Guild Wars 2

I woke up this morning and tried to log onto gw2 and my password would not work(no miss spelling because gw2 auto saves it) I recovered my account changed the password and changed the password to my email but it was scary to say the least that someone got into my account and could of used it for gold selling or just sell the account its self. I have over 1800 hours on this game and I don’t want to lose it to some guy trying to make some quick $$ so how can I protect my account more and how do you think he got in?

Enable 2-step authentication if you have a smart phone. https://account.guildwars2.com/account/security

This will require you to input a code (which will constantly change on your phone) after username and password are accepted.

1. Set up an email proxy account and associate your GW2 account (and only your GW2 account) to that address. (EX: whatever.GW2specfic@emailprovider.com)
2. Use the mobile authentication mentioned above.
3. Use a +12 character password you use on no other website (also do this for the above email account password….not the same password).

• First one ensures that nobody can know your account log in name (so the hacker has to obtain that and your password to log in).
• Second one makes it nearly impossible for someone on an authorized network from logging into your account.
• Third one makes it MUCH harder for someone to guess or obtain your password from other sources on the internet.

Note that if your email address is compromised none of the above will help you as Anet will assume any email coming from that address is you and will perform any requests (such as changing your password and disabling the authentication). Actually # 1 might keep this from working as the hacker must be smart enough to SEND the email from the proxy address, or Anet will NOT automatically assume it is you and will likely request several forms of verification that the hacker will be unable to provide.

From what I have seen, the most common method of account compromise now is starting from a compromised email account.