Guild Wars 2

I would like to suggest a layer of security, where by if 2 or more parties with different IP addresses in a short period of time are contesting the playing of an account, the account is locked for suspicious activity, namely hacking. It would be easier for Anet customer support to unlock an account later, than do a full rollback if everything was lost.

Of course this would not help in the event where a player is offline and is getting hacked, but at least when the player is at the computer, they can try to defend themselves by disconnecting the hacker to fight them off, and eventually win.

An alternative would be a button that can be pressed to lock the account.

Think of it like this as well, if a player is rolled back to restore their stuff, the gold that was gained by the hacker is still out there, unless it’s banned in time and sealed up. Having the account locked in time before they can really get away with it, means that the gold doesn’t go anywhere really.

I hope this suggestion helps in some way.

I support this idea because its bloody brilliant.

Good to see a moderator moved this thread to the correct place. Thanks!

You’re basically suggesting that the IP address be used as a “machine identifier”. Unfortunately, it can’t be used that way due to the prevalence of DHCP for IP address assignment. There are a lot of people whose IPs change quite frequently. It is perfectly normal for someone to have a different IP every time they log into the game. My ISP doesn’t change my IP that often, but there are many that do.

The algorythm for determining if an otherwise valid login is potentially due to stolen ID/PW would have to be a lot more complex than simply checking for IPs. The lack of a good machine identifier is why many implement a cell-phone text-back method to reauthenticate new locations detected using an account.

Loli Ruri.8307:

An alternative would be a button that can be pressed to lock the account.

Hmm… I’m thinking the support center will be flooded with messages like “Hi, I spotted this new button on my screen and pressed it and now I can’t access GW2 halp pleaas!”

And wouldn’t that make it easier for a hacker to cause extra grief with little effort? After wiping the account clean, hit the button on their way out. Now the legit owner can’t log in, wonders why and gets mad at ANet for whatever reason they come up with. (Addiction is serious business)

Okuza, while you are correct about the security aspects of a specific IP address, ANet has already chosen to do this anyhow, just without Loli’s suggestion of the autolock feature.

IP addresses can be spoofed by creativeness and MAC addresses can be spoofed by design. However, it’s not really feasible to spoof a customer’s actual network and MAC address. Since they’re already being captured by ANet, Loli’s suggestion seems to dovetail with it perfectly.

Okuza.5210:

You’re basically suggesting that the IP address be used as a “machine identifier”. Unfortunately, it can’t be used that way due to the prevalence of DHCP for IP address assignment. There are a lot of people whose IPs change quite frequently. It is perfectly normal for someone to have a different IP every time they log into the game. My ISP doesn’t change my IP that often, but there are many that do.

The algorythm for determining if an otherwise valid login is potentially due to stolen ID/PW would have to be a lot more complex than simply checking for IPs. The lack of a good machine identifier is why many implement a cell-phone text-back method to reauthenticate new locations detected using an account.

So your are saying that there are people out there who get a new IP address all the time every couple minutes at most, and continually re-logging their characters? Amazing!

Loli Ruri.8307:

So your are saying that there are people out there who get a new IP address all the time every couple minutes at most, and continually re-logging their characters? Amazing!

While that’s potentially possible, I don’t know of any ISP that goes quite so far as to change IPs when there’s an active TCP session or recent UDP activity. It would break the session and they’d have unhappy customers leaving in droves. They might do it on very rare occasions to address a major problem. More typical for the “quickly changing” IP situation would be a new IP every time you power on your computer.

So, log on, play a bit, log off, power down. Next log in after that is a different IP. It’s probably going to be in the same IP block, but that is subject to change on the whim of the ISP, too. This behavior is fairly common and it’s big reason why IP addresses make poor identifiers.

Okuza.5210:

While that’s potentially possible, I don’t know of any ISP that goes quite so far as to change IPs when there’s an active TCP session or recent UDP activity. It would break the session and they’d have unhappy customers leaving in droves. They might do it on very rare occasions to address a major problem. More typical for the “quickly changing” IP situation would be a new IP every time you power on your computer.

So, log on, play a bit, log off, power down. Next log in after that is a different IP. It’s probably going to be in the same IP block, but that is subject to change on the whim of the ISP, too. This behavior is fairly common and it’s big reason why IP addresses make poor identifiers.

Actually most cable and similar ‘hard link’ ISPs (like FiOS or Optimum Online here in the northeast US) will have your router gather its IP from the ISP’s DHCP (the public address you’ll present to GW2 in this case) and is used on as many PCs in the home network as needed.

I’ve found over the years that the expiration on the router’s public IP/DHCP is pretty long, usually a month or two, maybe more (and also lasts across router bounces, and even short power outages at the house). Some ISPs will also allow the public IP to be static, but normally on a business account only and at very high cost.

So far the only time I’ve encountered a true reset of the router IP was after Sandy rolled by here, taking out the house for a couple days (and had parts of FiOS down several times after that for the following week). The 2003 blackout may also qualify, but I wasn’t tracking use of the public IP back then.