Guild Wars 2

Just a quick tip to help protect yourself from hackers. Create a brand new email address with a strong password (preferably a password you don’t use for anything else) and use that to login to the game with.

Use the address ONLY for GW2 and don’t share it with anyone.

Your level of protection has now increased significantly.

this shoud be listed in minimum requirements….seriously

You also shouldn’t have to create a whole new email just for a game, their security should be better… Other games are and have been doing just fine. I am big into Guild Wars, I played number one a lot. They should have better means to secure an account like how in GWone you had to know a characters name on the account you wish to log into.

You are absolutely correct Skiter…in 15 years of playing mmo’s I have never had an e-mail issue like this one….I have had maybe 3 different emails in that span….I am guilty of using the same password for the past 3-4 games though and I think thats how I was compromised this time.

Not that hes getting back to me but I also did just learn that if your account was hacked and you lost everything that they cant give you the things you have worked so hard for back “We do not currently have the ability to conduct Account Restorations. That is definitely something we want to offer in the future, but it’s not possible now.”

I love this game so much I have been following it for years and now that its here I loved it so much more until I learned how bad their support is, I am just so upset they are lucky they don’t have a support phone number.

Please restore hope I wanna love this game again.

Using email addresses as a user id violates basic computer security 101, as most folks will use the most common email account they have. This means that half of the user id/password combo is public or nearly public information. This leaves only the password protecting the account. GW1 acknowledged this by requiring the use of a in game character name as an additional authenticator. Having to create (and then check for messages) separate email accounts for each game/forum is crazy. Most folks have trouble keeping track of passwords for multiple accounts. Asking them to have numerous email accounts, each with unique passwords is a recipe for mass frustration.

I agree with Dead Parrot. Why on earth if they implemented the Character Name thing for GW1 did they not just throw that in for GW2? I’ve also wondered why popular games don’t use on screen keyboards (as some games do) to type in your login info to bypass the possibility for keyloggers. Seems like simple steps to security were overlooked or not implemented yet. But on that note, I’ve also played several games on release, and for serious, this is the absolute WORST case of hackers/spammers/gold sellers I’ve seen at a launch. It’s like they were just sitting there salivating waiting for this game to release -.-

I just did this! If you have a smart phone do it through gmail and you can also add a gmail authentication to this email!

Gaile could you address any login issues that might stem from changing email addresses on active accounts? Such as sharing an email between 2 Guild Wars 2 accounts? Before I go and do something to give myself more headaches? (such as not being able to play on either account?) I really don’t wanna make 2 more email accounts, I already have so many

Thanks for your time and help!

GaileGray.9587:

Run Amok.9205:

Just a quick tip to help protect yourself from hackers. Create a brand new email address with a strong password (preferably a password you don’t use for anything else) and use that to login to the game with.

Use the address ONLY for GW2 and don’t share it with anyone.

Your level of protection has now increased significantly.

Great advice. We’ve been saying it for yeeeearssss.

10 years of playing MMO’s your the first I’ve been hacked in… Same email for all that time. Don’t take the easy way out, you should have helped us and took care of us like you did in GW1

Well, this is what my wife did and she has been locked out for over 3 days! So, how is this helpful???

She diligently followed this advice and it has served to prevent her from playing. Brilliant.

yeah i’m not gonna do this then. i like being able to play

Hilarious though right .. their own advice doesn’t even work.

that is what you get when your not ready to launch a game right, don’t check your secruity and this is what happens thousands of baned angry players

Zenfield.2193:

that is what you get when your not ready to launch a game right, don’t check your secruity and this is what happens thousands of baned angry players

And they won’t even give us our things back because that system isn’t ready yet.

They weren’t ready to send this game out it would seem.

CorpraSalaith.8912:

I agree with Dead Parrot. Why on earth if they implemented the Character Name thing for GW1 did they not just throw that in for GW2? I’ve also wondered why popular games don’t use on screen keyboards (as some games do) to type in your login info to bypass the possibility for keyloggers. Seems like simple steps to security were overlooked or not implemented yet. But on that note, I’ve also played several games on release, and for serious, this is the absolute WORST case of hackers/spammers/gold sellers I’ve seen at a launch. It’s like they were just sitting there salivating waiting for this game to release -.-

Or you know, Windows OS has it’s own on-screen Keyboard you can use. I’m sure other OS’s should too.

I’ll be honest I thought the email change was a great idea. My account was compromised (the 100+ authorization attempt emails told me that) I made a new email address and switched it over, no more authorization attempts.

Most of my accounts were compromised a few months back (shortly after installing the Win 8 preview I might add) and I didn’t feel secure using my original email account because it had been attempted at during that time.

I use the same password for everything (except the new email) so this was a great help. I mean even if they do by some miracle get my new address for log-in, and the pass, they can’t get into the new email.

I also used Gmail for the double verification.

Also for those griping about security and ANet: They have no control over what/where/who gets our information from other places. Compromised accounts (including mine) that are the result of using the same information repeatedly are no one’s fault but our own. Don’t get mad at ANet for telling us how to better secure not only our account with them, but any of our accounts…

But zax…my wife wasn’t compromised.
She per-empitively and vigilantly created a new email to be prophylactic.
And so…GW2 “hacked” her.
She can’t play because of some sort of glitch with this system and its advice…

@OP or just have a heavily encrypted password that is unique to this game, that appears to work also!

also amazing advice: use a Gmail account with 2-step verification. and a different password for gmail/gw. They somehow get your gw account, oh shiz they need the email verification to get in. oh shiz now they somehow got your gmail password as well? crap then cause they need your mobile phone to get the verification key to log into your gmail to accept the login request. being secure honestly isnt all that hard.

also, a mixture of letters, numbers, and punctuation is hard to remember and isnt always as effective. as detailed in a tweet from Anet, longer passwords are harder for computer programs to brute force and are often times easier to remember. if your password is if=$ic,@ that honestly isnt that many characters for a computer to brute force through and it is also hard to remember. If your password is i,love,swimming,at,sunny,beaches then your chance of a password being ‘hacked’ is VERY low, as it is longer and thus harder for a computer to guess, and also it is very easy to remember. Just something to keep in mind.

This is the link the team was referencing: http://xkcd.com/936/

Even better, use a unique password for your email, and for Guild Wars.

Never ever ever ever use the same, or similar, passwords for multiple sites. What happens most of the time is you go to www.uber-fan-site.com, register on their forums, and post some cool forum posts. What you don’t know is that uber-fan-sites might be a bunch of crooks, they try to login to your Guild Wars account using the email and password you gave them.

So, always use a unique password for your email, banking, paypal, online games, etc.

P.S. I recycle a junk password on most forum sites, but I do try and protect my critical accounts.

I think the reason companies are forcing the use of email addresses for user ids is to cut down the number of tech support tickets of the “I forgot my user id” type. Of course, this violates basic security measures so they compensate by suggesting you create unique email addresses. I wonder how they are going to handle “I forgot which email address I used for this game” tickets? It will happen. And imagine the tech support nightmare that will ensue if Google or Yahoo decide to start charging a small $1 per month per email address fee! And don’t say they won’t. I have already had one company start charging for email addresses that were “Free for Life”.

Skiter.3810:

GaileGray.9587:

Run Amok.9205:

Just a quick tip to help protect yourself from hackers. Create a brand new email address with a strong password (preferably a password you don’t use for anything else) and use that to login to the game with.

Use the address ONLY for GW2 and don’t share it with anyone.

Your level of protection has now increased significantly.

Great advice. We’ve been saying it for yeeeearssss.

10 years of playing MMO’s your the first I’ve been hacked in… Same email for all that time. Don’t take the easy way out, you should have helped us and took care of us like you did in GW1

If you played wow and used this email guess what…Blizzard was hacked and they got the emails and possibly passwords. If you used the same password too there’s your problem.

I’m not saying this is what happened to you but I have seen others complaining they used the same email and password on multiple games and fansites as they used to log in to GW2 then act like it’s ANet’s fault they were hacked. Most people don’t want to accept responsibility for their own failures these days.

Personally I don’t know what people’s issue is with using e-mail as account info.

I’ve played many MMO over the past couple years and a large selection of them used e-mail address as the account. The answer is simple use different passwords and strong passwords at that.

Do you use the same key for multiple things, such as your car and your house/apartment door? No.

So why use the same password for multiple locations? You might not be dealing with tangible objects you can hold in your hand, but your online data should still be very important to you. Treat it as such.

Doesn’t work.
know people that did this, still got hacked.
it’s coming from arenanets own database, I tell you.

If I have keyloggers on my pc, or if I respond to phishing emails, or if I give my account info to family/friends, I expect my account to be compromised no matter how many times I create a unique email.

I don’t believe this is due to a compromise in their database. If that was the case I’d expect to see account hijackings on a mass scale. Several thousand accounts out of what… over a million sales? That’s small potatoes.

anonymouse.9053:

If I have keyloggers on my pc, or if I respond to phishing emails, or if I give my account info to family/friends, I expect my account to be compromised no matter how many times I create a unique email.

I don’t believe this is due to a compromise in their database. If that was the case I’d expect to see account hijackings on a mass scale. Several thousand accounts out of what… over a million sales? That’s small potatoes.

Growing daily. They can only hack what they can use at a time. No one is safe at the moment.

Erm, they don’t NEED to try to hack into GW2’s account database. There are plenty of people willing to give out their own credentials to keep them busy.

If you were running a RMT shop where you had 100 employees, 10 of which were checking lists of email accounts and passwords (freely available if you know how to search for them) for GW2 accounts, and you found you had access to the ArenaNet account DB, you’d grab all the account data and would put almost all of your resources on hijacking those accounts and taking the gold. There would be a lot more accounts compromised than what’s currently going on.

But, like I said, they don’t need to draw attention to themselves and trigger any server alarms by trying to hack into ArenaNet’s databases when people are fully willing to give up their credentials.