I got hacked for the first time in Final Fantasy XIV

As the title shows, I was recently hacked. I was foolish enough to copy and paste a link that was sent to me via "Tell". The tell stated something along the line of the player quitting the game soon and will be doing a 300M Gil giveaway. Me thinking that the link sent to me was the official Final Fantasy Forum turned out to be a fake. I entered in my account log in, and I found it odd that it wasn't logging me into the forum no matter how many times I entered in my login correctly. I noticed that I was disconnected from the game moments later, and so I tried to log back in. Oddly enough, it kept saying my password was incorrect. Turns out I received an email saying that a security token was just registered to my account. I never registered any security token. I realize I was just hacked. IMMEDIATELY I got in contact with Square Enix and they were able to remove the security token from my account, and I was able to log in with all my gear and gil still intact. I have now put a security token on my account so that this never happens again.

Has anyone or know of anyone that experienced this?

Did you at least get the 300 mil ?

Consider yourself fortunate. These stories rarely end with "and I kept my stuff."

FFXI (2003 MMO) accounts used to hacked all the time. Gil lost. Gear lost. Characters deleted, etc. From the day security tokens became a thing, I've never read a post that went "I got hacked even though I had a security token." That's the lesson learned for other readers. Use a security token, never lose your account.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Did you at least get the 300 mil ?

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Lol! Nah, I didn't. It was too good to be true.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

Consider yourself fortunate. These stories rarely end with "and I kept my stuff."

FFXI (2003 MMO) accounts used to hacked all the time. Gil lost. Gear lost. Characters deleted, etc. From the day security tokens became a thing, I've never read a post that went "I got hacked even though I had a security token." That's the lesson learned for other readers. Use a security token, never lose your account.

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Yup, I don't know how I was so fortunate. I logged back in and the dude had my character in his world server. I assume they were in the process of transferring gil and gear?

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Originally Posted by JuneStarwind

As the title shows, I was recently hacked. I was foolish enough to copy and paste a link that was sent to me via "Tell". The tell stated something along the line of the player quitting the game soon and will be doing a 300M Gil giveaway. Me thinking that the link sent to me was the official Final Fantasy Forum turned out to be a fake. I entered in my account log in, and I found it odd that it wasn't logging me into the forum no matter how many times I entered in my login correctly. I noticed that I was disconnected from the game moments later, and so I tried to log back in. Oddly enough, it kept saying my password was incorrect. Turns out I received an email saying that a security token was just registered to my account. I never registered any security token. I realize I was just hacked. IMMEDIATELY I got in contact with Square Enix and they were able to remove the security token from my account, and I was able to log in with all my gear and gil still intact. I have now put a security token on my account so that this never happens again.

Has anyone or know of anyone that experienced this?

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Just so you know, adding a security token wont stop this from happening again. The false website you went to also has a field for the one-time password incase you have one added. If that's the case, they will use that info and login to your account just the same. The only way to not get compromised is to not fall for phising scams and follow good password security.

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Originally Posted by Ryaze

Just so you know, adding a security token wont stop this from happening again. The false website you went to also has a field for the one-time password incase you have one added. If that's the case, they will use that info and login to your account just the same. The only way to not get compromised is to not fall for phising scams and follow good password security.

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For future reference, I have the security code authenticator so it changes the one time password every minute or so. Will that help? Of course, I won't be clicking on any links anyone sends me via game anymore though.

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Originally Posted by JuneStarwind

For future reference, I have the security code authenticator so it changes the one time password every minute or so. Will that help? Of course, I won't be clicking on any links anyone sends me via game anymore though.

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It doesn't help if you enter it into the fake site though. Since it's all scripted to log into your account in that timeframe that the token is still valid. The only way to REALLY protect yourself from these things, is understand that there is NEVER a 300m gil giveaway, or a petition for anything that "cannot believe SE is allowing this at this time" to be stopped. Also knowing that SE never has username, password, and OTP, on the same page. It always, ALWAYS, authenticates your username and password before requesting the OTP. That....and if there is ever a link that goes .com-xy/ then it is fake. SE will NEVER have anything other than .com/

To add on, official forum threads start with https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/ and then some numbers with the thread titles following. Fake links (I have encountered those /tells in the past but never went to any links) tend to sneak some characters in the link to look authentic.

Glad you have managed to get your account back but please do be careful in the future.

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Originally Posted by JuneStarwind

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I can't make fun of someone or belittle them for falling for these tricks, because they're getting more and more creative now. It hasn't happened to me yet, and I take very strong measures to make sure it doesn't. I'll share some with you and everyone else.

1. Closely inspect external links. If it doesn't have .com/.org, it's supicious. However even if they do have them, it's best not to go to them.

2. If you DO go to them, look at the website you're on. They somehow have the ability to mimic a landing page to make it seem legit. This goes for people using search engines too, be aware of the landing page.

3. If they have time to whisper, they have time to respond. You will notice that they don't often respond if you ask questions, and if they actually do, they are very simplistic, ranging from one word to just a mundane sentence.

4. If you don't recognize them, be wary. There's no harm in being cautious, and when it comes to ANY external links, ask a friend.

5. Do a character search. If you're all the way in Ishgard, and someone you don't know from the Central Shroud is sending you a message, something's off.

I'm horribly horribly sorry this happened to you, and nothing is more alarming than that cold feeling of having your account compromised. It's a hurdle that more people than you'd believe end up experiencing. And as I said, they are getting extremely creative. I tend to get very angry about it because sometimes they throw in emotional stuff to manipulate people. Humans are emotional creatures, and stuff like that reaches us really easily sometimes. HOWEVER, some good news comes from this experience, and particularly your experience. These bots and scammers result to using the same method across many, many, many accounts. You've alerted everyone to their new method, saving many potentially compromised accounts in the process. I'm glad that you got everything taken care of. Everyone be wary out there, it's only a matter of time until they have response systems that seem so convincing, you'd swear you're talking to a coherent person.

This happens all of the time. The phishing attempts with that message have been going on for a few years now. The people who message you are victims themselves and they may have used your account to trick others. They usually get their accounts back as far as I know, because SE just bans the account until it's recovered.

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Originally Posted by JuneStarwind

As the title shows, I was recently hacked. I was foolish enough to copy and paste a link that was sent to me via "Tell". The tell stated something along the line of the player quitting the game soon and will be doing a 300M Gil giveaway. Me thinking that the link sent to me was the official Final Fantasy Forum turned out to be a fake. I entered in my account log in, and I found it odd that it wasn't logging me into the forum no matter how many times I entered in my login correctly. I noticed that I was disconnected from the game moments later, and so I tried to log back in. Oddly enough, it kept saying my password was incorrect. Turns out I received an email saying that a security token was just registered to my account. I never registered any security token. I realize I was just hacked. IMMEDIATELY I got in contact with Square Enix and they were able to remove the security token from my account, and I was able to log in with all my gear and gil still intact. I have now put a security token on my account so that this never happens again.

Has anyone or know of anyone that experienced this?

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I don't know anyone personally that this has happened to, but those accounts that are used to send those scam tells used to belong to people that fell for the same scam.

You got lucky, though. Take it as a lesson to never visit any links sent to you. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

What kind of stupid ass person behind this would do this to other people’s poor account hacking them and taking all their hard working gils? Is it that hard to make and earn gils? No. I don’t really understand these low life piece of shits. Sorry for the language but whoever is behind all these scamming shit, hope they choke and die i could care less what happens to whoever do shit like this.

The scam link is always a fake.
Example: “.com-xyz” or some shit like that

You might not have gotten robbed due to the fact you're a bit newish and didn't have the amount of gil they were looking for. They are looking for many millions of gil and not a million or two. Maybe you didn't have much gil on your retainers either, to make it worth their while and they just left you alone. Being poor might have been your luck. They never touch player's gear rich or poor. They don't want to be bothered by selling off gear. It's too time consuming.

This is a RMT racket and one of the ways they supply their gil to sale to other players. When other players buy gil from them with real time dollars, those players are supporting their little phishing racket they have going on in game. I hope I never learn of anyone coming by their gil in game through RMT. I'll be the first to report that's for sure.

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Originally Posted by Rayne6665

What kind of stupid ass person behind this would do this to other people’s poor account hacking them and taking all their hard working gils? Is it that hard to make and earn gils? No. I don’t really understand these low life piece of shits.

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Gil seller websites most likely.

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Originally Posted by JuneStarwind

As the title shows, I was recently hacked. I was foolish enough to copy and paste a link that was sent to me via "Tell". The tell stated something along the line of the player quitting the game soon and will be doing a 300M Gil giveaway.

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I got that message, too, but instead of copying the link, I reported the player. Never trust a third party to do an in-game giveaway. On the off chance that it's legit, it will be conducted entirely within the game, not on a third party web site, and certainly not with your actual account login. Sorry you had to learn this the hard way.

Luckily you still had everything, good to hear.

I got my account back after being hacked. Square Enix proceeds to suspend my account as I prove to them my identity that I am who I am. I made this thread in hopes someone sees this and learns from my mistake. Thank you Square Enix team for working with me and being patient with me.

Phishing links have been used since before I was even born. I don't know how people can still be falling for them at this point.

I got a tell in-game(that I reported later) for a phishing link that directed me to a fake forum post for the same gil giveaway OP mentioned. And immediately something just felt off. The link had this weird suffix after "forum.square-enix". After clicking around on the page a bit, I realized that a lot of the redirections that you'd normally find on the real forums weren't there, such as how I couldn't get back to the main forum boards from the top link or get to the lodestone pages from there.

Just to be pedantic, that's phishing, not hacking.

There is tons of these topics made about this and even the Lodestone warns about clicking links. Use your brain people.

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Originally Posted by Nyxs

There is tons of these topics made about this and even the Lodestone warns about clicking links. Use your brain people.

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This.

It amazes me that people still fall for things like this, and don't already have a security token in place on their account. With all the years that this has been happening in games, and suckers still get licked. If you would take the time to slow down and actually look at links those idiots send in /tell, you would see they are not any official forum or website. No, the token will not always save you, but it sure does slow things down. I don't even use my common e-mail account for gaming, I have another one set up completely different, and nothing ever gets sent from it so all I do with it is receive e-mail only related to my games. It's like banking - put a buffer between you and the endpoint, I only use a credit card for purchases and nothing is connected to my bank account so I don't have a similar issue.

It's the world we live in now - get used to someone trying to take your shit, because they will in a heartbeat if they can. Be vigilant in the security of your accounts, no matter what they are. Use complex passwords, security fobs or tokens, use a PIN on your phone (not facial recog or finger swipes - legal reasons for this, look it up), change your passwords regularly, monitor your account activity (no matter what the account is).

And OP - you didn't get 'hacked', you gave your account information. There is a difference here. Glad you saved your account.

Never. Never never. Never never never click a link provided in-game. Especially from a stranger. To me, it's the equivalent of scammers pretending to be the IRS and asking for payment with i-Tunes gift cards. Whyyyyy would anyone think it was legitimate?

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Originally Posted by Greyhawk

This.

It amazes me that people still fall for things like this, and don't already have a security token in place on their account.

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For a clarification, while adding a security token to an account is always a good idea, it does nothing to help guard against this phishing scam, since part of the webpage asks you to put it in along with your username & password. Meaning anyone who falls for it will be giving them the 2fa anyway. The only way for someone to not get phished by this scam is to not blindly put your log-in details without doing reconnaissance on the site & its URL to verify its the official site.

That's why you see so many people falling for this particular one - there is no defense against it besides the person's own internet awareness, and far too many are lazy about their internet safety habits until they get phished and its too late.

Honestly, for me. It's 6am, I'm tired and wanted to see what was what. Pfffffft oops.

Realized what I'd done and moved faster than they did.

This time. =_=;

Keeps me humble I guess. I know how to not get ripped off by a car dealer, a house seller, a random old lady in the market and telemarketers but sometimes I forget to look for a - at the end of a link or a string of numbers and letters in odd places. Especially if I've never seen the site before.

In all the years I've played this game this is the first time I've ever actually looked at the forums. Spooky.

Live, learn and remember everyone is out to get you I guess. >:P

A june starwind from adamantoise hacked one of my FC members who also took out all of the FC gil from our chest- I screened it as proof
We have yet to get our gil back
Glad to see you got your account back with your stuff though

The real lesson here is: ALWAYS use two-factor authentication. Just a password isn't enough anymore. So, just get that security token and use it. Also don't open rando links on your main computer. I use my macbook for opening trassh links and other "shady" websites. Never had any problems.

EDIT: Glad you didn't lose any stuff.

EDIT#2: inb4 "2fa is useless against this scam". Sorry but if you type in your security code anywhere else but the launcher/official website you're beyond salvation. No amount of warning/protection can save anyone from being that ignorant.

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Originally Posted by HeyMcFly

A june starwind from adamantoise hacked one of my FC members who also took out all of the FC gil from our chest- I screened it as proof
We have yet to get our gil back
Glad to see you got your account back with your stuff though

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Just so you know, this person your mentioning was another phished account. So this June really didn't "hack" your friends account, they were a victim just like your friend and the RMT schemers will do their dirty work from a phished account. Be careful giving names in the forums. Naming and shaming isn't allow. If your friend is just an officer and had access to the FC gil then SE takes the stance that only the leader of the FC should have sole charge of the FC's gil. So unfortunately if that is the case they won't see the return of any FC gil taken. Your friends personal gil they will return with a character rollback if your friend reported the account being compromised. Hope it works out for you friend.

This isn't even hacking, it's phishing. Being pedantic about what you call it, check the links being sent to in-game and actually use two-factor authentication on your accounts.

Its 2022 and some people are still not using 2FA for their stuff.

I'm surprised people still fall for these in the year 2022.

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Originally Posted by Seger

Its 2022 and some people are still not using 2FA for their stuff.

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The fake website asks for your 2FA. So that point is moot.

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Originally Posted by LittleChickenNugget

I'm surprised people still fall for these in the year 2022.

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Just as people fall for Amazon scams and fake Facebook ads, the missing component is information. Making fun of people passive aggressively like this does nothing. Spread awareness and how to not fall for such scams.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

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I know my wording came off in a way that should be worded better once I reread it- I should have said "oh hey, youre the ex-phished account that targeted all of my FC & got one of our officers" I know they were phished, just glad they got their personal items back

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Originally Posted by LittleChickenNugget

I'm surprised people still fall for these in the year 2022.

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Everyone has done at least a few stupid things in their lifetime, whether they fall for scams or not. No one is above making silly mistakes.

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Originally Posted by LittleChickenNugget

I'm surprised people still fall for these in the year 2022.

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At least they didn't put a link in the OP. :p

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Originally Posted by HeyMcFly

I know my wording came off in a way that should be worded better once I reread it- I should have said "oh hey, youre the ex-phished account that targeted all of my FC & got one of our officers" I know they were phished, just glad they got their personal items back

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Well it was more pointing a finger and naming in your comment, as if this account holder was the one who, as you say "hacked" this officer's account. People who come to the forums and read your comment do not need to get the wrong idea and misinformation on who is actually sending the scam invites in /tells, rather they need to be better informed, so they understand what's is going on if ever they receive a /tell like this themselves.

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Originally Posted by Rolder50

Just to be pedantic, that's phishing, not hacking.

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it's really only pedantry if the distinction is without a difference. phishing requires very different tools to stay safe from than other forms of hacking

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Originally Posted by JuneStarwind

As the title shows, I was recently hacked. I was foolish enough to copy and paste a link that was sent to me via "Tell". The tell stated something along the line of the player quitting the game soon and will be doing a 300M Gil giveaway. Me thinking that the link sent to me was the official Final Fantasy Forum turned out to be a fake. I entered in my account log in, and I found it odd that it wasn't logging me into the forum no matter how many times I entered in my login correctly. I noticed that I was disconnected from the game moments later, and so I tried to log back in. Oddly enough, it kept saying my password was incorrect. Turns out I received an email saying that a security token was just registered to my account. I never registered any security token. I realize I was just hacked. IMMEDIATELY I got in contact with Square Enix and they were able to remove the security token from my account, and I was able to log in with all my gear and gil still intact. I have now put a security token on my account so that this never happens again.

Has anyone or know of anyone that experienced this?

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Your biggest mistake

1) You don't use a security token, whats wrong with you?
2) Clicking and going to random links. I do have to ask if this is your first MMORPG or first time on the internet

Having a decent internet security program/add-on also helps since the phishing websites are not secure which will trigger red flags.