Blizzard Authenticator…What Is That?
Posted on July 3, 2008 by ApadweI keep hearing from in game friends that Blizzard put their WoW Authenticator thingie on sale, but no one really explains what it is and what it is supposed to do.
This past weekend at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris, Blizzard announced their new Blizzard Authenticator which is supposed to help protect accounts from getting hacked easily.
The authenticator is kinda like one of your favorite keychains but a bit different. It is a physical device that fits on your keyring and kinda acts like a "key". The authenticator, once tied to your WoW account, protects your account from getting hacked by using a digital code that you have to enter after you enter your account name and password to login to WoW. On the device itself there is a button you press each time you login to your account and will generate a different digital code "key". Since this is seperate from your computer it is virtually impossible to hack since the hackers would have to get your authenticator itself to login to your account.
Very awesome but do NOT lose it because if it is lost you have to go through the Blizzard Customer Service in order to login to your account. These are on sale in Blizzard's Online Store for only $6.50. Pretty cheap for the extra security it provides. A lot of people say these should be given away free and by looking at the price they pretty much are as it seems they are just trying to cover the costs of producing them. They could probably charge about $20 each and still sell tons of them if they wanted to make a profit from these. You do not have to buy one if you don't want to as it isn't required in order to play WoW but if you happen to worry about the safety of your account you can get one and sleep easier.
You can also tie the authenticator to more than one WoW account. That's what I'm going to do since I have my account and my wife has a seperate one as well.
On a side note, it's great to see Blizzard taking control and helping fight against all the account stealing that is going on. I also never thought my account would be valuable enough to have a "key" for it right next to my house and car keys. After just checking on the Blizzard's store it seems they are already sold out but keep checking back as I'm sure they have more on the way.
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5 Comments on Blizzard Authenticator…What Is That? »
July 6, 2008
WoW Macros @ 12:18 pm:
Meh, just another way for them to get your money.
Personally if you just practice safe internet procedures and not be a moron you're at 0 risk of having your account stolen. I've been playing wow since almost release and never had a single problem with any of my accounts.
But i guess if this helps you sleep at night, then its probably worth ti
July 7, 2008
Nombres Bebe @ 11:48 pm:
I dont think there will be takers for this keychains. May be who got his account hacked will go for this keychain but 99% wont even bother.
July 11, 2008
Contagion @ 4:43 pm:
"Personally if you just practice safe internet procedures and not be a moron you're at 0 risk of having your account stolen."
Yeah, because 0 day vulnerabilities don't exist, right? And you've never been to a website you trust that has banner ads or flash media. (think wowhead, wowwiki, curse)
I regularly laugh at very knownledable computer users who think they're too smart to bother implementing strong security. But rest easy, I'm sure YOU are the exception.
Contagion @ 4:44 pm:
"I dont think there will be takers for this keychains. May be who got his account hacked will go for this keychain but 99% wont even bother."
I think 1% might be underestimating. But even then, that's over 100,000 buyers.
August 27, 2008
Epinnoia @ 6:49 am:
"Meh, just another way for them to get your money."
They are not making a profit on these things. They are selling them at cost. In the long-run, Blizzard will save money by not needing as many people doing account restorations and such.
"Personally if you just practice safe internet procedures and not be a moron you're at 0 risk of having your account stolen."
Also not true. There have been exploits to flash and java quite recently. Now if you want to go so far as to say that you'd be safe by ONLY installing WoW, and NEVER browsing the internet on the same machine you play WoW on, I might say you're getting closer to making a truthful statement. But most of us do not have the money to toss around like that. My machine was quite expensive to build — and it would be silly to dedicate it only to playing a game…no matter how much fun that game may be.