Hacked? Who's to blame?

Ceridith

You get come after a long day of school, work, or whatever other errands you had to get done for the day. All you want to do is plant yourself in front of your PC for the next few hours to have some fun playing your favorite MMO.

Unfortunately when you try to log in, you get a "password incorrect", or worse, you are able to log in only to find your accoutn stripped of all of your characters and/or your items and gold.

Dread sets in. You panic. You think to yourself, how could this happen to me?

Without going into too much detail, someone got their hands on your account info. Either someone phished the information from you, or you were infected by a keylogger.

Is it your fault?

The short answer is yes.

Possibly you willingly gave your account info unwittingly to a third party. It could also be that you visited a site that had infected flash ads, and you hadn't been keeping up on updates, nor running an ad/script blocker in your browser. Or, perhaps you tried to download an addon with an executable for an installer. It could even be as simple as carelessly using the same account name (or email) and password on a fansite as you do for your MMO account. In any of these cases, the breach occured due to the carelessness of the user.

The longer answer however, is no, you are in fact not to blame for your account being hacked.

I've never been one for blaming the victim. Everyone makes mistakes, and not everyone is fully versed in IT security, nor should they be expected to be. There are so many ways to have your account info stolen from you, most of which, the majority of MMO gamers don't even realize. As such, the steps required to fully fortify your account from being breached is it's own end-game in itself, only the death penalty for wiping in this raid is a cleaned out account. Even if you do your best to keep your account safe, it still doesn't guarentee your account's safety.

As such, it's not fair to blame the victim, even if they did do something "stupid" from an IT security perspective.

So then who is to blame, the developer? In most cases no, although there are certain things that contribute to the ease in which accounts can be breached. For example, using the email tied to the account as the login for the account, is not the smartest from a security perspective. But rather than arguing back and forth between whether the user or the developer did enough to tighten security is irrelevant in terms of where the blame falls. Authenticators are also helpful in keeping your account more secure, but if they're in short supply or don't exist at all for your MMO, you're out of luck.

The blame falls next on the hackers, obviously. Without them trying to actively breach accounts, there would be no hacked accounts. Basic cause and effect, really. No one defends these guys, they're definitely at fault. Yet, putting the bulk of the blame on them still falls short...

Gold buyers. Here we go, this is the root cause. This is the group of people who are squarely to blame for why accounts are breached and cleaned out. Without them, there would be no value associated to your character and all of their items and gold. Without them, the hackers wouldn't profit from selling stolen virtual goods. Without them, hackers would have no reason to break into account and steal all of your virtual-wordly posessions.

So, if you ever find yourself in the unlucky position of trying to log into your account one night only to find it's been hacked... You can call yourself stupid for clicking that link or downloading that mod. You can be frustrated at the developer for not helping you make your account more secure. You can also be angry with the hackers that broke into your account and ruined your characters and took all of their items. But, don't forget to also place them blame where it really belongs, on the people who gave those hackers the incentive to plunder your account.

If account hacking is ever going to be stopped, it needs to start with dealing with the problem at it's source: the people who buy gold, characters, and anything else that is stolen from hacked accounts.

blazin-ace

Originally posted by Ceridith

...If account hacking is ever going to be stopped, it needs to start with dealing with the problem at it's source: the people who buy gold, characters, and anything else that is stolen from hacked accounts.

 

All true enough.  But there is question regarding method here. I mean what's best for the gaming hobby?

 

You have games like Eve where real world cash can be traded for game currency through a variety of means and vice versa. It is a legitamate part of play supported in code. You have games like EQ2 where they have servers set for leveling characters that others can buy legitamatly with the corporate blessing. They made the potential crooks part of the machine.

 

Then you have some more modern MMO's ( I hesitate naming here as I don't want a war with fan boys) that make it easy enough to level and aquire currency that most will not buy.  

 

The more traditional groups get plagued by spam, hack attempts, etc.... But you get more sense of accomplishment through aquisition.