Account Compromised?

Account Compromised?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: naujocks.2319

naujocks.2319

So today I found two e-mails telling me that I had asked for my password to be reset for gw2, which I didn’t. Didn’t follow the links, of course, but looking at the emails they did seem to originate from anet. Checked my account management, no unusual logins, have the authenticator installed, and e-mail and game password are unique and not shared with any other games / websites. Only buy my gems from the ingame store, and don’t visit any other fan forums.

My question is, because of the password reset emails, does this mean my account was targeted by someone, or was this just a random attempt with nothing to be concerned about? I’ve gotten the horribly misspelled emails telling me my account is going to be terminated, etc., but this wasn’t like them. As I haven’t sent any emails asking for a password reset, I don’t know what procedures are even followed or what information is needed to even begin the process.

Any insight from others would be appreciated. I’ve taken just about all the steps I know to keep my account safe, which is why these two emails threw up huge red flags.

Thanks.

  • And logged into the game after seeing the emails, nothing unusual was found, everything worked like it should.

Account Compromised?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Gaile Gray

Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

Hmmm… I guess what I can say here is that if those mails came from us, that means someone knows your Account Name (user name or log-in name). The fact there’s been no access is great, and you’ve followed very sensible security protocols. (I would be remiss in not saying that sometimes someone gets all needed information to access an account but waits and uses it later. I’d call that percentage pretty small, though.)

On the other hand, this definitely could be random: Some RMT company acquire a list of “One Gazillion Valid E-mail Addresses!” and then spam those addresses to see if they can match them with a list of known passwords. With what you’ve done, and because, as you said, you’ve “checked my account management, no unusual logins, have the authenticator installed, and e-mail and game password are unique and not shared with any other games / websites. Only buy my gems from the ingame store, and don’t visit any other fan forums” I think you’re pretty secure.

If this is a concern and you’d like to change your user name, please go ahead and submit a ticket (click “Support” above, then “Submit a request”). I get sent about a half-dozen to a dozen phishing attempts a week. I know they are just sent out to people without the sender knowing anything else. And yes, I’ve gotten the “attempted password change” e-mails a few times as well and all has been ok.

But again, we’re happy to help you if you’d like to change to another Account Name.

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

Account Compromised?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: hoegarden.4287

hoegarden.4287

Those phishing emails are indeed just send at random i guess.
I only got those emails on a crap email i used for random logins or sites. On the email i use for gw2 never got targeted by this kind of issues.

So keep using different emails. If you use gmail you can easily add secondary emails for this kind of stuff.
It will save your life sometimes

Account Compromised?

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: naujocks.2319

naujocks.2319

Hmmm ……. But again, we’re happy to help you if you’d like to change to another Account Name.

Thanks for the reply. I will probably do this, just as a final safety measure. My GW1 account was hacked some years back, so I am probably a bit extra jumpy when it comes to this. That one was my fault, tho … same password and username for game, several forums, email, etc. I learned a hard, but valuable lesson on account security with that episode.

As a follow-up, no more emails asking for password resets. Those two came back to back, within minutes of each other, but nothing else since. Better to be too cautious than not cautious enough, right?

Thanks again for the replies.