I love this authenticator change, but I boggle at people (WoW)

[thistlechaser]

I am so very in love with this authenticator change on WoW: instead of asking you every single login for the number, it's become "smart" about it. It challenges you based on your IP and other factors from your computer/location.

The WoW community is up in arms. "Now I'll get hacked!" "Wasted $10!" "Blizz SSSUUUCCCKKKKKKSSSSSS!"

Seriously? Think about it. You people think Blizz would do something to increase your chances of getting hacked?

Who loses money every time someone is hacked? Blizz.
Whose customer satisfaction numbers goes down every time someone is hacked? Blizz.

You really, really think they would put this in place if it made things worse?

I do agree that there should be a checkbox to make it challenge you every time, since that would make people feel better and would do no harm. But me? I'm happy as anything about this.

Comments

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

Ah, so that's why it didn't ask me for another authentication after I logged on, realized I'd forgotten to clear the cache (NPC scan won't track rares that are cached), logged out, cleared it and logged back in.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yep! I had that "DC while switching characters" thing five times last night, plus the login this morning, and I haven't been asked once! 100% of my playtime has been from the same computer, in the same location, same ISP, so it makes sense. If I logged in from somewhere else? Then hopefully I'd be challenged.

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

Overall good feature, bad timing (Playstation hacks, citibank hacks, more) AND it seems like you should give customers the option to ALWAYS require the token key.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Agreed on both counts!

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

FFF what is even UP with that?

That's been happening to me so often lately, and it always resets my xperl defaults and kicks me out of custom channels. >_O

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes! It's gotten so bad I had to make a macro to rejoin my channels...

[giftofarthas.livejournal.com]

I swear it's to make those of us with multiple alts cry tears of blood.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I have a small worry that the authenticator change means the DC issue won't be cleared up soon ("It'll take forever to fix this, so we might as well make it easier for them to log back on..."), but that's probably just me being paranoid.

[elo-sf.livejournal.com]

interesting, I had been noticing regular DC's on switching characters, I found waiting about 5-10 seconds seems to help the problem, e.g. /logout then wait about 5-10 seconds on the character screen. Didn't realize it was very global.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll have to try that! It seems global, as far as I've seen.

[priestpluswolf.livejournal.com]

I suspect it might, given what it's doing, be a security feature blizzside that they haven't told us about. This is just a theory. Why?

*puts tinfoil hat on*

You have a hacker. They're going to be swapping your toons around very quickly, stripping you and sending things off as fast as they can. Multiple relogs in under ten minutes. All of my relog-disconnects have been if I'm relogging fairly rapidly, never if I stay on for 10, 20 minutes before doing it. It only kicks me then. If I was a hacker, and had gotten someone's authenticator, I'd only get time to strip one or two alts before it threw me offline and demanded a re-authenticate.

Just a theory. It's annoying but boy if it makes life difficult for us, imagine what it does to people who grab someone's authenticator code and really only have one shot of stripping you bare.

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

It's unlikely that there's a 'hacker', or something would have been done the toons other than resetting my xperl prefs and leaving custom channels. :\

Funny aside: A couple years back there was a guy in the guild I was in who used a power leveling service to level/farm honor on his toon. We noticed weird behavior from said toon (notably a previously talkative character/player went silent, ignored whispers, etc...) and kicked him out of the guild.

He came back saying he was hacked. We asked why his hacker had leveled him, pimped him out in PvP epics and had been farming BG rep.

"I don't know, I guess I got a nice one."

"Or, you used a power leveling service."

"...maybe..."

Back on track: It doesn't do it every time either, just often enough that I know, when it pauses at the end of the loading screen bar, a DC is coming.

[priestpluswolf.livejournal.com]

Well sure, but if this hypothetical tin hat program is just looking for multiple rapid relogs, not what's going on, it's not going to notice channel tweaking, just 'wow this person is logging on and off a whole lot'. I have no proof this is what it is, that's why it's a tinfoil hat theory.

I've learned if I want to swap characters quickly because I need something /right away/, I will be DCed. Every time. +_+

Levelling services take all the fun out of it. I love levelling. I've deleted 80s and 85s just to level them again.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

IT'S A CONSPIRACY! RUN FOR THE HILLS! TAURENS AND DRAENEI FIRST!

I think the only argument that kind of holds weight is the "Waster $10!" one. And even still it's a pretty flimsy argument. It's a neat idea, it's like security with convenience so that's pretty cool.

The "I'll get hacked!" argument is funny. Cause they would still need to probably log in through your computer and if your computer is so infected that they could take direct control of it and do that then the authenticator wouldn't do crap anyways. Cause they could just intercept the login, password, and authenticator information and just cause WoW to crash so the login attempt never gets sent to blizz, then have a bot automatically log you in on a separate computer with that information and change your password.

Alternatively, it's a conspiracy.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Cause they would still need to probably log in through your computer and if your computer is so infected that they could take direct control of it and do that then the authenticator wouldn't do crap anyways.

This. It's really not that hard to keep your computer clean. ...though I suppose that's a whole different rant.

All in all, I agree that it's a neat idea. Security with convenience, that's like win with win.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

There has to be a downside...maybe it eats your hard drive information, om nom nom.