World WarCraft on photo.net

<p>On the front page of photo.net there is an ad(?) where you can play World Warcraft for free. Is this intended? I believe there might be serious security risks if playing World Warcraft without protecting your computer with several different tools. I believe that many people might not be aware of the risks. The ad is there now, in my native language.</p>

<p>It's just a network ad. I don't really see why the network thinks that PN viewers are a good target demographic. But on the other hand, WoW is a legitimate company. And given the number of WoW players in the world, if there were a serious security risk from playing, I think word would get around pretty fast.</p>

<p>If you do a search for "World Warcraft security", you can find quite a lot about it.</p>

<p>Here is one article that explains a bit more about it:<br>

<br /> <a href="http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/mmo/articles/59951.aspx">http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/mmo/articles/59951.aspx</a></p>

<p>In that article, this is the key sentence:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Many of the issues that you will find with World of Warcraft security are the same ones that remain relevant in overall computer information security.</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /><br>

World of Warcraft has the same security as most things on the net.</p>

<p>You are probably right about that, but those accounts seem to be interesting for the hackers.<br /> <br /> I don't have flash player installed anymore, so I can't see all the videos on YouTue. But some comments to one of the videos explained how hackers with knowledge of your email account, can hack it, request password reset, and use the new password. Then they hack your PayPal account. Some tranfer only small amounts of money so that the PayPal account owner might not notice this. Gmail was mentioned. (I hope I understood it correctly, I am not quite sure about that, but you get the point). So if your email account has been hacked, and you have a PayPal account, you might want to check if someone has stolen money from you.<br /> <br /> Another comment was this:<br /> "I've been a victim of identity theft myself, due to a trojan horse/key logger, and my Paypal was used to do a transaction (80 bucks). This person knows my social security number, and I really hope he won't abuse it in the future. I don't think he/she was a professional, tho. Changing the social security number is kinda drastic, at least in my country"</p>

<p>I wouldn't worry. World of Warcraft has resolved most security issues since Leeroy Jenkins took over.</p>

<p>Ann, I've been playing WoW for as long as it's been out. Every hacked player ever has pretty much one thing in common...a phishing scam. This is no different than anything on the internet, anywhere. Actually, Blizzard is quite proactive about security. They are VERY quick to lock down a hacked account. They also have an authenticator available for extra security. <br /><br />Leroy is no longer in charge, Lex...he was passed up long ago by both Arthas and Deathwing. It's ok though, pretty soon we'll have kung fu pandas running around.</p>

<p>LEEEERRRROOOYYYY JENKINS!</p>

<p>Does anyone know how many players have been hacked? Seems like quite a few.<br>

<br /> What do you do for security, Michael? How do you avoid phishing scam? Is that from emails?<br>

<br /> I just want to say to those who decide what ads I should see: I am not buying toilets, hairremovers or games. Come to think of it, I don't buy much of anything these days, so you can save your money and go ad someone else. Maybe that will make my computer ad free?<br>

<br /> Lex, are you misinforming me?</p>

<p>One more question, isn't the damage already done if the account has been hacked? What information do they collect there?</p>

<p>Ann, in WoW, the phishing is cleverly written emails from a fake "Blizzard" telling you your account has been jeopardized. It asks you to follow a link and log in, problem is...the link is to a fake sight. When they hijack your account, basically the sell all your virtual "stuff", and create general havoc.</p>

<p>Blizzard, when this happens, locks your account until they get hold of you to verify your information. Once they do, you almost always get all of your "stuff" back. Now, here's the tricky part. MANY people use the same password for everything. If your password for your WoW account is the same as for your email, for instance, the hacker will try it and then get more of your information, in the way of your emails. This can escalate into credit cards, etc, if all of your account logins and passwords are the same.<br /><br /><br>

Avoiding this is the same for literally everything on the interwebs...pay attention to what you are doing. Hover your cursor over a link, it will show where it's really taking you at the bottom of your browser. There are no "free laptops, iPads, etc" being given away just for opening an email. It's all common sense. Develop some internet savvy, and everything will generally be fine. A direct hack, where the user did absolutely nothing wrong is extremely rare.<br /><br /><br>

Blizzard uses a very secure system of verification through its Battle.net server. I am really quite impressed by it. The phishing on WoW has also gone done greatly over the last year or so, as the hackers don't really get much out of it.</p>

<p>Thank you for your valuable information, Michael. It sounds like it is more or less the same that has happened to Global Payments in Atlanta, where maybe 10 million credit cards have been hacked. There is going to be a press conference about that tomorrow.<br>

<br /> <a href="../off-topic-forum/00aA1H?start=250">http://www.photo.net/off-topic-forum/00aA1H?start=250</a></p>