Hacked / Account Suspended / No ETA

[Dorin]

@Abraxis Yes, ignorance is bliss. People don't realize the massive amounts of ways you can crack passwords. We work in Internet Security and use lowercase, uppercase, symbols and numbers so the people with "lolpassword" only have a matter of weeks before they're number gets drawn and they're in here with us.

He's considering just getting a new account instead of waiting, since digital downloads are back up. We have friends who had their accounts under investigation for 6 months on on FFXI after they got comprised with a token. SE is either terrible or brilliant by making people spend more money.

@Spoolx / atopax We didn't get booted waiting for live chat, but the support agent could only "escalate" our "escalation". They were nice, but not really helpful.

How many characters long was your password?

More than 10, 20, 30?

[Spoolx]

Live chat got all the way down to 1 again for me and said no agents available.. two days in a row

[Abraxis]

Well, going on day 7 (5 if you omit weekends) and no word or update on anything from SE. Looks like there's only 3 more days until I finally say "F U SE" and leave the world of Eorzea altogether. Which is sad, because I freaking loved the game. It's an even bigger shame since they already have my money for a physical security token that STILL hasn't shipped at all. Awesome.

Guess I should start looking up more information for Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar and Everquest Next, since they're the only ones that are interesting to me atm.

[Panthur]

Oohh, elder scrolls on line... hope my laptop can handle it !

[Cirsce]

@Dorin My husbands password was between 10-20 and used lowercase, uppercase, numbers, and symbols. Now it's 30 characters, not that he can use it.

@Abraxis Yeah, it doesn't look like anyone is hearing back about anything anytime soon.

I've read somewhere that in the event that your account is suspended you were just supposed to have to reset your password and it would unlock. However, we have not gotten an email back from SE acknowledging that hacking or suspension even occurred to his account.

It also looks like people waiting to get their items and gil back who did get hacked, but thankfully not suspended (yet) are living in a dream world. Since some have been waiting for over a week for a roll back and then finally just deciding to play and stop waiting.

We decided against buying another copy for him to play on since this is not an isolated incident and the most common post on the forums is hack / suspension / banned for getting hacked. And other issues like them telling people they never received their 90 day subscription even though it was taken out of their bank. We both want to see how it all plays out before sinking more money into a game that seems to suffer from customer support incompetency.

I almost feel like this was how they handled their servers being overwhelmed. Completely shut down sales for two weeks with no word when it'll be back / completely suspend anyone with suspicious activity and give no word when it'll be back up. I am really in love with the game itself, but between billing errors, hacking and suspensions and generally just no word from anyone who can actually fix a problem even after waiting 2-5 hours for customer support it seems like it's just a matter of time before something goes wrong for one of us, again. And the account you've poured so much time and effort into is taken away with them giving no word to you on what's happening or when something even will happen.

[KeikoSoma]

Welcome to the club, we're growing in number quite fast by the hour. Unfortunately don't expect much sympathy from some folks around here as they think that we're all idiots that use passwords like "lolpassword" and click on every single ad banner and open every email link we find and buy gold willy nilly.

The one time passwords and harder passowrds are not impervious either. There was a news article someone posted of those one time password keychains having their data ghosted by hackers before they were sent out to the public, so they got them all.

[ureizz]

I am now scared for my credit card information, I got hacked and managed to change password, cant get any support, my account is still active but theres nothing I can do with it.

[KeikoSoma]

Ureizz, the website will not display your full credit card number. The hacker would have to hack SE's actual servers instead of just your user account to get that. Card companies offer theft protection. If you notice unusual activity, report it and close your card right away.

[veveaucent]

I've had fraudulent charges on my card (a little different than having it straight up stolen) you will get a card with a new CCV number (the number on the back) so you won't loose preauthorized payment and will retain the same credit card number but fraudulent charges will cease. In the case of stolen cards the stolen one will become useless.

[xSinful_Snake]

I'm very sorry to hear you all going through this but I do have a question. I am a PC Technician but by no means does that make me an Internet security expert. I have to ask, how are these account hackers able to compromise accounts that have security tokens? Where do the tokens come from and how are these thieves able to hijack or intercept the security token being sent? I would think this would require an expert which is probably not impossible but I also imagine SE would be able immediately detect a breach or rogue signal in their servers. Can someone explain this?