Blizzard Authenticator

Recently, I heard that one of the guys in my guild got his account hacked. He logged on one day to find his well geared tank sitting naked in Dalaran, all his hard earned equipment sold of and the cash gone. I think at least one of his lvl 80 alts was also in the same situation. What a bummer!! Now I don’t know how strong his password was, or if he’d been frequenting dodgy sites that could have installed a keylogger on his machine. I do know that this is something that scares the hell out of me, especially since I have started accumulating a serious (for me) amount of gold. And not only that, but actively blogging about my exploits too. If that doesn’t make me a prime target for these scumbag thieves then I don’t know what does. The answer – get an Authenticator!

I had actually been meaning to get one for quite a while now (even before the gold making phase), I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. I work in IT and I know that there is no such thing as 100% impenetrable security. However I use a very strong, unique password with a mix of numbers, letters and characters which I change regularly; my anti-virus, spyware and adware blocking software is constantly kept up to date and I never share my password or succumb to phishing attempts. Still, having a guildie getting hacked like that was the catalyst to me ordering an Authenticator, at only £6.29 it seemed rude not to.

So that was last Thursday, last Friday I get home from work and my wife hands me an Authenticator. Now that was exceptionally fast, I thought. But I was wrong; this wasn’t from Blizzard, this was from a work friend of my wife. Her friends son (thanks Anthony) had ordered an Authenticator too, but had also received another one as a gift, so knowing that I was also into Warcraft, gave it to his mum, to give to my wife, to give to me. The timing was almost impeccable, but not quite. I of course gladly accepted and am glad I did; I got my newly gifted Authenticator setup on my account on Friday night and now feel a lot more secure. Oh and you even get little 2 headed Corehound Pup non-combat pet for  activating it. It’s now Monday and I still haven’t received the one I ordered. When I get it however, I’ll pass it on to someone else who hasn’t got around to getting one yet. Share the love and all that.

~McRaffles