The issue, xaeris, is NOT that the hacking occurred WITH the authenticator. The issue is whether or not the issue occurred WITHOUT the authenticator.
Even if the hackings did occur without the Authenticator, there's
nothing Blizzard can do about it.
It is just that simple.
Is Blizzard at fault if you got a keylogger/virus/malware/spyware on your system?
Nope.
Is Blizzard at fault if you fell for a phising scam?
Nope.
Is Blizzard at fault if you gave your details to someone else?
Nope.
These are not things Blizzard can do anything about. Why are so many Blizzard customers getting hacked?
Because
Blizzard is THE giant of the MMO/Online Game industry. Sheer numbers. You have the same chances of getting hacked in Istaria than you do in WoW, Diablo 3, etc.
Yet you don't read threads on the Istarian boards about Istaria players being hacked, do you?
Let's say, oh, 5% of all players get hacked.
WoW has ~10million subscribers, this comes to 50,000 players. Yeah, you're going to hear a lot of noise.
Okay, let's say that in Istaria, 5% of all players get hacked (this won't happen, I'll cover that in a minute).
I don't know how many subs Istaria actually has, let's just pull a number out of the clouds and say, I dunno, 100k? That's only 5,000 people.
You'd hear some noise, sure.
BUT, the Istarian % won't be anywhere near WoW's.
Why?
Istaria is a much less popular game, that's why.
Hackers aren't going to go after this "indie" game that very few people even know of; there's no profit in that. No, they're going to go after the game that nearly everybody plays; the game where they know they can make some real profit in selling gold/accounts/items/etc.
So, I'd be surprised if hacking in Istaria is >1% to be honest. So that's <1k people for every 100k. That's why you don't hear anything about Istarian hacking.
Istaria uses much the same UN/PW that WoW has, in fact,
Istaria is even less secure because there's no Authenticator system at all, when considering the technology itself.
You're more secure playing Istaria, only because Istaria is a lot less-popular game.
Kinda the same reason as to why you're safer from Terrorist Attacks while living in some backwater country nobody cares about, vs living in somewhere like the USA.
The backwater country is going to be a lot less secure against terrorism, but yet since nobody cares about it, nobody is going to attack it.
Not everyone has the developmental tools to make their own top-of-the-line security software. That's why they bought the license from DigiPass.
They sell authenticators
at cost (they're not making any profit off of those), hoping that players will get them and stop getting hacked (which is eating up their support staff's manpower like crazy).
Given how expensive it would likely be to buy such a license to use such software, or how expensive it would be to not only write such software yourself, but ALSO to manufacture your own keyfobs, you'd likely still have to pay them for this, as it'd be expensive.
What's the difference? Blizz makes an Authenticator system, and manufactures their own keyfobs, OR, they buy a license to use Digipass' system and keyfobs.
You're still going to have to pay for the keyfobs either way.
With the Smartphone apps, if you don't have a smartphone, then you're not going to care if Blizzard or someone else wrote the app for it.
If Blizz shipped keyfobs with their software, they'd have to charge more for it.
Let's say you are an avid WoW player and you either didn't get annual pass or you joined WoW after getting annual pass. You already had an authenticator on your account.
You go to the store to buy Diablo 3, which is $59.
Oh but wait, with the Keyfob, it'd be $65.
They're gonna make you pay an extra $6 for a keyfob that you didn't even need and have no real use for?
They've gone about as far as they possibly can.
They routinely post messages loud-and-clear, they have
an entire website section that is
devoted to loads of information about Account Security, they offer all sorts of Account Recovery services, they preach time and time, "GET AN AUTHENTICATOR!", and now they keep trying to nudge people in that direction.
Honestly, there's nothing else they can reasonably do. If you attempt to FORCE people to buy an authenticator or use the smartphone app, then you get all of these hobos going "OMG I Can't afford that I QUIT!!!!!" even though it is only $6.
No, they want Blizz to take the $6 hit because they're too cheap to spend $6 for peace-of-mind.
And to be honest, Blizz is already doing the Authenticators
for pure loss.
Think about it.
Manufacturing a Keyfob is about $5 in bulk. Shipping one is about $0.50. That's $5.50.
They are charging you $5.99.
This covers the manufacture of the keyfobs, but
it doesn't cover the costs of buying the license to use the software from Digipass, nor does it cover the costs/equipment/maintenance/support staff/etc of the Authentication Server that runs the system.
"But that $0.49 per keyfob will cover it!"
Errr, no it won't.
Even if all 10 million people suddenly bought a keyfob tomorrow, that's only a "paltry" $490k. Paltry when trying to pay for server equipment, manpower to run and maintenance the system periodically, etc.
of the customers getting hacked, get hacked bcause of somethign stupid they did - then how much $$$ should be invested to solve the problem for the 20% who actually get "Hacked" by a security problem on blizz's end?
