Guild Wars 2

I am posting this on behalf of my Fiance since her account has now been successfully commandeered and has no access to the forums.

So far this is where she stands; She has submitted an anonymous support ticket, posted to reddit and followed up to both in the last hour. Her account had issues back at the end of november. We changed the password had the account set back before the hacker had taken it, received a new serial code and did (in our opinion) everything that could be done to protect it.

Everything was all well and good until December 24th, when her 2FA had spammed her phone early in the day before she had woken up. She immediately changed the password to both her attached email and gw2 account. She was safe for then. Today at 10am, 5 minutes after she had woken up her 2kittenain had been spammed. This person had figured out again her new password and couldn’t bypass the authenticator.

Immediately she tried to sign on to the gw2 website and her password was incorrect. Trying to reset the password was a moot point. It seemed as if the email had already been changed and even though she still had access to the serial and character names, nothing could be done. Waiting around all day for a reply from support and nothing happened.

She found herself in an odd position where the previous night she had not signed out and still had access in the game while all these authenticator texts were coming in. Therefore whomever was attempting to get in still couldn’t. Now the both of us assume that they currently had a support ticket in to remove the 2FA. The client unfortunately crashed and left her without any access and just more waiting from support. Now the person who has accessed the account has gotten full access and we’re at a loss.

My biggest bafflement of it all is the fact that an account with a flag from a previous hacking issue less than a month ago was so easily turned over to a new email and had the authenticator removed. This game means a great deal to the both of us because this is how we met 3 1/2 years ago. Not only that but the time and financial investment that she has put in is above what most do.

This is devastating and stressful for my fiance. She has no idea what to do or if it can be even saved. Some help, advice, or awareness to the issue would be spectacular.

She posted on reddit 7 hours ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5klpe7/account_security_issue/ and sent a support ticket over 10 hours ago.

I, being one of her friends, can back up this statement as I was the one to suggest making a forum post about it. I hope she gets her account back.

Your fiance will have to wait for a response from support. If after 3 days (72 hours) with no response the ticket number can be posted in the sticky thread at the top of the forum for review. While waiting your fiance should make sure the email address she had associated with the account is secure. If she isn’t convinced that her email is secure, which it sounds like it may not be, she should consider contacting support using an alternate email that she does know is secure. Given that her account had an issue with security before, full virus scans and all the other security measures she can take to make sure everything related to her computer and online accounts should be completed. I hate to bring this up, but this may include ruling out someone in her home that may be messing with her account via access to her computer, email, account information, etc.

I was just talking to the person this happened to. Hope it can get resolved, though I’m confused as to how the 2 step verification can be avoided. Anyways, just hoping this gets some attention.

Not directly related; but are her other accounts secure? I’m thinking bank account and other valuable RL ones. It seems strange to put this effort into a GW2 account.

When looking for viruses/trojans on her PC, also consider her phone as possible point of compromise.