Thread: Account Hacked/Stolen - Info to Keep it From Happening, & What to do if it is Stolen.

This happened to my 2nd account last week too. I give props to Turbine for catching it quickly and suspending the account. They only got to 2 of my chars, 1 of which was just a crafting alt. However the one lvl 65 they did hit had my whole inventory and storage wiped out. I finally got a response from support a week later saying there is nothing they can do, here have some gold to help. How is gold suposed to buy back the full rift set, the heavy lothlorien crit set, or the shield from BG I had? I had already replaced everything I could buy but where's the help with all the stuff that takes months to grind and can't be bought?

Originally Posted by Linwe_19

This happened to my 2nd account last week too. I give props to Turbine for catching it quickly and suspending the account. They only got to 2 of my chars, 1 of which was just a crafting alt. However the one lvl 65 they did hit had my whole inventory and storage wiped out. I finally got a response from support a week later saying there is nothing they can do, here have some gold to help. How is gold suposed to buy back the full rift set, the heavy lothlorien crit set, or the shield from BG I had? I had already replaced everything I could buy but where's the help with all the stuff that takes months to grind and can't be bought?

I am a founder lifetime account holder and I have never been hacked until now. I only play for a little at a time and had not logged in for some time. I ran virus and malware scans and came up with zilch. It seems if this is widespread as Turbine says then just maybe someone got the better of them and did compromise Turbines account managment systems. This is the first game I have ever played online where I have been hacked.. My WoW account, UO account and EQ 1 and 2 accounts are still secure.

Some of you lost items in this round of hacking.. they not only stole all my items but deleted everyone of my characters on top of it.

Notice in my sig.. that box used to have my main character of whom was named Eocyn and was a level 62 hunter

I want to confirm again that Turbine has NOT been compromised. We are not sure exactly how specific accounts are being compromised, but we have provided some common causes in previous posts. As the compromise is not from Turbine, we are unable to stop the issue from happening, though we do place accounts on hold to protect them once we confirm that a compromise has occurred.

I am sorry that your accounts have been compromised. I do encourage you to submit tickets as detailed in the original post. If the characters have been deleted, please create a new character and submit an in-game ticket with that character. Select "Cheating" and "Account Compromise" as the type, and include as many character names as you remember. If there are specific items you're interested in, you may include those as well.

Originally Posted by Victorie

I want to confirm again that Turbine has NOT been compromised. We are not sure exactly how specific accounts are being compromised, but we have provided some common causes in previous posts. As the compromise is not from Turbine, we are unable to stop the issue from happening, though we do place accounts on hold to protect them once we confirm that a compromise has occurred.

I am sorry that your accounts have been compromised. I do encourage you to submit tickets as detailed in the original post. If the characters have been deleted, please create a new character and submit an in-game ticket with that character. Select "Cheating" and "Account Compromise" as the type, and include as many character names as you remember. If there are specific items you're interested in, you may include those as well.

Had my account hacked yesterday... tickets have been submitted, etc...

Lost 50ish gold between to toons, and a ton of scholar crafting mats.

My PC is 100% clean as far as a half-dozen spyware and virus software programs can tell.



I quoted the above in my reply because the statement "Turbine has not been compromised" is a pretty darned bold statement when you follow it with "we don't know how specific accounts are being compromised".



Lastly, I hope the nonsense that an account rollback is not done has been eliminated. That policy is about as wrong-headed as a policy can get. Yes, you can give back gold, but the issue is not the gold, it's the things that people worked hard and long for item-wise that an account rollback can take care of quickly and easily.

Originally Posted by Hexes1

My PC is 100% clean as far as a half-dozen spyware and virus software programs can tell.

It doesn't take spyware or a virus for someone to figure-out your password, so just because your computer is clean doesn't mean the breach was on Turbine's end. Regardless, I hope they can make your account 'whole' again, but I don't think they do character roll-backs.

Hexes1, I am sorry to hear that your account has been compromised. Regarding my statements, it's really a cause and effect. We don't know how accounts are being compromised because we have not been compromised.

We are unable to see what programs are downloaded or installed on a PC, or if the same login information has been used for any other games or websites. And we are unable to comment on the security of other games and websites.

Most compromised accounts are the result of third party websites or games that were compromised. Additionally, there are a number of active phishing e-mails and malware that are causing compromised accounts throughout the MMO game community.

We encourage all of our players to be as secure as possible. Don't use the same username and password combination in more than one place, and change your passwords frequently. Don't share your login information, and be sure to use secure passwords. Also be sure to do this with your emails, especially ones associated with game accounts. We also encourage all of our players to frequently run multiple security programs, to ensure that you catch anything new.

Regarding reimbursement: this is reviewed on an individual character and account basis. Please submit your request for any affected character, and they will be reviewed. Once you have received a response, if you have any additional questions about your personal reimbursement, please submit a new in-game ticket with those questions. Please note that the new ticket will be answered in the order it was received in the queue, so there may be some delay before you receive another answer.

How do we find out if our account has been banned?

My other account was banned today apparently because of someone trying to sell it. I had the same problem with my other game accounts (guild wars and wow) My wow account was hacked, all my toons deleted. Because of that i had to buy an authenticator. Now Im receiving scam emails for games I dont have ...
Now my lotro account was banned so i think there is something else wrong. Now Im changing the email address of all my game accounts and ive opened a request to ingame support but i think we must do something else to prevent more problems.
I have two ideas:

1. wow authenticator is great. I have no issues now.
2. add to the account information a phrase or word that turbine sends us with every email so we know it comes from them.

I hope turbine can solve my problem soon

When will my characters be restored?

My account was compromised some time between logging out on Thursday, July 15th, and logging in on Wednesday, July 21st. My characters were stripped of inventory/bank, and the 300-400 gold I had on my characters was all gone. The characters were all standing near mailboxes, at my map milestone. I reported it in-game on all 8 of my remaining characters (one was deleted). The next day, the account was suspended. As of Monday, July 26th, my account was resumed. However, my characters have not been restored. As per the email I received, I contacted the in-game support. I wrote a ticket, using the same Cheating->Account Compromised category, and got the same response as last week. So how long until they are restored? Will there be a charge for it? I have yet to hear any news about the next steps.

Disclaimer: I do not work at Turbine so I can not speak about their internal systems.

For those of you who are claiming that Turbine must have been hacked, here are a few tidbit of info:

First, please read the page that was pointed out by another player.

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blog...ials-uncovered

That article states that Symantec found a database containing 44 MILLION user logins and passwords for various online games. The account info was being verified by a trojan which was installed on multiple compromised computers. I saw someone referring to an older version of that article (I can't find the post I'm thinking of) and WoW was the game with the most accounts compromised, which makes sense since it's the mmo with the most players. I don't know why that article was edited and the specific games apparently removed. In any event, it is surprisingly easy for hackers to get your account information from your own computer.
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Edit: My memory is failing me. WoW wasn't at the top of the list. Wayi Entertainment (never heard of em) was first, PlayNC was second. http://news.techworld.com/security/3...tolen/?olo=rss

Dunno about the other millions of accounts.
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Second, companies dealing with private information usually take precautions to keep from getting hacked. If you run an mmo and your databases are compromised and your account info is hacked, it's generally the worst type of PR you can get. So it's in every mmo's best interest to secure their data.

A company of decent size (including Turbine) typically has computers acting as firewalls that monitor traffic coming into and out of the system. They also restrict traffic that should not be allowed. For a service that often sits outside a firewall, such as a publicly accessible web server, there are normally logs that are used to watch for suspicious activity. Because traffic visiting a web site is, in normal cases, limited to a small range of requests, it's very easy to isolate requests out of the ordinary.

Most companies would also have a system in place where they can restrict the IP address (each computer talking to the Internet has what's called a unique IP address) to those within the network in cases where the machine that needs to be accessed is something like a database server. In other words, I'm pretty sure I can't sit here at my pc in my living room and connect to Turbine's account database. Most companies also will have logs monitoring access to the databases so they can review activity if anything looks odd. A company that implements basic security in its system normally has little difficulty determining that someone is trying to access the system.

So what I'm trying to say is that it should be very easy to Turbine to tell if their system has been compromised. I see no reason to doubt them when they say their system is safe.

Originally Posted by Zero_Out

When will my characters be restored?

My account was compromised some time between logging out on Thursday, July 15th, and logging in on Wednesday, July 21st. My characters were stripped of inventory/bank, and the 300-400 gold I had on my characters was all gone. The characters were all standing near mailboxes, at my map milestone. I reported it in-game on all 8 of my remaining characters (one was deleted). The next day, the account was suspended. As of Monday, July 26th, my account was resumed. However, my characters have not been restored. As per the email I received, I contacted the in-game support. I wrote a ticket, using the same Cheating->Account Compromised category, and got the same response as last week. So how long until they are restored? Will there be a charge for it? I have yet to hear any news about the next steps.

Various posts by Turbine employees put the time frame at up to two weeks for characters to be restored, and they are trying to shorten that time frame. There is no fee.

kenshin8000, if you're account has been banned, it does note that on the Account Management website. You also won't be able to log onto any server, the launcher will note that you've been banned after you log in with your username and password.

finisterre, sorry to hear you've had this experience. I'll certainly pass along your feedback.

Zero_Out, as elderlygamer noted, in-game response for hacked tickets is generally within 2 weeks.

i was hacked a few weeks ago... i just got reimbursed for some gold... so i'm wondering, is there no way turbine can return at least some of the items i've lost? like my radiance pieces from BG, the nice jewelry drops from various instances... the food/pots/hope tokens i literally spent hours on farming and crafting??? the hacker sold off all my armour, i can't even get back into BG without grinding many more hours for enough rad >.<

*cry*

ps. and i don't remember the exact names of each item... even if i were to submit a ticket for them... i don't exactly keep a list of every item i own on all my toons :-(

Originally Posted by mynilia

i was hacked a few weeks ago... i just got reimbursed for some gold... so i'm wondering, is there no way turbine can return at least some of the items i've lost? like my radiance pieces from BG, the nice jewelry drops from various instances... the food/pots/hope tokens i literally spent hours on farming and crafting??? the hacker sold off all my armour, i can't even get back into BG without grinding many more hours for enough rad >.<

*cry*

ps. and i don't remember the exact names of each item... even if i were to submit a ticket for them... i don't exactly keep a list of every item i own on all my toons :-(

one thing folks can do when hacked is immediately goto mylotro and look up your toons.

mylotro doesnt update your toon info immediately upon a change and if you catch the hack quick enough you can still see what you had and make a list.

Originally Posted by mynilia

i was hacked a few weeks ago... i just got reimbursed for some gold... so i'm wondering, is there no way turbine can return at least some of the items i've lost? like my radiance pieces from BG, the nice jewelry drops from various instances... the food/pots/hope tokens i literally spent hours on farming and crafting??? the hacker sold off all my armour, i can't even get back into BG without grinding many more hours for enough rad >.<

*cry*

ps. and i don't remember the exact names of each item... even if i were to submit a ticket for them... i don't exactly keep a list of every item i own on all my toons :-(

How would you prevent people from committing item fraud by declaring their account hijacked and the items stolen when it is not? If you would replace these rare items that would be a real possibility.

So Turbine opts to give gold which is relatively uninteresting for people who have equipped high-level characters but helps those who actually got robbed quite a bit.

i would presume turbine backs up their databases regularly... a snapshot of the character database provides proof that a toon did own said items (isn't that how would they "move" a character between servers? make a list of all items belonging to a toon on the source server and recreate it on the destination server) ... and i'm sure turbine did go back to check since they were able to determine how much gold i had to reimburse me, but a few extra gold to cover the loss of hours and hours of instances, raids, gathering mats etc. just isn't what i had in mind :-(

mynilla, I'm sorry to hear that your account was compromised. I can't help directly, but did want to provide some information.

There is a very specific process used for World Character Transfers, and it is completely different than the one you describe. This process is not one that we could use to "restore" characters to a previous state, and is therefore not useful for compromised accounts.

The steps required to research and provide any compensation to a compromised account are quite complicated and lengthy. We are therefore not always able to restore items. If you have specific special or unique items that you would like back, you can submit a ticket and make that request. However, please note that not all requested items can be restored.

Why is phone support only available for people who do not work for a living? I am a field support tech and cannot call Turbine during the narrow time window available on work days and there is no weekend support available.

I submitted a ticket on my issue almost 24 hours ago and have not even received any sort of response.

I am sorry the hours are not convenient for you. I will certainly pass along your feedback about them.

Email turn around for Account Management inquiries is about 1.5 weeks at this time. They will respond as soon as they get to your request in the queue. We are working to improve this time.

Originally Posted by elderlygamer

Most companies would also have a system in place where they can restrict the IP address (each computer talking to the Internet has what's called a unique IP address) to those within the network in cases where the machine that needs to be accessed is something like a database server. In other words, I'm pretty sure I can't sit here at my pc in my living room and connect to Turbine's account database. Most companies also will have logs monitoring access to the databases so they can review activity if anything looks odd. A company that implements basic security in its system normally has little difficulty determining that someone is trying to access the system.

I would not be surprised if Turbine banned know malicious IP blocks. From what I have read on the tech support forums, they don't block anything from the game servers (except on a case by case bases according to the new community guidelines) because even spammers like to play games. However, they do ban IP blocks from the account servers. Some are banned by region, and there are filters to make sure when you are entering a new credit card, the IP address you are logging in from is close to the zip code from your credit card. (There are a few people from the US that do business in Asia that have had trouble updating their account information while in Korea). I also noticed in the support forums that Turbine Partners (IE: Codemasters) do have region blocks on the game servers. The consensus is that this is for business reasons. I seem to remember reading a post somewhere about someone working with Turbine to allow their IP through the filter so they could play, but could not find the post. May have also been on the Codemaster forums.

Banning know malicious IP blocks can be a good idea. We did it at the small bank I used to work for. We used a blacklist on our email server for known spam IP blocks and our firewall blocked traffic from known malicious regions, such as China, Russia & Eastern Block countries, and Brazil. I have nothing against people from these regions, and have played with some really nice people from them, but that seems to be where a lot of hacking comes from, especially for financial institutions.

One suggestion for Turbine... when I create a new account don't send my login and password back to me in plain text.

let's logon to a website with our account username and password.

this way a keylogger doesn't have to try and get it from the logon client for the game.
web browsers are much more easily to get this info from.

1 vote for security.

Here is my question.

As one of the victims of this account theft, how does one go about getting their characters rolled back to a point before the account was hijacked?

I don't want nor really care about gold. I only had about 15 or so gold on my character that was stripped. What I do want is the equipment and items that were sold. In game gold cannot buy bartered items, tokens or bindable equipment.

I am, and have been, a VIP and Founder since closed Beta. If all I am getting out of this is some gold, well that is unacceptable. I also find it odd that this problem happened along the same time F2P went live. I don't think it's a coincidence.

Anyway, I want all (or at least the toon that was stripped and sold) my characters rolled back. Being that gold is pretty much useless to anyone level 65, I really have no need for it.

And I don't care to hear about the pro's and con's of rollbacks and how it would be "improper" for them to do so because how would they know whose account was a legit hijack and whose is trying to pull a fast one.

That is what Customer Service People are for....otherwise all you need is your automated phone line and form emails.

There is a difference between what is acceptable by means of company policy, and what is right. For a company that is trying to stay afloat, I would tend to believe that doing the right thing would be the correct path here.

Point is, I want everything back, down to the last complete hobbit breakfast.

Originally Posted by Koboldfodder

Here is my question.

As one of the victims of this account theft, how does one go about getting their characters rolled back to a point before the account was hijacked?

I don't want nor really care about gold. I only had about 15 or so gold on my character that was stripped. What I do want is the equipment and items that were sold. In game gold cannot buy bartered items, tokens or bindable equipment.

I am, and have been, a VIP and Founder since closed Beta. If all I am getting out of this is some gold, well that is unacceptable. I also find it odd that this problem happened along the same time F2P went live. I don't think it's a coincidence.

Anyway, I want all (or at least the toon that was stripped and sold) my characters rolled back. Being that gold is pretty much useless to anyone level 65, I really have no need for it.

And I don't care to hear about the pro's and con's of rollbacks and how it would be "improper" for them to do so because how would they know whose account was a legit hijack and whose is trying to pull a fast one.

That is what Customer Service People are for....otherwise all you need is your automated phone line and form emails.

There is a difference between what is acceptable by means of company policy, and what is right. For a company that is trying to stay afloat, I would tend to believe that doing the right thing would be the correct path here.

Point is, I want everything back, down to the last complete hobbit breakfast.

well.....now demanding arent we?

they have stated many times why it wont/cant happen.

and your account status/join date have no bearing whatsoever on this...you will get treated the same as someone who sub'ed up today.

and who say Turbine is trying to stay afloat?

they were bought because they were profitable.

every game they have going is making money and that includes lotro pre-f2p.

Well, the situation changed now.

Previously, you payed Turbine for play time. You get your stuff stolen? No problem, they still fulfill the contract. Even if you could prove it's their fault that your account got broken him, they still provide play time.

Now you can have for-real-world-money items in there. That will be interested if you prove it's their fault you got broken in.

I would like to hear Turbine's justification for sending me a small amount of gold to in response to my tickets and then calling the issue closed. Of just the items I had equipped only 2 of them could even be bought. The rest had to be bartered or were raid drops. Does Turbine really have no way of keeping track of items a character has or had?

Using your game log in data as forum log in data is one of the best ways to get your account hacked.

Well I've come to vent my frustration at the lack of customer service I feel I have received.

I like everyone else in this thread have been a victim of my account being hacked.
I dont know how it was compromised but it was (im not blaming me and im not blaming turbine, Im a long time internet user and tend to be very conscientious of my security), I went through all the steps of getting it back.

I have managed to have it successfully returned, and I'm Very glad for that.

Ive then followed all the additional steps in requesting in game assistance in getting my stuff back as is posted throughout this thread.
Thankfully my losses are not as bad as they couldve been. The hackers logged in and my account was on page 2 of my characters so they only went through 4 of them and not all 9.

Now Ive been playing since the closed beta test, so I feel Ive supported the game for a long time, I pre ordered and got my lifetime subscription on launch.
I've barely used in game support as I rarely have any issues, think Ive used it maybe 4 times in total for quests that were bugged and required to be reset, otherwise Ive never used in game support and been satisfied with the results I have had.

Im also the sort of player that likes to do EVERYTHING in game that I can, I'm one of those people that must do every quest and have it ticked off in my log, its the whole point of the ULTIMATE quest that is LOTRO.
Due to this Im also a hoarder of my in game gear. I never buy anything off the auction house as I prefer the satisfaction of going and obtaining whatever I need for myself.

To breakdown my losses.
One character (of low level) lost all vault, all inventory and all gold. Probably had 10g on him and pretty much all my level 45 class quest items farmed and prepared for when I hit that level. They surprising thing is they didnt strip the gear I was wearing
Another character (of low level - but supreme master craftsman) Lost all inventory and all gold, thankfully they didnt move him to his vault. They also didnt strip the gear I was wearing.
Another character (of low to mid level {30} also supreme master craftsman) Lost all inventory and all gold. Once again thankfully they didnt move him to his vault or else I wouldve lost a LOT of crafting ingredients. Once again, didnt strip the gear I was wearing, so very glad for that. (this character did have about 30k worth of shire rep ready to hand in that was lost though, wasnt happy about that)
Overall these characters wouldve had a maximum amount of gold on them of about 15-20g at the time I was hacked, but its not the gold thats a concern its always about the items.
Now after my in game appeals and a weeks wait I was reimbursed about 30g over these 3 characters, and I accept that, Im fine with that. I can probably re buy some of my stuff if I wasnt so stubborn to go farm it all.
So far as im concerned with those 3 characters, case closed, problem resolved, im happy to move on.

Now My Final character that got done over Is the very first character I created back in closed beta days and then remade on open beta and carried over into launch. Its got a playtime of over 2 and a half months of my real life sunk into it. I consider that to be a hefty amount of my life for one single character. SO as you can understand I'm pretty attached to my character and its achievements.
This was the worst of all. I found this character logged outside my Kinship house, which I am an officer of my Kinship (I would be co-GM of the kin if the game had the option for it), Ive got a VERY small close knit guild and its been around since launch as well.
On this character they cleared my inventory, my vault (which had 120 slots filled to the brim) my 60g, my house vaults, my shared storage vault (20 slots filled at the time) and ALL my Kinship house vaults. Thankfully they didnt remove the gear I was wearing. IT was the ONLY thing left on my character.
My kin vaults were full of crafting gear, all of it was swiped and sold. My kin is not happy about being ripped off by proxy. I got my GM to raise a ticket as well due to the kin vaults being sold off and they told him that I needed to deal with it in my tickets.
As stated previously Im a bit of a hoarder, and I had a fair bit hoarded up at the time I lost all this. I cant even fathom the volume of crafting gear and legendary Items I had awaiting to be leveled in my personal and house vaults. I lost my entire stockpiles of shards for crit crafting from my shared storage and that wasnt pleasant.
My biggest losses are the things I cant farm back due to them being one time rewards from quests I cant repeat.
I lost bits of radiance gear and whats more annoying is the tokens I had farmed to spend on more radiance gear or other tradeables. My biggest gripe is my tokens. Tokens of all sorts.
I had hundreds of mirwood feathers and a small stockpile of stars that I had been saving up to spend on either the mount or scrolls for my legendary items. Its the loss of the tradeables that I hadnt traded. As they took up less space generally then what I would trade things for, so sometimes its easier to store the tokens.

So I raised a ticket and when i discovered I couldnt type more then 1000 characters in my report I had to edit out over half of my original ticket, I couldnt even detail out the volume of my losses.
I had spent the week without my account on this forum reading what steps I needed to follow to get my account back and attempt reimbursement of some kind. From what is posted in this thread it states that we may not be able to give items back but we will attempt to return some if you specifically request it.
Now I couldnt request what I wanted back as I have Lost EVERYTHING.
I couldnt name every item stored in ALL of my vaults, its impossible to remember all of this information. The 1000 character limit wouldnt allow me to anyway.
So my ticket had to be pretty general.

I received my "reimbursement" a week later in the form of 80g. And was told that NONE of my items could be returned. Now some might consider 80g a decent amount and that I should be happy with what Ive received.
Its quite obvious. IM NOT HAPPY.
80g does not replace the 3 years I spent filling those vaults. It replaces a little bit more then the cash I lost.
Now I posted in my original ticket that I was NOT concerned about the gold in ANY way. Gold is meaningless when you very rarely spend it.
So according to this thread if your not happy you should raise another ticket and request your items you would like returned again.
So I raised another ticket.
This time not so subtle as I was rather angry with the level of service.
As I can only really submit one very brief side of the story, I get no interaction with a customer service person of any kind, just a closing of the ticket and its been resolved. This is not satisfactory.
So this time I basically demand my stuff back, im pretty angry about being ripped off by whats quite obviously a gold seller when Ive never been to a gold sellers website or bought in game gold, i depise those people with a passion, my ignore list is filled with names from right click -> ignore and report as spammer. Such an awesome in game option btw.
Now once again, no interaction or conversation is had, my ticket is closed with you have been provided with your reimbursement and the issue is resolved.
So I raise another ticket. THIS ISSUE IS NOT RESOLVED.
I state that I will continue to raise tickets until I am reimbursed some of my items.

Now at this point Im happy to concede that I wont get my crafting gear back, I wont get my LI's back. I cant get anything back that is unique and different. I would love my PILES of crit tool recipes back, but I understand that isnt going to happen either. Id love to get my legendary shards back too, I had hundreds of them stored up

What I want back at this stage is my tokens, Id love my radiance gear back too, but I know that isnt going to happen.
Id love to be compensated by being given the tokens that those items cost in return. Like how hard is that to do?
You guys have given away tokens in lotteries. So the entire community KNOWS that you have the ability to do something this simple.

In this final ticket I pretty much state I want all my tokens of all sorts back. All those dungeon runs, all those repeatable quests and all those beer quests were a waste of time as Ive now lost my rewards.

This ticket was closed and I was told that the 110 gold I was given over my 4 characters was more then enough for me to "re buy" my gear and any further tickets would be considered abuse of the in game support system as the issue is resolved.

Im sorry but the gold doesnt replace what my kin house lost.
It doesnt even go close to replacing half of what I had hoarded.
For me to rebuy everything I have lost on the AH under a market economy it would cost me somewhere between 400-500 gold.
Your 110g does not cut the mustard Im sorry to say. Its not a reimbursement, its a charity payment to try to make me go away.
Let alone my kin, they're not happy about their losses, and they wont be addressed as the issues with my characters have been classed as resolved......

This "customer service" is not customer service. Ive worked within customer service industries for the last 10 years and I would never treat a loyal customer with such disrespect.
Ive basically been told that Im wasting your resources and Ill be banned If I continue to make requests for assistance.
This is NO WAY to treat a customer.

When this thread states that you will do your best to give assistance in these matters it seems to me that youre misleading your customers.
Nearly every single person that Ive seen post in here has posted about their disappointment in only being given in game gold when we are promised that *some* things may be returned, when in reality NOTHING will be returned.
I should never have hoped for the service I expect from a quality company that cares about their customers.
AS it seems to me turbine don't really care about us as long as the paychecks keep coming in.
I know this post wont do anything as I have read the entire thread and know that your just going to say that things can only be resolved in game.
Well guess what, they weren't resolved in game and now I feel im being treated like a second class citizen and being threatened because I continued to push the issue.

I wrote this so no one else who gets hacked ever has higher expectations of the level of customer service you will receive from turbine with this issue.
As in reality, its rather quite poor.

I look forward to the GMs replying to this and telling me I am an important customer (as every customer is an important customer) and then still doing nothing to make me happy and blaming me for my account being hacked.....

Yes I am rather bitter right now.

Hey nwrimmer,

Let me start by saying I'm sorry your account was compromised, and that you're not happy with the resolution provided. Our ability to provide item reimbursement is limited, and I do understand that is disappointing (to say the least).

Thank you for keeping your feedback polite. While we can't assist via the forums, I will certainly pass along your feedback. If you'd like to provide this sort of specific feedback to the supervisors of the in-game fraud department (who investigate compromises and provide compensation) you can do so by submitting a inquiry via the In-Game web form in my signature. (Please select Hacked/Stolen Account Report as the type so that your inquiry is correctly directed.)

Victorie

Hey victorie

Thank you for your reply.

I have done what you have suggested and submitted my feedback to those involved.
I find you dont get anywhere by kicking and screaming and throwing a tantrum, but I do like to make sure people understand what it is like to experience something so horrifying.

Its like coming home and your house has been robbed. Except its your digital home, its still just as heartbreaking. And since I can spend a good quarter of my life in the game its very heartbreaking.
I still cant bring myself to play the character that lost the most because its so daunting to get it all back

I'm pretty sure I'm a victim of an account hack. I'm experiencing the same issues as the others, i.e. username/password not matching and email address has no account associated with it. I noticed on my.lotro.com when I check my characters, their gold is missing. I know I don't have adware/spyware on my computers, but went ahead with a full system scan on both computers, twice. Doesn't seem to be a problem on my end.

I'm just wondering what happens if someone reports you as a gold-spammer? I've never tried to buy/sell gold, but seeing that you can report anyone as a gold-spammer, what keeps people from running around in-game and selecting random people to report? When a character is reported, does turbine automatically ban the account and remove the gold, or am I in fact a victim of a hack?

I have submitted a ticket on the issue, but with it being the weekend how long do you suppose I'll have to wait to see an answer?

We are a family of 5 who play your game and have had an account for a few years now. Recently we had our account hacked and the worlds affected the most were Windfola, Landroval & Gladden. The thief was very thorough as they took all of our gold & silver. Then they stripped our bags and our vaults. Fortunately they did not get to our houses & kin hall chests. The items taken were raw materials for all crafting types (ore, wood, vegtables, scholar mats, etc.), crafted mats (ingots, planks, food ingrediants, etc.), crafted supplies (food, potions, oils, scrolls, etc.), many shards, travel rations, reputation items, unbound clothing & much more. They stripped our bags & vaults of absolutely everything that could be sold.

We followed all the steps after being told our account was compromized, and all the scans revealed nothing, nor have we used our account log-in combination elsewhere. The thief was very good at what they did to us because not only have they taken items accumulated by years of play, but they have left us paralyzed because the little copper we have left will not buy travelling expenses, potions, and more to continue gameplay in a normal manner. A little gold will not buy us back what we lost either...not at the prices people sell things for on the Auction Hall (sellers which no doubt includes honest gamers AND thieves such as the one that hit us). Having read the forums, it doesn't look like your company is doing much to help the victims of this kind of activity, however I am imploring you to make more serious efforts to fairly compensate the victims with items & money that were stolen.

When it gets down to it, all things given to the victims are nothing more than game gold and game materials which have no more worth than what your company (and the thieves) can make off of them. You give away gold & items in your lotteries and contests because it is just a bunch of pixels and code. Give your good, dedicated players a truly fair compensation for what they have lost and not just a pathetic fraction of it's worth in the time and effort the player put into aquiring their items. Thank you.

This exact same thing happened to me last evening. Sadly I could watch as my main characters were "friends" on a second account I have. I could see the thief logging my characters on and off, moving from their last location to my house and my kin house. I am sure everything is gone along with the will to start anew.

This happened to me, and I wanted to share my experience. First off, my computer is clean, no keyloggers, no viruses, I'm very careful with it, and scan for viruses often. Second, my lotro password is unique, I do not use it on any other site or for any other purposes. Thirdly I do not share my password with anyone, my closest friends and family do not know it. I realize Turbine says they are secure, and I am not blaming them, only stating that I am also secure, so I am not sure how this happened. It is evident that there is a drastic rise of this occuring since f2p went live, that probably has more to do with the number of new players making it more attractive for hackers than any security comprimise that happened at the same time, allthough I definately do not like that Turbine uses our account login/passwords for purposes other than playing lotro (Ie: forums, mylotro). The only fault I can attribute to myself is I don't change my password often, and I encourage everyone to change your password right now.

I logged on late Saturday to do some festival stuff, then logged out. Sunday morning I had a raid, and went to log in and was told my password was incorrect, I entered my e-mail and it told me there was no account registered to that e-mail. I raid with my girlfriend and asked her to check where my char had last logged out at. He was in bree, I logged him out in the shire festival area. Obviously I had been hacked. Since all of turbines account info uses the same stuff, I also could not log into the forums, however after searching I found the appropriate ticket to fill out with info that I'd been hacked. I also tried calling turbine, but they have nobody taking calls on Sunday so instead I was given a recording as to when I could call back.

Over 24 hours went by with no response to my ticket, I called Turbine, spoke to someone, who basicly repeated everything suggested in this thread (they were very nice, no complaints), they corrected the e-mail and said I would now be able to change my password and log back on in about an hour, this was all true. I logged in to survey the damage. My main character is a completionist, I've litterally done every deed and every quest in the game (except a few in Enedwaith and most of the moors), I'm an avid raider and have completed every raid in the game. Needless to say I had a significant amount of gold and loads of items. My personal bank was nearly full, my shared bank was completely full, and I had 3 inventory bags that were full.

The damage wasn't as bad as it could of been, my house was untouched, I still had the gear I was wearing and my legendary items. However everything in my bags and my vaults had been sold. I was asked to compose a list of what was missing, this list would be very comprehensive, so in the ticket I asked if turbine had a way to view what I had (or what my char had sold) as this would be everything. I'm quite sure I wouldn't know everything I had, but I can compose a list as best I can if needed.

I haven't heard from a GM yet, I left my char logged in for a few hours to see if there was a response, I eventually got an update saying my ticket had been forwarded to a higher stationed GM. I'm sitting here, decided I would write this message about my experience to pass the time. I am truly hoping Turbine is able to completely repair the damage. Reading other posts in this thread has not given me much hope.

Turbine, given these rash of account hacks, please update your security protocols. Here are some suggestions:
1. allow us to create questions that must be answered if our accounts are logged in from foriegn IP's.
2. Do not use our account info for the game for any other sites (including your own).
3. If an account is hacked roll back or replace every missing item, I don't think you realize the countless hours that go into obtaining these things and how devestating it can be to hear that you will instead be given gold as compensation....no matter how much (and I hear it's not much) gold is given it is no compensation for these often irreplaceable or ridiculous amount of time it would take to replace items.

I'll try to update this as I hear back from Turbine, I hope to have good news for those that have experienced this, I can't tell you how sick to my stomache this whole event has made me.

At this point I would like to have an official statement from Turbine as to why they do not support any kind of rollback.

I know several possible reasons but that's not the point, I'd like to know specifically what is holding back Turbine at this time, be it technical or business reasons.

Originally Posted by Darmokk

At this point I would like to have an official statement from Turbine as to why they do not support any kind of rollback.

I know several possible reasons but that's not the point, I'd like to know specifically what is holding back Turbine at this time, be it technical or business reasons.

ya know back in the day i could see why they wouldnt do it...wasnt happening often enough to warrant devoting resources to such a thing.

BUT....since the frequency of these incidents has increased greatly over the last year...Turbine really needs to step up and make it so that they can rollback/restore lost items.

As an update for anyone curious, it has been over 72 hours since my ticket was forwarded to a higher stationed gm, I have heard nothing back. I understand these things may take time, and I would easily wait a month or more if it meant getting my char as he was back. I would just like some info as what I should expect as far as waiting, progress, and if there's anything more I can do. I log in once a day now to see if there are any changes, my char is still missing all his gold and items (except worn gear). His vault and bags were even stripped clean of all his tokens/marks....that is really daunting, he had around 25k skirmish marks, 500 silver tokens for the alcraig faction (having recently finished grinding our their rep), 15 superior marks, every raid armor set (except helegrod, of which he had a few pieces), the list goes on and on. I am truly concerned after reading these posts that he'll be awarded gold and nothing else, which would take 100's of hours to reclaim, and much of it can't be reclaimed as it was quested. I offered the idea that my char was on bullroarer for testing enedwaith, and perhaps that copy could somehow be imported and the differance in gold given to me. That would give me most of my stuff back, and although I wouldn't be looking forward to grinding all the faction again, it would certainly be better than getting a lump gold sum (at which point I don't think I could continue playing). Obviously a roll back or reimbursement of my items would be preferable, but I'm really at a loss for what exactly Turbine has the ability to do, as stories vary greatly, even among Turbine representatives (which are usually vauge, like we can restore some items...though every player I've read so far says they restored none). I was hoping my update would clear up some of this, I'll post again when my situation changes or when I've truly given up.

I also lost everything, everything from my house, bags, vault, shared vault, and my kins chests. All of my hundreds of thousands of Legendary item XP, reputation tokens I had been saving up for future characters, resources for crafting. And even some items that I had saved from early on in the game that don't exist anymore.

Today I got an in game mail with 85 gold. I don't know what to say other than this is so extremely disappointing.

I had the same experience today. I submitted the tickey yesterday after having been hacked earlier that day. I got 45 gold as compensation. I had 38 F-ing gold just in my wallet.... So are they saying the 100's worth of gold of the rare items, crafting mats and quest specific non replacable items is worth 7 gold!

I was mildly annoyed at the hacker.

I am pissed at Turbine for this joke they call customer care.

ps.... they also banned my account today when i logged in after having reclaimed my account yesterday... really switft Turbine.. really swift. I had to call up long distance all over again and spend my time on hold to get my account re-re-activated.

Hey guys,

I'm sorry to hear that you experienced this problem. I will certainly pass along your feedback regarding the compensation.

Asmuth, turn around on the review of your characters can vary depending on the queue. Tickets are answered in the order they are received. They will get back to you as soon as they can.

In the meantime, we are taking a poll to see what some players think about future improvements that may help players if an account is compromised. Please let us know what you think (in that thread)!