Account security is your responsibility, not Blizzard's

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-27-2009 @ 3:30PM

Gordon said...

For the most part I agree, however my own experiences make me wonder. Prior to Wotlk i stopped playing. I removed WoW and formated my computer. I use a different password for my Warcraft account. Two and a half months later I received the dreaded "Your Password has been changed e-mail" and was sent into hacked account hell. So there was no saved passwords on my computer for a trojan to steal, Wow wasnt installed and my computer had no trace of the game for two months. Talking to a few friends afterwards, both online and off, the same things had happened to others. My experience makes me wonder if hackers look for accounts that are idle and brute force them.

2-27-2009 @ 5:54PM

Spark said...

I have to disagree with Jesse on the idea that the Authenticator solution is driven by greed. Two-factor authentication is, generally, a good solution. However there is added cost involved over the traditional password system. Costs include the token, the infrastructure, and support.

It's hard to determine the token cost as Vasco isn't very forthcoming with their per-unit pricing. But I know RSA tokens go for a whopping $50 per unit. Paypal sells their tokens at $5 ea. And someone on the WoW forums claims they've gotten a dealer to provide pricing at $18ea for the Vasco Go 6 (Blizz authenticators are branded versions of these) at a minimum of 5,000 units.

It's possible that Blizzard is making money off the deal. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the Authenticator pricing is simply sharing the cost with the customer. Your $7 fee helps eat part of the cost of Blizzard providing you with improved security. Blizzard eats the other part of that cost as they hope, ultimately, it decreases their support costs.

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