Please help, someone is on my account.

[Maulth]

Earlier this evening, after logging off to go play some DotA 2 with some friends, one of my buddies hops down in our Teamspeak and lets me know that my character - Maulthia Karadoc - is currently in New Gradinia spamming gold selling services for some third-world RMT site. After reading Reddit for the last week, and seeing firsthand how terrible customer service has been thus far into my FFXIV experience, I don't know what to do. I can't login to my account because someone is already logged in (worst feature I've ever seen by the way). They've logged off twice to my knowledge, even after I had changed the password twice and manged to get back on. I changed the password from two separate computers (one of which is a brand new installation of win7) and they're still able to login to my account, so I'm 100% sure it is not on my end. Routine virus scan came up with absolutely nothing from both AVG and Windows Security Essentials.

How do I fix this? IRONICALLY the only way I've read to contact a GM was in-game, which is passing idiotic considering you won't allow people to log back in when the gold spammers on their account.

[bonniebru5]

one time password perhaps?

[Xyphre]

I have a feeling they are getting through without a password. I saw this happen in Rift. Just a guess, but who knows.

[Maulth]

Well, one of my friends let me know as soon as whoever had it logged out, and I've retaken my account. So what do I do, stay logged in permanently to prevent this? I'm sure a lot of people reported my character for spamming so I'll likely get banned. How do I deal with all of this?

[Kosmos992k]

change your password, and run a malware check on your PC - just in case.

[Tigron321]

change your password, and run a malware check on your PC - just in case.

I did. Changed my password yesterday, woke up and I'm suspended today, so. Didnt work. Can't wait to deal with this wonderful SE support I'm hearing so much about.

[Kosmos992k]

I did. Changed my password yesterday, woke up and I'm suspended today, so. Didnt work. Can't wait to deal with this wonderful SE support I'm hearing so much about.

The suspension was probably already in the works since your account had been hijacked.

You'll need to contact SE customer support and I am afraid to say you'll have to be patient because it takes time to handle each case. They may have a backlog of cases that they have to deal with, and so it could take a day or two to get to you.

If you consider how many accounts have been terminated (someone claimed 6000 in another thread), and how many suspended, and figure an hour per account for investigation and action (including time spend with customers trying to reactivate their now suspended account as well as all the time to verify that some action is merited - in your case your account had probably been reported for spamming). So at minimum that would be about 6,000 hours of work. Let's assume that your SE support person handling these matters works a 50 hour week, there have been approximately 5 weeks of active service of the game, so each support person has about 250 hours of effective working time available. even if you look only at the 6000 banned accounts, that would require a team of 24 specialists - assuming an hour per account.

Knock it down to 30 minutes per account, but include all the bans and suspensions, you may be talking 10,000 affected accounts (or more). even at 30 minutes per account (average)n that's at least 20 full time people working on nothing else.

I'm not trying to defend or "white knight" SE here, but reality is reality. All of us would hope that a human looks into bans and suspensions to make sure that mistakes are corrected - such as in your case. But the reality is that to take the appropriate care, you have to have people doing it, and as cases mount up, a backlog may form, which takes time to clear.

[Tigron321]

The suspension was probably already in the works since your account had been hijacked.

You'll need to contact SE customer support and I am afraid to say you'll have to be patient because it takes time to handle each case. They may have a backlog of cases that they have to deal with, and so it could take a day or two to get to you.

If you consider how many accounts have been terminated (someone claimed 6000 in another thread), and how many suspended, and figure an hour per account for investigation and action (including time spend with customers trying to reactivate their now suspended account as well as all the time to verify that some action is merited - in your case your account had probably been reported for spamming). So at minimum that would be about 6,000 hours of work. Let's assume that your SE support person handling these matters works a 50 hour week, there have been approximately 5 weeks of active service of the game, so each support person has about 250 hours of effective working time available. even if you look only at the 6000 banned accounts, that would require a team of 24 specialists - assuming an hour per account.

Knock it down to 30 minutes per account, but include all the bans and suspensions, you may be talking 10,000 affected accounts (or more). even at 30 minutes per account (average)n that's at least 20 full time people working on nothing else.

I'm not trying to defend or "white knight" SE here, but reality is reality. All of us would hope that a human looks into bans and suspensions to make sure that mistakes are corrected - such as in your case. But the reality is that to take the appropriate care, you have to have people doing it, and as cases mount up, a backlog may form, which takes time to clear.

Naw, I know it takes time, I've got no problems with that. I've just red people's horror stories about SE's customer service is all. Met some of it first had as well, but what can you do.

[Gonzothegreat198]

If you have a smartphone, get the SE Token App and apply it to your account. Until then, if you don't want to stay logged in permanently you can always deactivate the account after you log off, and then reactivate when you want to log back on. I would also change the password to your email account that you use for FFXIV, and check to make sure that email account is still registered in the mog station as the primary.

[Maulth]

If you have a smartphone, get the SE Token App and apply it to your account. Until then, if you don't want to stay logged in permanently you can always deactivate the account after you log off, and then reactivate when you want to log back on. I would also change the password to your email account that you use for FFXIV, and check to make sure that email account is still registered in the mog station as the primary.

How does one deactivate their account?

and by mentioning that I was using two seperate computers, I was saying that I know it's not a keylogger. The other computer first connected to the internet to download FFXIV, and antivirus. Meaning I hadn't even downloaded anything else. After I changed the password on that computer, they were still able to log off and then back onto my account.