Guild Wars 2

Alright. So I’m not sure if this has really been brought up to your attention as I am not a regular on these forums but there seems to be a massive account hacking issue last night. 3 people I know got hacked last night. Is there something being done to help prevent this? One person I knew had email verification on there but that did not stop the hacker. Another person that had their account hacked, stole what they could from my guild’s bank and sold it all. This is becoming a huge concern.

Another reason I say this is a concern, is the fact that more and more gold sellers seem to be hacked accounts. Their names and account names are regular names not just facerolled names like “adksfldf”. There was a gold seller not that long ago that had 2k AP. Most gold sellers have less that 100AP.

My advice to other players, make a very STRONG password, one that is random and has letters and numbers and special symbols if allowed and capital/lowercase letters. Also something that I find comfort in, is the authenticator application available to smartphones. I hope this will help deter any stolen passwords and such.

EDIT: I just noticed that I too have an unknown IP address under Current Logins. Could an ANET dev help me with this question: Does that mean they have tried to access my game account and succeeded or have they succeeded in logging into my forums account or both?

Would that address be from TX? If so, you can read about it over in Account Issues.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Account-Security-What-you-need-to-know/

I’ve lost ~140g of items simply because they were deposited in the guild bank.
My best friend account was hacked and anet, after verifying it was compromised and rerolled it for him, refused to restore those items for us without any explanation, totally ignoring our concerns. You can read in the restoration red post that they say they can’t, but not a single reason, not a single answer if you ask why.

My advice to other players, don’t deposit anything in your guild bank even if you’re the only member of your guild, don’t use it, you can be hacked and lose everything, forever.
It doesn’t matter how strong your gw2 password is, the hackers probably are not even using a brute force method.
Plus hackers are taking advantage of the mobile application right now. You should use it before a hacker does it.
Your best protection is crossing your fingers and hope to not being targeted by hackers.
My friend was using an updated antivirus, his gw2 password was never used on any other site, he didn’t reply to any phishing e-mail, etc…
If it has to happen, it will.
Good luck to everyone. orz

Also, it’s good practice to keep your passwords across sites different. Don’t use the same password for your email that you do for Guild Wars.

Uses same password for almost everything 10+years going. never hacked once. #YOLO

This is just fear mongering.

ANet recently officially stated that there are no outstanding security issues, and that most of these hacked accounts have had major problems, such as using the exact same password for the account and email, or sharing the account.

Its also been statistically proven that most people use very simple passwords, share the same passwords on every account that they own and bypass security features for the sake of convenience, such as disabling secondary authentication.

Even if only 10% are this dumb, that’s thousands of hacked accounts.

Don’t take someone’s word for it when they say they were legit. People lie out of shame and fear that they won’t get it restored if they admit to getting themselves hacked by buying from a gold seller or some other mistake…

Do not use bots or any other kind of cheat tool (these are hacks 99% of the time).
Do not buy from gold sellers.
Do not use weak passwords.
Do not use the same password for the game and your email.
Do not click any link in an email you receive from “ArenaNet” or “Guild Wars 2”.
Do not disable secondary (email or phone) authentication.
Do not share the computer with others.
If you share the computer, use an encrypted, password protected user account.
Do not give others access to your game account.
Do not give others access to your email.
Do not give others access to your phone.
Do not use out-of-date or unpatched versions of Windows.
Do not use Internet Explorer.
Install NoScript, Ghostery and HTTPS Everywhere in your browser.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250x250/45345618.jpg

Why do people always assume they never got the verification email just because they didn’t see it? Whoever got into the email account just deleted the verification email after using it to get into the GW2 account, likely to make people think their email wasn’t compromised, that it’s Anet’s fault, and they don’t need to change their password.

Also reason you don’t see many account theft posts is they get deleted. Hope you see this in time to remind your friends to change their email passwords.

Here is the problem with Guild Bank Restorations. How many times should ArenaNet restore a Guild Bank?

Let’s say a Guild has 500 members, and one of the member’s account is compromised. Said Guild Bank has some expensive items/runes/whatever in it and 5000 in gold. Hacker/Gold-seller gets 7000 worth of gold and items to sell. ArenaNet restores the bank. A week later, someone else from the guild has their account compromised and the hacker cleans out the bank again. Hacker/Gold-seller gets another 7000 worth of gold to sell, again. Two months later, another account is compromised….now 7500 gold in Hacker/Gold-sellers hands. We now have even more Gold-sellers hawking their wares in chat. It’s profitable for them, because ArenaNet keeps replacing all the gold they steal.

If ArenaNet limits it to one Guild Bank Restoration per lifetime, as with personal accounts to counter this….who gets to choose which account gets the Guild Bank Restoration? What if the player had a Restoration previously at another Guild, because they are lax with their personal security? Who chooses at which time in the Guild’s lifetime? Let’s say it was the first time it happened. The same complaints would appear as soon as it happened again in any Guild.

No real good solution other than no Restoration for Guilds.