone with a deactivated account who's on break.

[apocrypha]

re: two accounts on one email: As was said, they account for this. You end up adding them both to the battle.net account and get a dropdown when you logon via your email.

Pretty painless, actually.

Oh that's cool, thanks for the info.

Edit: OK, it's actually *easier* now because now I've merged I only have 1 account name and the drop down box thing works great 

[Sheepherder]

It's up to about once a month one of our guildies gets hacked. And so far it's always been someone with a deactivated account who's on break.

Or is it not a coincidence and they're just sitting on the password for signs of inactivity so that they can hijack the account without user interference?

[Mattemeo]

It's up to about once a month one of our guildies gets hacked. And so far it's always been someone with a deactivated account who's on break.

Or is it not a coincidence and they're just sitting on the password for signs of inactivity so that they can hijack the account without user interference?

I think these days if I knew I was going to be taking an extended break from the game I'd have all my guilded characters demoted so in the event of a hack, it's only my crap that needs sorting out rather than the Guild Bank's contents too.

[sickrubik]

It's the only complaint I have about the merge (which I had to do before to claim my BlizzCon pet anyway). Maybe I don't want my guild to know I'm ignoring them because I'm playing Diablo 3! Well ... maybe I don't want them to know for SURE. I am pretty sure they'd suspect anyway.  

I think a big  chunk of the guild is going to be playing Diablo 3 anyway.

[Modern Angel]

Re: hacking. I really can't recommend the Blizzard authenticator enough. It's six bucks and you're unhackable. Very worth it.

[Lantyssa]

Convenient that they will sell me the solution to the problem they just created for me.

[Rasix]

 

[Modern Angel]

Convenient that they will sell me the solution to the problem they just created for me.

What? They've been selling these long before this apparently sky is falling account merge.

[Oban]

Convenient that they will sell me the solution to the problem they just created for me.

The battle.net mobile authenticator is free from the App Store and I think it is available for lesser devices as well.

I have been using the authenticator from last year's Blizzcon, since I seem to go through iPhones at a rate of about 4 per year.

[Soulflame]

As much of a social recluse as I am, people being able to find me in other games doesn't bother me.  If they're doing it to be jerks, I'll ignore them.  If they are people I played with before, it will be utterly fantastic if they find me again, in all likelihood.  I've certainly lost track of enough people in the MMOs I played in the past, with very little chance I'll ever run into them again.

[Lantyssa]

What is so hard to understand?  Just as I dislike using the same password for accounts, I like having separate accounts using different account names.  It's not that hard a concept to grasp considering I'm a LAN Administrator for a living.  It violates the security policies I lecture my users on.

The "selling me" quip was just the flippant response to some of you not getting why this matters to me, and it IS technically accurate.  Two days ago I had no problem, now I do, and your solution to it is to pay for the privildge of fixing it.  Which all it does is help protect my WoW account, it doesn't unlink the account name from one of my e-mail addresses.

I don't care if YOU think it's a minor issue.  To me it's about security which is a big deal to me.  In summary, fuck you.

[Lantyssa]

Also they don't list my version of the RAZR, just every other version, on their app list.

[Rasix]

What is so hard to understand?  Just as I dislike using the same password for accounts, I like having separate accounts using different account names.  It's not that hard a concept to grasp considering I'm a LAN Administrator for a living.  It violates the security policies I lecture my users on.

The "selling me" quip was just the flippant response to some of you not getting why this matters to me, and it IS technically accurate.  Two days ago I had no problem, now I do, and your solution to it is to pay for the privildge of fixing it.  Which all it does is help protect my WoW account, it doesn't unlink the account name from one of my e-mail addresses.

I don't care if YOU think it's a minor issue.  To me it's about security which is a big deal to me.  In summary, fuck you.

I'm sure someone of your technical prowess can set up some separate dummy b.net accounts to handle the incredibly pressing security issue you're facing.

edit: But honestly, does anyone really think a WoW gold-farming hacker gives a crap about your email address?  So they can possibly hack your email address and intercept your attempt to recover your account?  Will they really go to that much trouble or take 2 seconds and log onto to one of the hundred other accounts they've hacked?  Heh, and a keylogger at some point has probably already gathered your email address. 

[Merusk]

To me it's not about hacking my e-mail address.  I could give a fuck about that as it's a yahoo address.   However, they've just handed the keys to half the kingdom over to the hackers.  It's easy enough to buy e-mail addresses from companies.  Buy them from a game company that doesn't care about selling them and you've got a great list of probable, not just possible,  B.net logins to hack.

Also, since gold sellers own most of the info sites, they now have a hell of a lot of login information they can exploit, since forum registries require e-mail addresses.  Are you keeping a separate e-mail for your forum logins vs your site logins vs your bnet login?  I'm guessing not, and even if you are you're an outlier.   Hacking guild forums will also prove a wealth of login data and this provides a hell of an incentive for gold sellers with 0 scruples to buy up the free hosting sites as well. 

It's a horrible, stupid format that creates more problems than it fixes.  There's no real reason the B.net accounts couldn't have had an account name that WASN'T an e-mail address.

[Ingmar]

There's no real reason the B.net accounts couldn't have had an account name that WASN'T an e-mail address.

Yeah this is the core of it.

[Rasix]

Also, since gold sellers own most of the info sites, they now have a hell of a lot of login information they can exploit, since forum registries require e-mail addresses. 

Eww, that could be nasty.  Good thing I never register at those sites and my wow password is unique compared to others I use for my email address.

Still, I have an iphone.  Could easily protect myself from whatever pro manages to pierce my paranoia.

[Jayce]

Now that I know you're someone who should know what they're talking about, I'm even more confused.  When I thought you were clueless it made a lot more sense.
 
 - what's to stop you from merging each wow account to a separate b.net account, and therefore email? Then you will have multiple accounts which is the same thing you had before.  And none of the email accounts have to be your "real" one.  I guess it's an inconvenience that you can't link your wow account to your main email address and feel secure.  But in the past, if they had your account password, they could also login to wow.com and see the email linked with the account in the account info.  So what's changed, other than the email address being front and center?

- how is selling/giving an authenticator selling you the solution to a problem they created? The underlying problem is the perceived high value of WoW accounts, not the changes in how the accounts are set up.  Unless I'm missing something.


fake edit: OK, I read your latest post and I'm still a little confused. Harvesting email addresses gives them half of each account's info - I get that. But the path of least resistance, to me, still seems to be keylogging and phishing rather than trying to brute force the passwords to these millions of accounts they have the account name to. But I will concede that IF they have a way of harvesting good, current, wow-playing email addresses, it is a little less secure.

real edit: I heard that you're some high percentage less likely to be hacked if your account is tied to a bnet account.  Anyone else heard that or have a source? I don't know the reasoning behind it.

[Modern Angel]

Bitch, please. Lantyssa is a *LAN Administrator*. You better get out the way.

[sickrubik]

I assume by wow.com, you meant worldofwarcract.com, as wow.com is the wowinsider blog. Based on that assumption, you could not gain the email address by logging into account management. the email address was actually masked, like a credit card would be.

While I don't actually have a lot of fears on the change, I do understand that it's not the best solution, and there's not really any reason not to just have an "account name". Though, I suppose the comparison to XBoX Live should be brought up in this respect too, as it also uses an email address, as I recall.

[Modern Angel]

IThough, I suppose the comparison to XBoX Live should be brought up in this respect too, as it also uses an email address, as I recall.

Exactly. There are a million and one games that use an email address as the account name. There are a million and one more to find your email address out. Guild Wars is another example and one which had a huge scamming problem for a long time. The sky didn't fall, the earth wasn't rent asunder and email accounts weren't hacked. Use a different password and email address. If it's that scary, unsub.

[Jayce]

IThough, I suppose the comparison to XBoX Live should be brought up in this respect too, as it also uses an email address, as I recall.

Exactly. There are a million and one games that use an email address as the account name. There are a million and one more to find your email address out. Guild Wars is another example and one which had a huge scamming problem for a long time. The sky didn't fall, the earth wasn't rent asunder and email accounts weren't hacked. Use a different password and email address. If it's that scary, unsub.

Yes I meant worldofwarcraft.com.  I didn't want to type it out. But you forced my hand!  I forgot about the email address masking, good point.

A million and one games aren't WOW though.  A wow account is more high-value than other MMOGs because the raw numbers of people keeps the price of gold from entirely crashing. There is always some sucker, no matter how easy they make it to acquire gold.  And I don't think "unsub" is the solution Blizzard wants people to move toward 

So in summary, I now agree with Lantyssa, though I think it's less of an issue than she seems to.

[Ingmar]

IThough, I suppose the comparison to XBoX Live should be brought up in this respect too, as it also uses an email address, as I recall.

Exactly. There are a million and one games that use an email address as the account name. There are a million and one more to find your email address out. Guild Wars is another example and one which had a huge scamming problem for a long time. The sky didn't fall, the earth wasn't rent asunder and email accounts weren't hacked. Use a different password and email address. If it's that scary, unsub.

The risk is a bit higher with WoW. It is probably fairly hard to monetize a stolen Live account; WoW is pretty easy, hence why there's so much more of that sort of activity around WoW.

Is the sky falling? No. Is the risk to your account/information higher after the merge? Yes, by an amount that is not negligible, even if it isn't tremendously large. It is cool that Blizzard offers two-factor authentication, but they are definitely sacrificing a little security for convenience on the account name side.

It is worth being more careful with your info after the merge, and I've seen enough people I know in game 'hacked' to say that it really isn't paranoid to do so.

[Lantyssa]

Bitch, please. Lantyssa is a *LAN Administrator*. You better get out the way.

Fuck off.  I was explaining why I don't like it.  If you want to spread your account information to the wild go nuts.

Making a billion fake e-mails isn't a good solution either, since you have to track them in some fashion.  See Morat's and wife's recent fun because they missed the e-mails that would have told them something was up.

Exactly. There are a million and one games that use an email address as the account name. There are a million and one more to find your email address out. Guild Wars is another example and one which had a huge scamming problem for a long time. The sky didn't fall, the earth wasn't rent asunder and email accounts weren't hacked. Use a different password and email address. If it's that scary, unsub.

Maybe I don't play those games?  Maybe they don't have the popularity which makes them as high a risk?  Macs aren't any more secure than PCs, they just have less users to make anyone give a fuck and bother trying.

real edit: I heard that you're some high percentage less likely to be hacked if your account is tied to a bnet account.  Anyone else heard that or have a source? I don't know the reasoning behind it.

If all accounts are bnet accounts then that will change.  It won't stop hacking.

[Oban]

Also they don't list my version of the RAZR, just every other version, on their app list.

Buy an iPhone, problem solved.

[Lantyssa]

So in summary, I now agree with Lantyssa, though I think it's less of an issue than she seems to.

I don't think the world is ending, I just feel it added a non-negligable amount of risk to a large number of people.

The hostility is because of the attitudes that blew my concerns off, and continue to tell me they're not valid, not because of my intense passion of the issue.

Buy an iPhone, problem solved.

Are you paying for it?

[Modern Angel]

Spreading what information to the wild? I use a different email account, I use a different password, I use an authenticator to protect my ingame stuff itself. That's Internet Version 2009 Basics right there. There are simple, concrete steps consumers can take to protect themselves and if they don't, tough.

[Selby]

Are you keeping a separate e-mail for your forum logins vs your site logins vs your bnet login?

Yes.  My b.net email address was used specifically for b.net.  Nowhere else on the net is it used for any login info anywhere.  But that's just me...

[Sheepherder]

Making a billion fake e-mails isn't a good solution either, since you have to track them in some fashion.  See Morat's and wife's recent fun because they missed the e-mails that would have told them something was up.

Make your dummy e-mails, link them to the main using parental supervision features.  Problem solved.