is an "anti-burgler" dumber than rocks?
OMG we’ve been….
…um…
Anti-thefted?
Anti-burgled?
Breaking and giving?
I am still at a loss what to call the events of yesterday afternoon other than simply Divine Intervention.
My sister and co-host Fran has been taking an extended break from World of Warcraft (WoW). In fact it has been at least two months since she closed her account. As for myself I had played WoW for all of about two five minute periods during the last three months. I just so happened (read someone Divine watching out over me) that during that second five minute period I logged on to see the words “Hi Shirl3y” come over chat. Now mind you Shirley isn’t actually the name of Fran’s main – but the character does have just as unusual spelling as s-h-i-r-l-3-y (one presumes it is a silent 3). Now I knew for a fact that this couldn’t be my sister playing her character as Fran was sitting no more than three feet away from me and she was holding a sandwich, not a keyboard.
I quickly logged out and attempted to log on to our second account.
Much to my surprise I was able to; but only for a few moments when Wow logged me out again. This went back and forth a few times and as it did I knew exactly what happened – I was struggling for possession of the account with the would-be thief. As it turns out my well trained fingers were faster. As they blurred across the keyboard I changed the password, email account, login name, and most importantly added an authenticator.
*Heavy sign of relief*
Here is where things get a bit…unusual. Perhaps the would-be thief was dumber than the proverbial box of hammers; more likely it was a bit of Divinely inspired forgetfulness. The would-be thief cum gold-seller managed to reactivate a closed account with a time card but neglected to change the password once they had done so. In the process of the three days before the fake Shirl3y was discovered they had managed to level one character to 85, accumulate nearly 9,000 gold, and leave a bag of high level ore.
The account is once again closed and secure. The unusual turn of events has been reported to Blizzard. Leaving me certain that somewhere in this world a thief is hopping mad, and pondering a question…
What do you call someone who breaks in to your home (albeit virtual home) and leaves gold and valuable items? Certainly if it weren’t for the two of us being watched over by the Almighty things would have gone oh so very wrong. The only simile I can conjure up would have to do with that mythological jolly fat fellow named Santa Claus who is said to break and enter once a year and leave presents. In the end, no matter what you make of the events related above, one thing is for sure…
Never try and steal from a nun.
See you online,
Julie Whitefeather
Sweet irony is sweet.
Or as we would say in EVE: “Nothing is so sweet as RMT tears”
Ahh the tax sheltered mmo blogging/podcasting church whose nuns also have secular jobs. Gotta love that big ol loophole the government gives you!
@Letrange….Irony is indeed very sweet in this case.
@Gnome…in your case its a bit more like open mouth and insert leg based on your reply. We are an ecumenical order not supported by any church organization. We do not get any tax breaks whatsoever. Fran volunteers one hundred percent of the time and if I don’t work 40 hour per we don’t eat. In fact for years nearly half my salary went for medical expenses. You may now attempt to remove your leg from your mouth dear gnome.
This is not unlike finding your car parked close to a bank with a full tank of gas and a suspicious bag in the backseat. If you hadn’t contacted Blizzard, this story would have had a completely different ending.
Hi there Hirvox…it may have had different consequences indeed. After securing the account contacting Blizzard (both in and out of game) was the first thing we did. n Thanks for the comment
Julie
well good for you then! And I mean that.
Good job on catching the thief, I love it when justice works in such unexpected and mysterious ways. Any idea how the account was hijacked in the first place? Unless it was part of some hack or phishing scam, which I would not expect you (sisters) to fall for, this can be caused by a key logger on either yours or sister Fran’s computer. Not sure what that would be, but maybe it is time to check for spyware. I hear Malwarebytes is good for that.
One popular way is to make some cynical assumptions about players and go for the weaker link: Other WoW-affiliated sites. They don’t have the same level of security that Blizzard does, so it’s not too difficult to steal their entire user database. Some store their passwords in plaintext or don’t use salt with their hashed passwords properly. And even if you don’t figure out every single password, proper tools will crack the weakest passwords in minutes. After you have a list of usernames and passwords, you can try to log on to WoW with them. This kind of an attack is quite cost-effective to gain access to a large number of random accounts.
It’s also relatively simple to avoid: Never reuse passwords for anything remotely important. At the very minimum, your game accounts, your work account, your personal computer’s account and your email account(s) should have completely unique passwords.
Sweet. I love it when crime does not pay. Hey, sisters, could I have some of that divine protection sent my way?
[...] This time we start off with a dale of divine intervention and the unfortunate thief who tried to steal from the sisters. The moral, of course, is never steal a from a nun. You can read about it here: (http://noprisonersnomercy.com/2011/04/never-steal-from-a-nun/) [...]
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