Regarding Rise of Unauthorized Access and Password Security

[Gokulo]

Oh, I knew it wasn't fake Gokulo, was just wondering if a lot of people got the letter and to just double check that I was fine.

Was referring to Trigun's post since he seemed to think the e-mail is a scam

[Nattack]

I cured unauthorized access to my playonline account. not even I remember my POL password anymore.

now let me lay something on you, One day I did try to log in (maybe in april) and my square enix password, and one of my email passwords were changed. luckily, it was my second email that i only use for serious business (and there's not much of that going on). So via my regular email account I changed them back. good for me, sort of.

What confuses me is how they changed these passwords. I checked gmail's log and only IP's local to my area had logged in. . . and the last ones between then and now I could actually attribute to myself.
nobody local to my area except me plays this game, so it was kind of a mystery to me, I did a scan and found nothing unusual. So it was time to wipe the computer.

The only other suspicious thing was that my Twitter was sending spam to your regular penis growth miracles and cheap Viagra pills...
this had been for a week or two, so they were probably very much so related. what concerns me is that it was such a strange combination of accounts struck. I can understand my email and twitter, but FFXI? perhaps ive got a botnet on my computer and the author was trying to make a quick buck on my account.

[Lucavi]

Only time my accounts have been "hacked" is after I stopped playing the game in question, both in Rift and in WoW. About 3-4 months after I quit, I got emails from both companies talking about suspicious actions on my accounts. I wanna know how these guys are always doing this shit. Its annoying as hell, especially if I had plans to play the game in question again at some point, like with Rift.

[arus2001]

I can never rule out rogue employees selling account info.

[Nattack]

Only time my accounts have been "hacked" is after I stopped playing the game in question, both in Rift and in WoW. About 3-4 months after I quit, I got emails from both companies talking about suspicious actions on my accounts. I wanna know how these guys are always doing this shit. Its annoying as hell, especially if I had plans to play the game in question again at some point, like with Rift.

I get emails like this and I dont even play WoW or Rift. the emails look authentic even, I can see how they could easily fool someone.

interestingly enough though, the emails came en masse as soon as i started a trial account - which i played for all of maybe 3 hours. not rift, though, that game looks terribly boring.
odds are i have something spying on my system. while it's not uncommon, it's definitely hard to find