100834-if-i-get-banned-for-no-reason-again-so-help-me

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Background : Doing seasonal work in a place with horrible internet, in anticipation for the employee housing I bought wildstar and began downloading in the lobby of the hotel i work at.
 
After 3 days of horrible mbps downloading i was finally finished patching. To make sure the patch actually worked as it took multiple days of me lugging my desktop comp up to the lobby i logged in and just messed around with character creation in excitement of actually playing it.
 
Cut to two days later, i get an email i was suspended for 3rd party exploits, i explained my situation in my response and a few days later they ban my account.
 
I never even logged into the world from my IP address. 
 
The account was compromised from India, yet they still stand by their ban of my account, and my ticket is still "being processed" 9 days later.
 
Now today we finally got our wifi, all my buddies I came up with got wildstar and we are planning on starting tonight, so i bit the bullet and bought a new copy. I did 2 step verification on my email and WS account this time.
 
So let it be none if i get banned for no reason again after going through all these precautions i will be one sad lil' guy.
 
For TLDR : I got banned without ever logging into the game for a 3rd party exploit after my account was compromised, I bought a second copy of the game but I am terrified its going to happen again even with all the security precautions I am taking, Pray for me.
 
 	
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			You didn't get banned for no reason. You got banned for obviously compromised security. It may not have been your fault. You may have been downloading that entire time. However while you were doing that, someone who had stolen your information was misusing your account.Be honest with yourself, and be honest with us. It wasn't for no reason. You weren't careful and it came back to haunt you.	
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			After experiencing Carbine's Customer "Service" I can only advice you to expect absolutely nothing from them. Everything above "nothing" is a small victory.	
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You didn't get banned for no reason. You got banned for obviously compromised security. It may not have been your fault. You may have been downloading that entire time. However while you were doing that, someone who had stolen your information was misusing your account.
 
Be honest with yourself, and be honest with us. It wasn't for no reason. You weren't careful and it came back to haunt you.
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You are right i didn't set up the authenticator because I didn't have a smart phone at the time. Everything is all my fault.
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You are right i didn't set up the authenticator because I didn't have a smart phone at the time. Everything is all my fault.
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You are right i didn't set up the authenticator because I didn't have a smart phone at the time. Everything is all my fault.
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			BACK TO THE POINT, all i am saying is, If something happens at this point where I have my email and game account on lockdown, I am going to be horribly horribly disappointed because i have been looking forward to this game for a long time, and getting banned before I even played it was disheartening as hell.	
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Don't get me wrong bud i'm not mocking you for getting your account compromised. It sucks giant hairy monkey balls and I don;t laugh at anyone it happens to .... unless I really don't like them.
 
All we're saying is there is another way to secure your account for those of us that hate all things phone (I really don't like phones, people ring me on them, I even ignore the landline because i'm ignorant like that ... never owned a mobile phone).
 
That said, I hope you don't get compromised again that really would be a pain in the arse.
 
Good luck with your new game account.	
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You are right i didn't set up the authenticator because I didn't have a smart phone at the time. Everything is all my fault.
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Lots of people do not use an authenticator and do not get hacked.
 
Do you use different passwords for every web site?  How often do you change your email password?  Do you ever log into a computer that you do not have complete control over (like in a public library)?  Does anyone with bad security practices share a computer with you (like a roommate)?
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Regardless of whose fault it was.
 
Are you permanently banned or temporarily banned?
 
If the ban is permanent you will have to be patient while they finish the investigation and then unban you.  I have yet to read a case of people whose account was compromised stay permanently banned.  It might take a long while but they will ultimately reverse it.
 
This is assuming the reason you were banned for is third party hack while your account was compromised - IP used was a different region than your normal login.  If the IP is in the same region/city, like your friend's house 5 minutes away, you are probably out of luck.  Since there is little way to prove that it wasn't you doing the exploiting.
 
If your ban is only 7 days (168 hours) then you might be unbanned normally before  your ticket even resolves.  But I would continue the ticket anyways - so your record is clear.
 
But either way, you should be able to get back.
 
Good luck.	
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BACK TO THE POINT, all i am saying is, If something happens at this point where I have my email and game account on lockdown, I am going to be horribly horribly disappointed because i have been looking forward to this game for a long time, and getting banned before I even played it was disheartening as hell.
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			I don't pray but I will make a funny face while staring into the sun on your behalf. Best of luck to you!	
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			Well i think its covered already that your account wasn't banned for no reason. But i would like to mention that its a unfortunate problem that sometimes legitimate accounts get penalised in the process of shutting down those doing the wrong thing. If they give to much wiggle room exploiters/bots will get through, to tight and more legitimate people are accidentally caught in the crossfire.	
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I mean I basically resigned myself to the fact my initial account was terminated unjustly, albeit I could of done more to protect it, but at the time I had such limited access I had no idea compromised accounts without the authenticator was such as issue until after the fact.
 
Hopefully all goes well this time around and if the other account does happen to get unbanned which I believe it should I will just pass it along to a friend if i am able to.	
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I mean I basically resigned myself to the fact my initial account was terminated unjustly, albeit I could of done more to protect it, but at the time I had such limited access I had no idea compromised accounts without the authenticator was such as issue until after the fact.
 
Hopefully all goes well this time around and if the other account does happen to get unbanned which I believe it should I will just pass it along to a friend if i am able to.
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I mean I basically resigned myself to the fact my initial account was terminated unjustly, albeit I could of done more to protect it, but at the time I had such limited access I had no idea compromised accounts without the authenticator was such as issue until after the fact.
 
Hopefully all goes well this time around and if the other account does happen to get unbanned which I believe it should I will just pass it along to a friend if i am able to.
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			Dear OP. Stop looking back, you spent the money, enjoy your account. Get off the forums and play the game!	
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Dear OP. Stop looking back, you spent the money, enjoy your account. Get off the forums and play the game!
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I'm at work I cant yet =(. Which brings me to my next question, what is a decent pvp server for Dom?
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You didn't get banned for no reason. You got banned for obviously compromised security. It may not have been your fault. You may have been downloading that entire time. However while you were doing that, someone who had stolen your information was misusing your account.
 
Be honest with yourself, and be honest with us. It wasn't for no reason. You weren't careful and it came back to haunt you.
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You seem rather certain that there isn't a massive security breach on Carbine's end.
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			If you're downloading stuff on a hotel wifi its very easy to see how your account info was breached.	
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Considering you don't need a phone, and you could have at least used a unique email, I wouldn't get too huffy there champ.
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Want this problem fixed? Stop blaming the customer and place the blame where it belongs: Carbine/NCSoft.
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Yup!  There's not a drop of evidence for one yet.  Really.
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...aside from what appears to be a massive number of compromised accounts.
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I started with that position.  But I've never seen an account compromise that was plausibly the fault of Carbine instead of the customer in this game, and in the absence of mass breeches, it's extremely rare that I've seen it in any other games or services.
 
After a while making observations like that, one's default assumptions change.
 
(People are terrible at internet security.)
 
(Heck, look at the in-game security advice on login now.  They ask you to either use 2-factor or use unique passwords.  Have you got any idea how many customers fail to follow that advice?  Lots of people do not see any problem with re-using passwords.)
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...aside from what appears to be a massive number of compromised accounts.
 
 
So your implication is that someone has compromised the hotel's network and is sniffing packets, right? Putting aside the silliness of the idea that someone would do this in order to sniff out Wildstar logins, once again, we're blaming the customer and not the service provider. There's this thing, it's called encryption, and it should be used for things like usernames and passwords.
 
(Frankly, I'd be very surprised if login credentials were not encrypted in transit, but it is a common enough security hole).
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You make fair points. People are terrible at internet security. It's a fact.
 
Given that, shouldn't a company interested in preventing their customers from being compromised find better ways of validating credentials? A large portion of the population simply will not get better at internet security. It's (past) time for things to adapt to this reality.
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Hotel Wifi's are notoriously bad for being kept unsecured.
 
Same with most publicly accessed Wifi's.
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			(That said, if you want to argue that WildStar's 2-factor implementation is terrible in terms of usability to the point where it forms a barrier to use, I'll agree, as I've made that argument myself in the past.  Something closer to what WoW does, or what Steam does, or what my bank does, or what my employer does, those would all be better.  Supposedly they're working on that.  We'll see.  But nobody who's getting compromised appears to be "innocent", and they do have something in place to account for that kind of thing.)	
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That's exactly what 2-factor is.  If you've got 2-factor turned on, you can be a terrible noob with no security capabilities at all, and odds are that you'll be fine (unless you use WinAuth -- if you use WinAuth and have terrible security practices, then people will steal your WinAuth key).
 
Banks haven't found better ways to protect poorly-secured accounts than 2-factor, and they have a lot more cash at stake.
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I disagree: two-factor is not a better way. It's more secure, but that's not necessarily better (it's a subjective measure, I suppose).
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(That said, if you want to argue that WildStar's 2-factor implementation is terrible in terms of usability to the point where it forms a barrier to use, I'll agree, as I've made that argument myself in the past.  Something closer to what WoW does, or what Steam does, or what my bank does, or what my employer does, those would all be better.  Supposedly they're working on that.  We'll see.  But nobody who's getting compromised appears to be "innocent", and they do have something in place to account for that kind of thing.)
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Whilst I will agree with you that there is no Good Excuse to be left in the lurch for so long, they are incredibly busy lately... and it will die down. Hiring more CS staff doesn't help because by the time you get them up to scratch and trained on what they should do in all circumstances, the bubble will have collapsed and ticket times will come back down again. (It takes a fair while to teach someone who speaks for the company what to say and when)
 
OnTopic: There doesn't seem to be any more accounts being haxed in WS than in WoW or other MMOs I've played. And pretty much 100% of them, it's been the user who was not following standard security things. (2FA, solid password, etc)
The point dfj was making was that.. there is no better way right now. And whoever invents one isn't going to be doing it whilst working at a game company, they'll be working for the military or banking/etc.
 
Would you prefer everyone play through an encrypted VPN tunnel? I'm sure the data heading to the login server is already encrypted, but the only next level would be the entire tunnel encrypted... and then there's all sorts of issues with ISPs and different PCs doing it differently. It's a huge mess, and only half your customers will be able to get it working. That might be OK for the Dept of Defense,, but I'm not sure it's something gamers would be willing to do when they already whinge about the 2FA being "too hard" because the numbers move around and you gotta click them with your mouse.
 
What else do you want? Retinal scanning? lol	
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I see, you want magic.  You want them to be able to sprinkle fairy dust on the internet and make it secure and safe without making it any less easy to use.
 
Never mind, carry on!
 
(If someone finds a way to do that, they are not going to waste their time and resources at a game development company.)
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Whilst I will agree with you that there is no Good Excuse to be left in the lurch for so long, they are incredibly busy lately... and it will die down. Hiring more CS staff doesn't help because by the time you get them up to scratch and trained on what they should do in all circumstances, the bubble will have collapsed and ticket times will come back down again. (It takes a fair while to teach someone who speaks for the company what to say and when)
 
OnTopic: There doesn't seem to be any more accounts being haxed in WS than in WoW or other MMOs I've played. And pretty much 100% of them, it's been the user who was not following standard security things. (2FA, solid password, etc)
The point dfj was making was that.. there is no better way right now. And whoever invents one isn't going to be doing it whilst working at a game company, they'll be working for the military or banking/etc.
 
Would you prefer everyone play through an encrypted VPN tunnel? I'm sure the data heading to the login server is already encrypted, but the only next level would be the entire tunnel encrypted... and then there's all sorts of issues with ISPs and different PCs doing it differently. It's a huge mess, and only half your customers will be able to get it working. That might be OK for the Dept of Defense,, but I'm not sure it's something gamers would be willing to do when they already whinge about the 2FA being "too hard" because the numbers move around and you gotta click them with your mouse.
 
What else do you want? Retinal scanning? lol
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But what I'm suggesting isn't magic. There are lots of ways to improve security without requiring magic. Here's a stupidly simple one: the general belief seems to be that people are compromised by keyloggers (yet, mysteriously, have no problems with any of their other accounts like email, etc). Have password entry be done with a mouse.
 
Want to talk about improved tech? How about signature-based validation. Do away with keystrokes altogether and have login be based on a stroke-based signature.
 
Or use a system similar to RSA SecurID (without the physical component).
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This ^
Your solutions either:
1. Require hardware that isn't in abundance, and people wouldn't want to buy
2. Already are possible (enter your own password with a mouse all you like if you think it will save you. Every windows comes with an OSK you can use. Just please god don't make me do that!)
 
I'm not sure what a "stroke based signature" is. If you mean a bit like gesture controls on a phone, then I'm afraid we're back at #1.	
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Lots of people do not use an authenticator and do not get hacked.
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Considering two-step authentication shouldn't be necessary at all, you might want to check your own level of huffiness. The general acceptance of it - and the tendency of the community to blame the customer - is laughable, albeit in a very sad way.
 
Want this problem fixed? Stop blaming the customer and place the blame where it belongs: Carbine/NCSoft. Sure, it may take them some time to figure out a better way to do security, but they can certainly adjust the way they respond to symptoms right now. A good start would be to end the "every problem is a nail and I am a hammer" response to compromised accounts. For example, instead of banning the account, why not lock it to the usual locations? Or why not send out a one-time passcode for the user to re-enable access? How about requiring a human review of the ban before allowing it to go through? I just gave you three common solutions to a problem that is anything but new... there are hundreds more.
 
Furthermore, there's no reason the OP should be dealing with this for 10+ days. Dial that response time down to single-digit hours, at most. Not enough CS reps? Hire more.
 
Naturally, it's much easier to blame the customer. Though, in all fairness to Carbine/NCSoft, they're not. They're just sitting back letting the community blame itself.
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You are right i didn't set up the authenticator because I didn't have a smart phone at the time. Everything is all my fault.
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