Success getting Gil restored that was removed by a compromised account?

[Berkilak]

And for the love of all that's good, it's 2021, most of us grew up with or learned computers and basic internet interactions at a young age, so why on earth would you ever clink a link sent to you by some random player? That's like opening a link that is emailed to you from your bank saying there is something going on with your account or they are having a raffle or anything of the sort. Never click links, especially from strangers, is internet 101.

The rest of us were just as flabbergasted. Dude is smart. Educated. Didn't expect that lapse in judgement.

And if the compromised account bought a bunch of stuff, that's immaterial. They verified that the account was compromised. They aren't being "scammed." Delete those items on the rollback, but give the person back the gil as well. No one is getting hacked and being given gil. Moreover, we both know that gil didn't go toward MB purchases - it went to a dummy account for a gold-selling service. Let's not let some hypothetical, far-flung, and ultimately unrealistic situation get in the way of giving your players actual support.

As for locking up the bank... it's done now. Doesn't help in retrospect, though. It would be absolutely asinine to have to completely shut out a group of a dozen or so IRL friends and family... but apparently that's a hard truth the players had to realize when SE left them cold after experiences like this. But it shouldn't be this way.

[MicahZerrshia]

They verified that the account was compromised. They aren't being "scammed." Delete those items on the rollback, but give the person back the gil as well. No one is getting hacked and being given gil. Moreover, we both know that gil didn't go toward MB purchases - it went to a dummy account for a gold-selling service. Let's not let some hypothetical, far-flung, and ultimately unrealistic situation get in the way of giving your players actual support..

In this case, most likely yes. But that is not always the case and in game money, just like real world money, can be laundered. And they already have enough on their hands dealing with hackers and rmt, all they need to throw into the mix is adding a gil laundering ring.

I am not trying to start an argument here, but we really need to take a moment to understand why they have policies like this in the first place. It's not so cut and dry as we verified your account was hacked, here is your money! Thank for using SE customer service.

[Berkilak]

In this case, most likely yes. But that is not always the case and in game money, just like real world money, can be laundered. And they already have enough on their hands dealing with hackers and rmt, all they need to throw into the mix is adding a gil laundering ring.

I am not trying to start an argument here, but we really need to take a moment to understand why they have policies like this in the first place. It's not so cut and dry as we verified your account was hacked, here is your money! Thank for using SE customer service.

Let's not forget this this is a video game. This kind of policy makes sense in reality. But in a fictional setting wherein your players are simply trying to enjoy your game? And the worst case scenario is that you give a couple devious players a little more fictional currency? This is much too draconian.

If they can take a look at the login logs, see that weird IP address from halfway around the world... there's your evidence. If they're accessing at a strange time or doing weird things (like emptying their FC chest and giving away all their items, for instance), anyone with half a brain can draw the correct conclusion. If a few people get convoluted with VPNs and the like and they get a few extra gil... so what? The harm these kinds of policies do to to the otherwise boundless amount of goodwill FFXIV has isn't worth it.

[Arazehl]

The good news is your friend will get reimburse the gil they were out. The bad news you can kiss the FC gil goodbye. SE see's this as the fault on the leaders part for giving access to FC funds to any other, but the leader of the FC. How do I know this? It happened to me and one of my officers who is a irl friend awhile back. The FC had 29 million gil taken from the Company Chest.

I change the access to FC to only myself now and everytime I see a post like this concerning someone getting hacked/pished I speak up in those threads too. Do Not give gil access to officers, friends,your dear Memaw or anyone other than the leader of the FC. This isn't about a trust issue, you jepordize the FC gil when you do and SE won't be responsible for it.

Fortunately my friend/officer reimburse what the FC was out over time and she did that on her own without a word or me asking her to.

To add the person with the hacked account, they invites an accomplise partner into the FC with the hacked account they are now on. Then the phisher ranks them if they need to, to the rank of whatever rank has access to the FC's gil in the Company Chest. It's all rather a neat and tidy crime. You can probably even see the Company Chest History to see exactly who took it, but still SE won't reimburse the FC gil ,saying it was the leaders fault for giving anyone access other than the leader.

Oh and one more thing. SE saying that any gil earned by your friend after the incident will be lost is because of the rollback your friends account will get. That includes gear, items or any gil after he regains control of his account. It can take up to a week to 10 days to rollback. Your friend just needs to be patient for that long.

[Berkilak]

Oh and one more thing. SE saying that any gil earned by your friend after the incident will be lost is because of the rollback your friends account will get. That includes gear, items or any gil after he regains control of his account. It can take up to a week to 10 days to rollback. Your friend just needs to be patient for that long.

That's the thing - they rolled back their character without really reading the fine print or checking to see if the FC chest was compromised. So their character did withdraw the 70 million, but then they rolled back their character to right before they did so.

[Packetdancer]

That's the thing - they rolled back their character without really reading the fine print or checking to see if the FC chest was compromised. So their character did withdraw the 70 million, but then they rolled back their character to right before they did so.

Ooooh. I'd somehow misunderstood the earlier posts; I thought the character took the gil and then gave it away while compromised. If he got the account back quickly enough that he still had the 70 million gil in inventory, but it got wiped away by the account restore before he put it back in the FC chest... ouch. Not surprising, mind you, but ouch.

Still, how account rollbacks work in most game systems (and, I would lay odds, in FFXIV as well) is they point to a specific time and go "revert all assets to this". It's not "hand back missing gil and/or items individually", it's literally "restore from backup" like bringing a hard drive back from an older image of it. Which is great in terms of not having specific items overlooked when returning things, but it's a problem in terms of it being an atomic transaction.

To put it another way, imagine the following sequence:

1. Account is compromised.
2. Person who took the account sees expensive materials in the account's inventory, gives those all away to an accomplice.
3. Person now steals all the gil from the FC chest.
4. Person gives the FC gil away to accomplice.
5. Account is reclaimed.

If you rollback the account to a point between 3 and 4, the FC gil is retained (by virtue of being in the person's inventory) but all the expensive materials are gone. If you rollback the account to between 1 and 2, all the expensive materials are back, but the gil is lost. Add to that the fact that the easy marker for "where to roll back to" is "just before the first login from the unauthorized/unusual IP address" -- i.e., to just before 1 in that list -- and you have an issue, inasmuch as the FC chest state is entirely separate from the account state, so is not affected by the rollback. (Nor should it be, honestly, because otherwise you'd lose materials people had put into the FC chest in the meantime or whatnot.) But the gil only was added to their inventory after that point.

Doesn't make this any less unfortunate -- or screw your FC over any less, I'm afraid -- but it does make sense from a technical standpoint. :/

[Berkilak]

Doesn't make this any less unfortunate -- or screw your FC over any less, I'm afraid -- but it does make sense from a technical standpoint. :/

From a technical perspective, perhaps. But from a customer service standpoint? A human standpoint? This overwrought rigidity does no one any favours.

Most of my fc has real world friends.

Only 3 of us have gil withdrawal permissions, and only 2 of us have rank permissions (or 1 outside fc leader)

Which is asinine to have to do to protect against shoddy customer service.

There's only a dozen or so of us in a small web of IRL connections. The bank was open because it was a collective wallet for those of us in the free company. You know: its intended use. If these permissions aren't meant to be utilized, don't have them at all.