recovering stolen items/gold (friend)

[Ksandra]

So this has been a shitty day for a friend of mine. He logged in this morning to his DK to see his toon was stripped, and someone kept booting him off his acc. He quickly changed his PW, and was paranoid and reformatted his comp. While he was reinstalling the game, he gave me his new pw to check his other toon (pld that he's been xping with us), and sure enough that character was stripped too. After he looked online from others that got their acc stolen, he read that he should check guild bank....and his DK was logged as basically taking every item out of the bank. (not gold though, luckily his toon doesn't have that access). Items are worth about 2k gold overall though. Lastly, whoever took it, spent all his tokens/honor points and bought shit with it.

Frustrating thing is, phone lines are closed on the weekends, and he's been waiting about 5 hours now for a gm response. So curious if people have been through something similar or know someone who has, and if they have any advice.

Also, before someone asks, no, no one had his pw beside him. He did say that he looks up a lot of info for wow stuff, and it's possible he might have accessed an "unsafe" site, weird thing though is he has firewall stuff and never got a warning.

Biggest thing imo would be the guild stuff. His DK JUST hit 80 about 3 days ago, so not like he had any major endgame shit from it. And his pld is 52 with us, and most of his gear is from us grinding instances which we can get back for him. Guild thing though, we had about 3 weeks ago a close friend of the guild master take everything (well it was her husband cause he was jealous or some shit ), so this is kinda bad timing, and I don't want people to be always suspicious of my friend.


So I guess my questions/point of the thread is:

a. Anyone got any good advice/knowledge on this stuff? I think I remember Blizz basically logs everything, so hoping this will go a lot smoother than the way SE does thing.

b. Anyone know of any recent wow info sites that have been identified as having keyloggers? I think after this he's gonna really limit sites he goes to (wowhead/curse/etc.). But would be nice to know if there's something specific that's been happening lately, or a major site that people are supposed to be avoiding that we might not know about (i.e. a somepage type thing).

[Correction]

He probably got phished for his account info. Kind of surprised guilds hand out full access to guild bank tabs (even if they restrict gold access) to members like that.

Get him kicked from the guild on both toons if you haven't already to limit the damage there (everyone in the guild would have to know not to deposit shit otherwise).

Blizzard will likely not be able to recover 100% of the items, but his toon should get his BoP gear back.

[fantasticdan]

If your friend is still missing items after the initial restoration, call a GM and have them look through the logs for the specific stuff he's still missing. Should be able to get nearly everything back except gems/enchants, unless they can restore those as well now.

[Boyiee]

Get an authenticator.

I had an account hacked recently, but they couldn't log on and strip it because of the authenticator.

Otherwise there is nothing else you can do except for CALL BLIZZARD. GM can't do much of anything, you will get emails from them after the phonecall telling you what they restored and see if your story has changed at all. Call, wait the 30+ min to talk to someone, and start off with "Hi, I believe my account was compromised. I logged on and the account was stripped" etc etc. They are very good about it, I've had this happen probably 5 times at least over the years and have always gotten every dime back.

[fantasticdan]

Get an authenticator.

I had an account hacked recently, but they couldn't log on and strip it because of the authenticator.

Otherwise there is nothing else you can do except for CALL BLIZZARD. GM can't do much of anything, you will get emails from them after the phonecall telling you what they restored and see if your story has changed at all. Call, wait the 30+ min to talk to someone, and start off with "Hi, I believe my account was compromised. I logged on and the account was stripped" etc etc. They are very good about it, I've had this happen probably 5 times at least over the years and have always gotten every dime back.

GMs can restore items on the spot (well mail them to you), but I doubt they'd do a full restoral that way.

[Ksandra]

Get an authenticator.

I had an account hacked recently, but they couldn't log on and strip it because of the authenticator.

Otherwise there is nothing else you can do except for CALL BLIZZARD. GM can't do much of anything, you will get emails from them after the phonecall telling you what they restored and see if your story has changed at all. Call, wait the 30+ min to talk to someone, and start off with "Hi, I believe my account was compromised. I logged on and the account was stripped" etc etc. They are very good about it, I've had this happen probably 5 times at least over the years and have always gotten every dime back.

ya he's going to call tomorrow, he would today but they aren't open on the weekends. he's been in queue for almost 9 hours now and still no gm ><;

glad to hear though you were able to get shit back. `

[erish]

If you cant get through on the phone go to the customer service forums.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Customer Service Forum

Honestly these guys are pretty good they should be able to sort you out pretty quickly. Just remember this isnt ffxi you will probably get your stuff back it will just take awhile.

[Tonko]

Here's the real scoop.

Step 1: Call billing (1-800-BLI-ZZAR)
Step 2: Submit a petition in game, tell a Game Master you got compromised. They'll escalate your account up to a specialist. The Specialist will investigate the account, and restore any items/gold/gear/professions lost while the other person was playing the account.
Step 3: Wait. Current wait time is like 7-9 days. Be patient.
Step 4: Check over your gear/items once they E-mail you letting you know they're done restoring your account. If you're missing anything still, reply to that e-mail. Don't re-petition.
Step 5: GET AN AUTHENTICATOR

It's really a painless process other than the wait time. You can continue to play while they do the investigation. Any guild bank ganked items get mailed back to the guild master.

Be sure to armory any characters you think got deleted. They probably just got transfered to another server. Make sure you mention this to the Game Master when you let them know you've been compromised.

[Ksandra]

Here's the real scoop.

Step 1: Call billing (1-800-BLI-ZZAR)
Step 2: Submit a petition in game, tell a Game Master you got compromised. They'll escalate your account up to a specialist. The Specialist will investigate the account, and restore any items/gold/gear/professions lost while the other person was playing the account.
Step 3: Wait. Current wait time is like 7-9 days. Be patient.
Step 4: Check over your gear/items once they E-mail you letting you know they're done restoring your account. If you're missing anything still, reply to that e-mail. Don't re-petition.
Step 5: GET AN AUTHENTICATOR

It's really a painless process other than the wait time. You can continue to play while they do the investigation. Any guild bank ganked items get mailed back to the guild master.

Be sure to armory any characters you think got deleted. They probably just got transfered to another server. Make sure you mention this to the Game Master when you let them know you've been compromised.

sweet I'll send this his way.

It def inspired friends and I to get an authenticator so we don't have to deal with this in the future...sadly they're out of stock atm ><;

[ghanima]

There's an authenticator for iphone and ipod touch, it's free. Not sure if there is one for normal ipod or for other phones.

Friend of mine got hacked last month, took about 7-9 days to get his stuff back but he got all of it back... in fact he ended up with all the gold from items the guy sold and all the items bought with his emblem of heroism/valor in addition to having all his gear and emblems restored. Go figure lol. The guy who hacked him was through- they got into his email while he was online in the game, changed the passwords and then deleted the emails (but didn't empty the trash).

Even though Blizzard's GM service is fail all around with wait times, getting your account back is painless and quick.