Hacked like a n00b

Well, technically, I was a hacked like a n00b, because I was one.

I had only been playing for about two months at the time and I knew nothing!

I had just hit 60, I was starting to get some gold thanks to a lucky drop and I logged in one day to find my character naked in Ironforge, everything gone except my mount and my hearthstone and all my money gone.

I put a ticket in right away, they closed down my account until I could verify I was indeed myself. (I had to fax a copy of my passport to them) and then in about a week I got much of my stuff back. My guildies had been nice and threw some money my way so it wasn't that bad.

But how did I get hacked in the first place? I run Norton anti-virus and Internet Protection and the definition were up-to-date. So then I downloaded Spybot: Search & Destroy and they found a couple of cookies that they thought were a problem, but no keyloggers or really malicious threats. SO what was the deal?

Here was the deal... I only use about five different password and username combinations (except for my credit card and online banking stuff) and when I signed up for WoW I just used my most popular one. Obviously, it was on some list somewhere and a hacker just used it randomly. They may have even known about it for awhile and lay in wait until I had enough gold to make it worth their while.

In my defense, I will say that I was unaware of all these hacking shenanigans when I signed up for WoW and figured I did not need to use a super secret Passwords. Now, I use a password that I use no where else except WoW.

When I was communicating with a GM about all of this, they tended to be very circumspect about how their fraud department went about penalizing the parties involved, but here is what I fathomed about what happened and I got a "Could be..." reply from the GM:

Someone bought gold from a website selling it, and this fly by night operation, instead of farming the gold themselves, hacked accounts, sent the gold to the unsuspecting sap who paid $108 for 1,000 gold and then got their account canceled because there was a clear trail right back to where the fraud began.

So the moral of this story is twofold:
1. If you buy gold with real money -- you are a loser and I hate you.
2. Don't use the same username and password for WoW that you use to register for your local newspaper!