hey guys, i woke up today to find in my email my password had been changed and my wow acct suspended (good thing i wasn't playing recently :P)

so i reset my password and realized an authenticator had been added to my account by the guy who had stolen it

after the password reset, the authenticator is still there, and now i cannot login

what can i do?

Hi, Glue-sniffer

Ready for a Wall'o'Text?

Technical Support has no access to account information at all, however, the steps lettered below detail how to recover everything, including your account, items, and characters. In summary, these are the steps you will want to follow, in proper order:

1) Secure the computer, so the account cannot be stolen again (steps A and B below)
2) Recover the account, ensuring only you have access to it (step C below)
3) Recover missing items, including gold, items, and characters (step D below)

If these steps are not done in order, it is possible for your account or items off your account to be stolen again, putting you back in square one. While Technical support is unable to recover accounts or items on accounts account directly, we will be more than happy to direct you where to go, and attempt to answer any questions you may have during this process.

*** Note ***
If your account was also suspended or closed during this time, you will want to email wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com once you've secured your computer and recovered your account, explaining that your account was recently compromised and you would like them to re-open the investigation. They will communicate with you via email, to the registered email address of the account, and review the situation, and take appropriate actions.
*** End of Note ***

Here are the detailed steps you will want to follow:

A) To start, please make sure that you have the latest security updates and patches for your operating system. There are many security updates that can prevent viruses and similar programs from gaining access to your system.
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

B) If your account was used without your knowledge, your password may have been stolen. A common cause of this is from a virus or key logging program that may have been downloaded to your system. Please run a full virus scan with updated definitions, preferably with 2 or more anti-virus and anti-spyware programs. You may have run anti-virus scans previously, but it is possible that the anti-virus program you have does not have information about the virus or trojan that may be could potentially be causing a problem. No virus scanner is perfect, so if one program does not find anything, please keep trying different scanners until the scanner finds and removes something that could be a keylogger or virus.

For additional information and links to some anti-virus software please visit our Computer Security page at http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20569

Note: Some virus scanners may require that other scanners are removed prior to operating correctly. Please make sure to download the latest updates and definitions for any security program before running a scan.

C) When you are sure that your system is clear of virus and similar files, you will want to recover your account.

If your account was stolen, and/or you are having difficulty recovering it for any reason, please contact our Billing and Account Services department. Billing representatives are on hand to take your call between 8am and 8pm Pacific Time, 7 days a week at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (800-592-5499). Customers in Australia should call 1-800-041-378. Our Billing team will be happy to assist you with any billing related questions. We look forward to helping you get this resolved. You may also contact them via email at Billing@Blizzard.com

If an authenticator was attached to your account without your consent, please contact our Billing and Account Services department at the number above or through email at Billing@blizzard.com

Next, I would highly recommend that you change your password. You can change your password before running the virus scan programs. However if you do change your password and use it on any webpage or to log into the game, the password may very well be sent out again by the key logger/virus. This could cause the account to be compromised once again.

There are two ways you can change your password. The first is to go to our account management site: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/

If you have access to your current password, you can log into the page and then select the Change Password link at near the top of the page.

If you do not currently have access to your accounts password, please click on "Forgot your account name or password?" link on the sign in page. It will ask you to verify some account information, and once the questions have been answered it will send a new password to the e-mail address registered to the account. You can then log into the account management site with this password and change it to something of your own choice.

If you are having any problems recovering your account password such as forgotten account information or the account is registered with an out of date email address, please contacting the Billing and Accounts support department directly. This is also the second option for changing your password.

*NOTE: For security purposes, Billing and Account Services cannot discuss or modify accounts via email.

For assistance with a European account, please visit http://www.wow-europe.com/.

For more information on Account Security please visit http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=30794http://us.battle.net/security/

D) Once you have control of your account, A Game Master will be able assist you further by letting you know what can be done next. If you are missing any items due to the compromised account, please start the game and log onto the affected character(s) if possible. If you cannot get into your character, try creating a new character on the same realm and logging in with that one instead. Once you are in the game, please click the red question mark icon for a Help Request at the bottom of the screen. This will allow you to contact a Game Master by opening a ticket. Please enter in as much information as possible about what has happened and what you have already done, and then submit the ticket.

Once you have submitted the information, you will see a notification appear in the top right section of your screen that you have an open ticket. A GM will be in contact with you as soon as they are able, to help you resolve the issue. Wait times can vary depending upon the time of day and the amount of pages in the queue, but they will work to get to you as quickly as possible.

Please be aware, if they are researching the situation and a ticket is still up, do not create a new ticket under that character! It will erase of all of the progress and research for that ticket! If you have any questions on how much longer it will take, or questions about the recovery process after a ticket is created I would highly recommend emailing the Game Masters directly.

You can email WoWGM@Blizzard.com directly with a description of the issue, but for any kind of in-game issue we recommend using the in-game petition since you may need to have the character online in order for the Game Master to correct the problem.