Hacked Accounts Discussion

[Cz]

"There has been a discussion in the community these last few days about an incident where somebody aqcuired access to someone else's account. We have conducted an investigation, and here is the official response."

To the official response

Please post your comments, and discuss here. We'll follow the thread and join in when needed.

[________BonkBonkBonk]

"all actions carried out on the account, including exploiting, deleting of characters, and harassing other players, is the sole responsibility of the owner, and all such actions will be treated as conducted by the owner. "

does this mean if my account gets hacked into (by your end mind you) would be my responsibility?

[Quindillar]

"An AO account is a personal account, which means that only one person can use it (ever!). "

I know some ppl, like husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend & brothers/sisters, share accounts. This is supposed to be illegal?
How stupid is that?

I have a twinbrother. If i where to log on to his account to receive an item from an auction or whatever because my brother was unavailable, u would ban both me & my brother??

EULA:

"1. Accounts are available only to adults or, in their discretion, their minor children. If you are a minor, your parent(s) or guardian(s) must complete the registration process, in which case they will take full responsibility for all obligations under this Agreement. ........"

Are parents allowed to open accounts for their children or?

Im a little confused.......

[Laeni]

Hmmm, there is still no explanation of how the account was hacked. Was the player(s) computer hacked or was the account hacked through Funcom's server's?

I think it's an important distinction because if in future you will hold the owner responsible for anything that is done on the owner's account, it must be determined HOW the hacking occurred. To hold an owner responsible when the hacking occured through a security lapse on Funcom's part would not be acceptable obviously.

And if you ban the owner of an account because of something that happened when the account had been hacked, does this mean that the owner will no longer be allowed to play AO at all or that he or she would have to open a new account? If you ban the owner completely and no longer allow them to play at all, you may be opening your company up to lawsuits (never underestimate the American desire to sue, our country is lawsuit crazy).

[Maximilian]

The point that puzzles me most is the following:

... We will also close any account(s) that have been used to transfer items, credits or equipment to or from this account if investigation shows that it has been done with intent. No discussions. ...

What exactly do you mean with that? If I am building a new char, and want to transfer money and/or items 'officially' with the help of a friend to the new char, this is supposed to illegal and will result in banning? Really?

And another thing. I really doubt, that you can get that through at court (at least in Europe - though I am no lawyer):

An AO account is a personal account, which means that only one person can use it (ever!) ...

I agree, that only one(!) person at !a! time is allowed to use it, but I bought that account from you. It is (partially) my property. So, if I decide, to give it away to someone else, either as present or as a second sell, it still is my property. I may be wrong.
Maybe you might be able to force me, to delete all chars from an account before giving it to somebody else, but even that I would doubt.

Would like to hear some 'official' answer to that.

Actually, this is not a problem for me, my wife hates AO and my sone is 18 month of age, but things might change in the future.

So long,

Max(imilian)

[Flapsie]

If one were to set up a Guild bank on a seperate account and let members of the guild be able to log into that account to give service to the other guildmembers when the owner is not available would all that used, got items +++ be banned ?

When do we get a guildbank !?!

[Cz]

Originally posted by BigStrongGuy
does this mean if my account gets hacked into (by your end mind you) would be my responsibility?

No. If it's our fault that the account gets misused we will not punish you for that, of course.

Originally posted by Couladjinn
"An AO account is a personal account, which means that only one person can use it (ever!). "

I know some ppl, like husband/wife, girlfriend/boyfriend & brothers/sisters, share accounts. This is supposed to be illegal?
How stupid is that?

We won't try to track accounts down and ban them for this, but in a conflict of ownership or similar cases we might have to enforce this rule. To grab the example with boyfriend and girlfriend; what if they break up, and one logs into the other's account and delete all the characters? That could be the kind of issues where we will most likely let the owner carry the loss himself / herself.

Are parents allowed to open accounts for their children or?

Parents are allowed to open accounts for their children to use, yes. But it's then meant to be used by the child only, not the parent. (But see above statement. Don't jump us if the 5 year old messes up daddys level 178 Trader, then deletes it. )

Also, a clarification, just to make sure everybody knows: We know for sure that the "hacker" did not get the account information from us.

[_____________Abunari]

I see that Cz answered part of my question above

I'll wait a bit and see if the rest gets fleshed out.

[Cz]

Originally posted by Maximilian
If I am building a new char, and want to transfer money and/or items 'officially' with the help of a friend to the new char, this is supposed to illegal and will result in banning? Really?

Nope. But if you log into somebody elses account, then trade somebody elses equipment to a friend to hold it for you while you log in your own account to get the items, he will be considered your accomplice, and will be banned together with you. That's the point of that part.

I agree, that only one(!) person at !a! time is allowed to use it, but I bought that account from you. It is (partially) my property. So, if I decide, to give it away to someone else, either as present or as a second sell, it still is my property. I may be wrong.
Maybe you might be able to force me, to delete all chars from an account before giving it to somebody else, but even that I would doubt.

Actually we brought that part up internally a while back, and I understand it's been run through the legal threadmill at least once. The licence can't be transferred to another person after it is registered, and that is a restriction we can legally put on the licence as far as I know. (I'll bug our Sales people about it again and counter-post if I get told I'm wrong.) If you want to give the game as a gift, leave the registry key unused.

[________________Kick]

ok, by what i hear all the people in the last instance were in one guild.

most likely, you will find that on the guild site, these individuals used the same username and passwords as their AO account. someone probably hacked this less secure information and used it to get into their accounts. Either that or a disgruntled guild member with access to the server took the data and used it.

Never use the same username and password as the one you used for your account, as other sites may not take as much security measures as others.

[{T}Bleeder]

WTF!!!!! can't sell accounts thats lame, that is really lame if you guys didnt have a problem with secuity with your poorly encodeing and handeling of ecypted keys with woulnd't happen ( note : this is a pursuption as a network professional who has delt with many poorly written network programs no true evidence lies behind it only a pursupmtion ) as far as stolen accoutns go this has happend in every single mmorpg so its only due process that it happens here

[Ditka]

LOL

Thier passwords were about as uncrackable as possible.

I'm a network security manager for a HUGE WAN. I'd be gleeful if my people used passwords as strong as they did. My guess is that they were trojaned, as passwords for AO are apparently saved in cleartext on your HD (if you use the remember password option). Either way, they made a mistake by leaving thier comps open to that kind of attack, BUT niether of them are "dumb people".

Btw... Hows it feel to call "The Council" dumb people?
Have fun in Camelot!

[Maximilian]

Thanks Cz for the 'really' fast feed back.

-> 1) Clear, though I had to read it more than twice. I wouldn't have come up with the idea of logging into a friends account, but actually a scenario I can imagine.

-> 2) Hmm - I have to agree, sounds solid, though I am still sceptic. Would like to ask an internet/business laywer about such a contract, but heck, I stay clean on my side, much to much effort.

So long,

And keep up that pace, you will see a lot of grateful people round here.

So long,

Max(imilian)

P.S. Good one Graham, right you are.

[__________Spacegipsy]

Originally posted by Maximilian
The point that puzzles me most is the following:


What exactly do you mean with that? If I am building a new char, and want to transfer money and/or items 'officially' with the help of a friend to the new char, this is supposed to illegal and will result in banning? Really? *snip*

Max(imilian)

I think what they mean is this (but I'd wish for some official clarification on this as well):

If Account A has either been hacked or is a *bought* account, and then money is transferred to or from Account B *and* the owner of Account B KNOWS that Account A is hacked, then Account B could also be banned.

I hope I got this right as it sounds extremely complicated.

....and any proof of change of ownership, not depending on how the change happened.....

I also think that these rules are strange, to say the least.. - as - if I understand the above right - if my account gets hacked (due to my "fault" = not enough protection on my end) - I not only won't get reimbursed - but on top of it will get my account banned...
Nice one ... really... sounds like Verant/Sony (in previous times) to me - one reason why I never played their game.

Another thing that puzzles me.. let's say I quit - that means I won't be allowed to give/sell/transfer my account in *any* way to a friend/guild-mate/whoever? I seriously doubt that this would stand a chance in any court.
Even though I have no intentions of ever doing that (I'm too attached to *my* chars to ever see anyone else running around with them) - it makes me wonder.

OSI has done a great thing about account transfers - if you want to transfer your account - for whatever reason - to someone else, and the one who receives the account wants to be on the save side, it can be done (for a fee of course) through OSI. By doing this, the transfer is official, nobody can claim afterwards that the account actually got stolen or some such *and* the account is cleared of all marks (if it had any).
All parties are happy... what's so difficult about that?

[Tentumbs]

There is another thing that bothers me.

The same passwords that goes for my account information and login is used to loginto this forum to post messages. If I do not do this from home, but from a computer somewhere when I am bored. (Firends, firends work, scool, internet cafe and so on) a person can get it if he knows what he is doing. Espessialy if I use the "save password" function in IE by mistake or if I do not think twice.

I have no problem that the account here is connected to the account in AO, but I would like to have the opertunity (Or even bether, been forced the first time) to set another password.

[__________Spacegipsy]

Originally posted by Cz


*snip*
Actually we brought that part up internally a while back, and I understand it's been run through the legal threadmill at least once. The licence can't be transferred to another person after it is registered, and that is a restriction we can legally put on the licence as far as I know. (I'll bug our Sales people about it again and counter-post if I get told I'm wrong.) If you want to give the game as a gift, leave the registry key unused.

Cz

I can see what you mean, but let's assume the following:

That the game/registration key isn't sold, but *only* the account. Meaning that the person who is buying this account already has a copy of AO running and has his own account (which he might or might not close down when he gets the second one).
I guess in this case one might consider this as transferral of a right to use a certain Log-In Name/Password.
Tricky I know... but would be interesting to find out (as in most cases the person who will buy a high-lvl account is a person who already plays AO).

[______________Lictor]

About the account transfer, preventing you from doing this sounds pretty legal... Most MMORPG work on the basis that you're *licensed* to use the stuff they provide... That's what you're paying for monthly, not for actual ownership... That's why selling stuff (chars, items, money) on ebay is illegal (though this is more or less loosely enforced). Same if you decide to quit the game, you can't ask FC to convert all your levels and item to real cash, because you don't actually own them...
For those not aware, this is pretty common in the computer business... You're not allowed to sell your copy of Windows or Office either, because you have bought a license to use the product, not the product itself, and you agreed with the EULA stating that license was not transferable...
I can't say I'm really sad about FC officially banning selling accounts anyway...

[_______________Onabi]

The problem is at hand here that you must be like level 170 so that Funcom whould re-imburse you? Someone in my guild has lost tons of equipment due to a death bug (7 large backpacks full with ql 160+ loot) he was only level 91 I think in that time, and the support didn't want to do 1 damm thing to help him, So if I get this straight the condition of reimbursement are:
-Be level 140+
-Be respected (and feared )
-Be known by anyone on RK1
-Be in a level 140+ guild with some 140+ accounts, and use them as ammo if I lose items.

I do say it's good you reimbursed the items to those specific pepole, but what the heck with all the other pepole that you left out because they didn't met those requirments, not much pepole meet those requirments, and ofcourse they're not real, but after this case it seems so, That you must have respected and famous friends' accounts to cancel once you lose items or so, correct me if i'm wrong pleae Cosmik?
Or do I just need to do a great topic which will recieve 400 posts and 30,000 views?

Again: I'm not going against the pepole who got their items back, it's a step in the right direction, but i'm crying for all the pepole who didn't publish their problem and has level 140+ friends to cancel their accounts!
It's certinely a nice step, but I whould like to see more customers who get their stuff back, w/o posting the screw-up that FC had (maybe after )

[___________Zeroshift]

Favoritism and damage control.

They will never do anything for you unless you know a GM or throw up a storm on the boards (whereby they then give in to make you shut up).

[Flapsie]

THAT have not worked for the NT profession YET ;p