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Banned, but...
mark2123
Member UncommonPosts: 450
After not playing for about a week, I logged into GW2 today and found my account to be permanently banned due to 'gold selling'.
Clearly, my account has been compromised as I'm an ethical player and I guess some Chinese mob have got into my account somehow. I have never traded gold or anything so cannot figure how they got in, but they did. Arena Net says 'permanent ban' which suggests that is that, which would be terribly unfair in my opinion because I haven't knowingly donr anything wrong.
I've submitted a support ticket and whilst I wait, I'm a bit annoyed about it all and just wondered if anyone else on here has been through this issue and how well Arena Net work with it's customers to resolve the problem.
Clearly if I have done nothing wrong, I guess it will be difficult for me to prove that it was not me logging in if they used my log-in details.
Any thoughts whilst I wait for a reply to my ticket, would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Comments
yupp. Back when the game launched and a lot of people got their accounts stolen by gold sellers and the massive ban began, ANET was working to help those who got caught in the crossfire. If the OP really did not do anything wrong then ANET should be able to see the foreign IP. Unless he sold his acc to them
Also keyloggers and viruses can help get his personal info stolen so....
Also..... use long passwords, alphanumeric, caps and lower caps.
Also...... make sure your pc is clean before logging into any account.
Gold sellers would have used a different IP from yours.
As long as you have your game serial key, it should be fine.
I haven't had this particular problem but just this week I bought something that I couldn't use in the cash shop (additional bank tab) and they took a hour for the first reply and after a couple of mails everything was sorted and gems were refunded.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
'permanent ban' just means the ban won't automatically lift without CS intervention, as opposed to a 7 day ban which would lift automatically after 7 days
'permanent ban' does not mean 'forever and ever til the end of time, no exceptions'
now if CS gets back to you and says they won't lift the ban, well then you're screwed.
They also lock parts of your account when a new IP is registered, like the ability to use gold, and requires you to verify you're the account holder before they unlock it. I believe they also prevent you from doing anything with your inventory and gear as well.
This is how they prevent people from being able to hack an account to sell gold, and to prevent someone from destroying all your items.
Thanks for some reassurance there guys. I truly haven't done anything wrong, though I am sat here wondering how they logged in from a new IP and when got around the security of that - suggests they have possibly accessed my e-mail too (different password) so I'm going to change that too.
I've run a complete system scan with virus checkers and nothing showed up.
Will keep you updated on the outcome - after 5 hours, still no response from A-Net but will wait and see.
Thanks again.
If your computer is compromised then chances are high that any program on it wont find any issues. It is common and I dealt with several computers with the same problem, easiest way is to do an online scan (like http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ or something similar), that usually finds it.
I would monitor my computer really close though and if any issue happens again I would do a clean reinstall. And I would be paranoid about using my credit card number online for a while as well.
Viruses tend to disable antiviruses and firewalls while still pretending that they work. Sometimes you can install a new one and it fixes it, other times the virus just disable the new ones as well.
Oh, and avoid Internet explorer and Firefox, hackers have made way more nasty things for them then Chrome, Opera or Comodo Dragon. Keeping a computer safe can be some work, good luck.
MAGA
Not everyone who gets their account hijacked is a goldbuyer (I actually got my GW1 account hacked once and I never bought gold in my life but I did stupidly use a password I had on other places as well, including this forum. I changed the mail and password and never had any issues since but it happens). Yeah, I dunno what I was thinking either...
Another common thing is people falling for phasing.
But sometimes the wrong people just hack your computer, lets assume that happened to OP until proven otherwise.
Yeah, but if your computer is hacked they will confirm it and delete the mail.
Most people don't get hacked because of viruses, keyloggers or because they buy gold.
Most people get hacked because they use identical passwords everywhere. Many fansites have terrible security, and when these goldsellers gain access with entire lists of stolen username + mail + password combinations. The hackers simply go through all of those and find those stupid enough to not use unique passwords. It won't help if your password is U923n4h3.:(3nsbhH if it's stored in plain text in an unprotected fansite database.
Another group of people that get hacked are people who use password1, qwerty or 1234567 as their password.
A couple of days after launch, I received about 20 e-mail notifications that people from China were trying to access my account. I've never bought gold from any site. ANet announced that a lot of information had been hacked from multiple fansites and they were using it to steal accounts.
AION got the character database hacked. The hackers gained access directly to the characters, bypassing username and passwords, sold their gear and used them to spam.
Buying gold is not the only reason that people get hacked, and the user is not always the one to blame.
You did receive the emails though. The only way for the Chinese to get past that is by infecting your computer with a trojan.
So people getting hacked this way are to be blamed after all.
I didn't get hacked, nor my computer was infected. I used the same account e-mail and password as I did in another gaming website and my information was stolen from that site. If I had been hacked, they would have been able to gain access to my e-mail and authorize themselves to use my account, but they couldn't because none of my e-mails use the same password as my gaming accounts.
I guess your point us fair, but I would argue, still not having had a reply from Arena Net, that if my account was compromised, then ok, it must somehow be my fault, but it wasn't malicious on my part. What I mean is that I haven't deliberately tried to spoil the game or breach the rules - someone else has decided to do that on my behalf and I am paying some consequence. The moral ethics issue is with the account hacker not anyone like me who could have sured-up their system a bit better. Easy to be wise after the event of course.
I hope Arena Net at least get in touch soon and give me a chance to explain things from my point of view. They can check the IP and see that there was unusual activity, but even if I was lapse in my security, I did not mean to end up in this situation and it's a shame than 2-3 people that have replied are ttelling me that if you don't buy gold, it won't happen. Well I didn't and it did.