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Forum Accounts Defrauded

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:04 pm
by Avizo
Hello again.

Although this posting may only be up the webmaster or GM's concernment, I figured everybody within the Illarion community should be briefed on just how easy it is for an individual person to seize an existing account for the Illarion boards, which may also cause that particular person to either obtain character information or to create a character for the purpose of matching the nickname from newly snatched forum account.

Since late January of this year, I have been exceedingly busy with a great quantity of work at my former workplace, causing my status in the world of Illarion to almost appear to the point of nonexistantance. Unfortunately, even when I did find the time to visit the forum here, I realized it was not at all possible to log into my account. There were times when I felt quite disgruntled with my situation but for the most part, I managed to blow it off, relax and I had soon thought of contacting the person nicknamed Alatar (the webmaster) to check up on the inconvenience. My effort to gather attention to this case sequentially changed after receiving a message in my inbox one day, informing me that I had new PMs (private messages) in my mailbox area here on the forum. How exactly can somebody read messages sent to them if he or she doesn't have access into their account? Luckily for me, the would-be prowler either forgot entirely or didn't bother to change my e-mail address that I registered with when I first signed-up here. Furthermore, my character's account appears to be in shipshape; nobody's touched it as far as I can tell.

Being a regular user on phpBB forums, it is real obvious to me how somebody conveniently debilitated my account, which I'm willing to explain to the webmaster and possibily the GMs in short time. But despite a few private messages and two posts that were not authorized by myself, everything seems spiffy and well updated now. I have taken some very precise steps in making sure this does not happen again to my account and even spent a bit of time engrossing in a quick conversation with the thief himself via MSN Messenger after finding out a couple of his MSN identities on the boards here. During this conversation, he was kind enough to mention a few other board names he's taken but I fear there could be more, which I'll also be sure to explain to anybody with any sort of authority, like the moderators. My only dilemma is being sure to send the information I have to the right person -- the webmaster AND the GMs need to be informed but should I send what I have to only the webmaster or to the webmaster and an active GM? Most of the board names appear to inactive users, so anybody active with the boards should be fine.

Anybody who may have anything else to share on this subject may feel free to post here or contact the webmaster and / or GMs. On a special note, I would like to personally thank the staff for the newly rejuvenated account system, which has allowed my son to really enjoy the game with its plenary and astonishing options. Hopefully, I too will be able to be quite entertained once I'm finished downloading the new client. ;)

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:09 pm
by Faladron
Why exactly would one steal accounts on a php board?

Sports?

Kicks?


I just can't make up my mind why someone stole your account data.

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:16 pm
by Avizo
Well, with some of these names I currently have written down and delineated in mind, most of the accounts of the names he mentioned appear to be really old, inactive forum accounts, some of them "famous" players noted in the Illarion Chronicle or on the website. I'm not quite sure why he suddenly decided to go after my account and certainly hope he wasn't trying to get access to my character. I'm just glad everything works fine now though.

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:20 pm
by Markous
Can you send me a PM with closer informations?

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 4:42 pm
by Estralis Seborian
Just a sidenote, in the past, board accounts were "hijacked" by a certain method. Prerequisite for this method was that the board account was registered by using a hotmail adress. So, do not use hotmail adresses for signing up for ANYTHING.

Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 5:26 pm
by Gildon
So you mean it is not safe to use hotmail?

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:22 am
by Nevas
Gildon wrote:So you mean it is not safe to use hotmail?
Hotmail does not have a perfect track record for being secure and stable.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9908/30/hotmail.06/

(Edit: Oddly enough, I just noticed that this article was dated 1999. There was another incident like this last year, or I'm getting old. :<)

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:26 am
by Juniper Onyx
:shock: Uh oh.....

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 2:28 am
by Jon Childs
If I knew enough about you, I could hack your hotmail account. :twisted: :twisted:

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 3:00 am
by Hadre Taliset
you couldd try, take you a couple years at least. But you could try. trust me i know. i used to play runescape and didn't care if it got hacked. Same password for like 3 years and still not hacked.

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 3:05 am
by Jon Childs
Hotmail accounts have secret questions. To revive/change your password you can answer this secret question. Say the question is MY first dog, and the persons first dogs nameis Scotty. You;d type that and Tada! Chnage a password riffico

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 4:41 pm
by Llama
What kynd of person puts REAL information there? I just use it at a sort of 2nd passowrd....

Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2006 7:38 pm
by Kevin Lightdot
Yeah, me to Adrian.

Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:14 am
by swish1
Use Really long passwords. No one in the entire world could guess my actual password :wink: :o :D :lol:

And for the secret question....

The question is My brother's name?

But you honestly believe I would give my real brother's name????????