FC Member banned due to Phishing getting her account

[SnakeWeasel]

A FC Member got her account taken over in a phishing scheme. She followed a link to "The Loadstone" site from someone she knew and you guessed it, it was NOT her friend and it was a fake Loadstone site. Her account was used for advertising RMT and SE did what they should have done and banned her account.

She immediately contacted SE and they had her re set her password and said they would work on getting her account re instated. I'm not looking for sympathy for my FC member, she should have been more carful. what I want to know is if anyone else has had something similar happen to them and how long did it take SE to investigate restore an account?

[Renalt]

Phishing and scam accounts seem to be on the rise. My advice is no one should ever click a link from anyone...friend or no. Use google and search for the site there. Feel free to bookmark the one you know you have used before so there is no mistake.

[weebtext]

She should've gone to the Lodestone instead.

[Jojoya]

A FC Member got her account taken over in a phishing scheme. She followed a link to "The Loadstone" site from someone she knew and you guessed it, it was NOT her friend and it was a fake Loadstone site. Her account was used for advertising RMT and SE did what they should have done and banned her account.

She immediately contacted SE and they had her re set her password and said they would work on getting her account re instated. I'm not looking for sympathy for my FC member, she should have been more carful. what I want to know is if anyone else has had something similar happen to them and how long did it take SE to investigate restore an account?

It happens far more often than it should.

Character rollbacks seem to take 10-14 days most of the time, though it can be longer. Your FC member needs to know that most items/gil obtained on the character during the rollback waiting period will be lost when the rollback is finally processed. They need to keep that in mind if they intend to keep playing the character during the waiting period.

[SnakeWeasel]

It happens far more often than it should.

Character rollbacks seem to take 10-14 days most of the time, though it can be longer. Your FC member needs to know that most items/gil obtained on the character during the rollback waiting period will be lost when the rollback is finally processed. They need to keep that in mind if they intend to keep playing the character during the waiting period.

Thanks that's the info I was looking for, it's been at least that long. T he FC member sends requests for updates on the ticket ever few days and so far she only gets "We are working on it"

[SnakeWeasel]

She should've gone to the Lodestone instead.

Agreed however the site she went to looked identical to the loadstone log in page. It was a well done phishing scheme, most likely it was a screen shot of the Loadstone page overlaid on the bogus site.

[Vid]

Let me guess the message was something along the lines of, "Leaving the game, 300m giveaway on forums.square-enix/com-np-ty-for-ur-account-info/ffxiv/threads/yadayada"?
Key part obviously being after the ".com" portion, if there's literally any dashes after the ".com" you know immediately it's a scam, and that's how they get ya.

Lotta those going around lately, especially if you spend anytime in a major city, most notably Limsa Lominsa for me.

[weebtext]

Agreed however the site she went to looked identical to the loadstone log in page. It was a well done phishing scheme, most likely it was a screen shot of the Loadstone page overlaid on the bogus site.

That's what happens when you go to the Loadstone instead of the Lodestone.

[Jeeqbit]

It happens all the time and this is what normally happens. A player reports the phishing tells and their account gets banned temporarily. The phishers usually try to take away gil including any they can access from the FC. SE is able to do a rollback to restore the gil on the player, but a lot of people say it takes months and once it's restored all the progress in between is erased, which makes it not worth it unless they had a lot of gil.

[SnakeWeasel]

Let me guess the message was something along the lines of, "Leaving the game, 300m giveaway on forums.square-enix/com-np-ty-for-ur-account-info/ffxiv/threads/yadayada"?
Key part obviously being after the ".com" portion, if there's literally any dashes after the ".com" you know immediately it's a scam, and that's how they get ya.

Lotta those going around lately, especially if you spend anytime in a major city, most notably Limsa Lominsa for me.

That's the one. The twist was that she got the link from a friend not from a shout so she thought "Well if my friend is doing it, it must be legit"