Dear Mr Hacker,
thenoisyrogue@hotmail.com
That is my contact email address for this site. It’s up there under the tab called ‘contact me’. I use it to not respond to people a lot. So when I went to log into that email address this morning, I was quite surprised to see that I was unable to do so. Hotmail was telling me that due to the absurdly high number of unsuccessful attempts to log into that email account, I would have to go through a barrage of trials by fire, water and very small and tiny letters and numbers to type into a bunch of boxes. Which tells me that someone had run some hacking programmes to get into my email account. The only reason I can deduce for doing this is that they presumed that I would be so silly to have a published email address as the one I use on my battlenet account. And perhaps also that I would use a really stupid password.
Well, it looks like my password held up to your attacks. But it’s still lucky that I don’t have my battlenet password out there for all the world to see. Better be getting me some of that real ID network happening now!
Not.
June 26, 2010 at 10:52 pm
I congratulate you on the steps you have taken to keep your account safe. I feel that many people who were upset that our logins would become our email addresses were rightly upset over it, largely for this reason. However, I think they pointed the blame in the wrong direction; it should be more at themselves.
If people would think it over for 2 minutes, and decide if they value an account, they would take these two simple steps: 1) create a unique password. Don’t use this password anywhere else. 2) Make it a level 4 password. Letters, capitals, symbols, and numbers. With the crap most people type in their IM conversations (or trade, or facebook, etc) you would think this would actually be the default.
But you did an awesome job and took it one step further: changing the username (via changing the email address) between accounts. This is especially important when you publish your account name (email address) out for all to see.
I am curious though, why do you seem so certain it was related to an attempt to access your WoW account? It seems a natural guess, but it also seems logical to merely pop open the account and see what fancy info they find inside; who knows what sites you have hooked up to that email address!
June 27, 2010 at 8:41 am
Hmmm …
You’re the guy who tried to hack me, ammiright?
June 27, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Steven has a good point. The first thing i did when compulsory battle.net login was implemented was to create a free email address for my wow account. This email address is used for nothing else. I have often wondered whether all these people that get hacked are using their freely available email linked to facebook etc for their battle.net login. For someone to login to a wow account (without an authenticator linked) you need 2 pieces of information. Why give them one for free?
June 28, 2010 at 7:26 am
Hello Cindy
June 28, 2010 at 8:47 pm
Haha, no Adam it wasn’t me. Better things with my time and better uses of my skills than trying to pretend to be a blackhat and steal some poor bloggers email address.
That doesn’t mean I don’t find the subject very interesting, at least in the broader scope of interpersonal conflict resulting in technological and skill growth of both sides. Considering the internet my home just makes internet account security slightly more interesting than some other options.