Account Safety Guide

[@. Hitokiri]

Topics:

Account – Hacked

So, you went to log on this morning and found your account’s password to have been changed, the person you just bought an account from stole it back. Here are some general tips to help in this kind of situation.

1) Assess the damage, how did your trade go down? Was the e-mail changed to yours? Do you know the phone number and secret question on the account? If you know both of these, you can get the account back. Simply go to WoW.com Account/Password Retrieval and you will need the account name, phone number, secret question, and e-mail attached to the account. Easy, you just recovered your account.

2) If the e-mail was not changed to yours, this presents some problems. If you know the secret question/answer, and know the last name on the account, you have to call blizzard. The number is 1-800-59-BLIZZARD. Basically your job here is to act as the original owner of the account, since you know the name, and have the secret question/answer to the account, 95% of the time they will change the e-mail to yours. If they inquire as to the phone number, tell them you moved, say that is an old disconnected line that never got changed and you’ve forgotten what it was. Say the e-mail was a work e-mail from a long time ago and it also never got changed. Several times this has worked for me over the phone, they are pretty nice about it.

3) If you don’t know the last name, don’t have the e-mail, don’t know the sq/a or the phone number, and just have the account name, you’re pretty screwed. You rushed the trade/sale most likely, and the account is technically still the sellers. Next time make sure to get all pertinent information transferred to you on the account.


Accounts – Charge back

This is a general paypal guide so you know what to expect with virtual goods. Paypal does not support the sale of virtual goods, if an item cannot be verified with a tracking number so they know that the buyer got it, they will never, EVER side with the seller. Rule of thumb: Have insurance on your account. Unless you keep the e-mail/phone number on the account in some way shape or form, the account is no longer yours. There are two ways to handle this generally.

1) Don’t change the e-mail. Tell them they need to call blizzard to change it, you have to wait 45 days until a charge back is no longer valid, so your best option is to say the e-mail is gibberish and not valid. The problem here is 99% of buyers hate it, you don’t feel secure without the e-mail, but there is another option.

2) YOU change the e-mail, do not let them do it. Basically before the trade is done, you ask them for the e-mail and phone number for it to be changed to, and do it for them. Write those down. It’s very unlikely that they will change this again. You now know the e-mail and phone number, along with the sq/a and name on the account, enough information to recover the account should they do a charge back on you.

If you sold your account properly, this would not have happened (unless he actually did a credit card charge back, not a paypal complaint). You send him a payment REQUEST, and in the memo note your char info and include online game. He cannot ask paypal to give his money back as virtual goods aren't protected.

PayPal's policy on not offering any protection on intangible goods is in reference to the seller, not the buyer. This means that if you don't actually send the buyer anything, you have no protection from chargebacks like this at all. Say again - no protection from chargebacks.

However, chances are the actual owner of the account isn't the person you were dealing with, EFC-Cripple. Stolen PayPal accounts are quite literally a dime a dozen, so are prepaid cell phones and services to register phone numbers in the same area as the verified shipping addy on the account.

What most likely happened is the account holder had a virus/fell for a phishing scheme, and the person(s) who then had control of the account sold it for a couple of bucks. This guy then contacted you somehow (where'd you list your account for sale?), and from there you know the rest.

If you don't actually send something physical to the verified address on the PayPal account, you're SOL when it comes to chargebacks (that's not to say that you're protected when you send them something through the mail - it's still possible to add a verified shipping addy to a hijacked PayPal account - but people doing that aren't scamming WoW shit). Even if you call the guy on the phone, unless the actual owner of the PayPal account has a listed phone number that you looked up (again not hard to plant a bad listing, but again not something most WoW PayPal scammers will do), and you called and talked to him, you weren't dealing with the actual account owner.

So, several hours/days after the transaction went down, the actual account holder logged in and saw all this money missing (dude prolly also placed a few orders for WoW gold at various places, maybe a few other accounts as well), scoured the PayPal website for a few hours looking for a phone number, called them and went nuts. PayPal will instantly issue a chargeback when you scream unauthorized access.

Now, hopefully you still have vital information so you can reset the password on the account and re-gain control of it, before dude does some serious damage. One thing to keep in mind is that for the most part, the scammers aren't getting these accounts thinking they're going to hold onto them. Alot of stores, when you're buying gold in bulk, like to meet your toon in-game, just to make sure you're not some level 1 asshole scammer. These accounts provide great buffers for moving stolen gold, spamming gold stores/scams in-game, and other juicy things like that.

What can you do to protect yourself when it comes to selling an account? Well, only deal with verified account holders, send them something through the mail, things like that. Keep in mind, however, that you'll never be 100% safe when it comes to selling intangible goods with PayPal though. Your best bet is using a money transfer service that doesn't allow chargebacks, like e-gold, webmoney, western union, money gram, bank wire, cash in a bag, etc etc.

Bottom line: if it's something valuable, and you don't really know the buyer, you should try to avoid using PayPal, there's a million and a half ways you can get fucked nine times to Sunday.

EDIT: Just to clarify, when I talk about sending him something through the mail, I mean sending it to the verified address on the PayPal account - not just any old address dude gives you. Dude can include the verified shipping address when he's filling out the payment information.

Accounts – Changing Information

This section is meant to help you understand how certain information is changed on accounts.

E-mail/Phone Number: There are two ways to have this changed. One is right through the account management page on World of Warcraft Community Site, and the other is by calling blizzard.

1. Account management, for this to work, you need to have access to the e-mail currently on the account. For instance, if I wanted to change the e-mail from joebob@hotmail.com to n3wi3@awesome.com, I would need to have access to joebob@hotmail.com. When you change it though the account, it sends an e-mail to the original e-mail account with a confirmation link that you click to change it

2. Say you don’t know the original e-mail or phone number, now you have to call blizzard. Dial it up, 1-800-59-BLIZZARD, and have the secret question and full name on the account ready. Tell the people you quit a job and moved a long time ago, but never changed the phone number or e-mail. First thing they will ask for is the name, tell them, then they will ask for the secret question, and occasionally for a high level character on the account, just to verify you have been using it and you know the names. As long as you have this information, 99% of the time they will change it over the phone for you.

Name: The only way to change a name on an account is with a legitimate government ID or notarized letter sent to blizzard that confirms both the original name, and the name it will be changed to. There is no other way to change this.

Address: Very simple, just change contact into in account management, and make it whatever you want, this is the easiest thing to change.

Secret Question: Very rarely this will be changed. With a legitimate transfer of ownership on an account (You are allowed under very strict circumstances), and with a notarized letter/ID, they will change the secret question along with the name. Again, this isn’t something that happens all the time.

Accounts – Bans

This section will explain the different kinds of bans and generally what you will get banned for.

Account Action: This is the most minor level of “ban”. This generally occurs when you spam someone, say a curse word and get reported, or if you are on a RP realm, being constantly out of character (lolrp). All this does is leave a mark on your account so your next “action” results in a 3 hour ban.

Ban – 3 hour: This is the second tier of the ban tree, you will get this ban for severe harassment, massive spamming, griefing same faction, and (depending on how nice the GM is) AFK'ing in battlegrounds.

Ban – 72 hour: This ban is a more serious one. This is generally given for a first major offense, ie: AFK botting in battlegrounds, fish botting (not glider), or for a second 3-hour offense, meaning spamming or swearing. This is a last warning on your account, and after this, even a simple action can permanently close your account.

Ban – Permanent: This ban is generally given for second battleground AFK offenses, any type of third party program that modifies how your character works (Speed hacking, wall hacking), and Glider. You aren’t going to get your account back, once they close it, that’s it. .0000001% of the people who get permanently banned get their accounts back, don’t hold your breath.

Ban e-mails:

1) Third party programs: You got caught using glider or speed hacks, either through player reports or through a passing by account administrator, you aren’t getting your account back.

2) Exploitation of the economy: Power leveling or Gold buying/selling. You sent gold to a flagged account or were caught power leveling. Most power levelers are caught by overzealous customers logging in while the Chinese are leveling. Going from an IP in China to Texas in 30 seconds is pretty blatant and sets off red flags at Blizzard. You aren’t getting your account back.

That’s about it, if you want more here, or want things removed, feel free to edit away mods. I made this as a general guide to stop the constantly repeating question that occur on the general WoW forums, and maybe to help stuff go along a little smoother.

[~ kawai123]

there's also a 1 day suspension of account when several ip addresses are login to your account.