New Changes to the Automated Account Recovery System

[Xrystal]

It looks like as recent as 4.3 they added a new step in security ... not great for those of us that log in regularly at different locations ...

Apparently now you are forced to change your password before being able to access any of your account on blizzards website or games. Nice security bonus but .. here's the annoying part ..

Monday - Go home after work after spending the weekend at boyfriends .. Log in to find account locked please change your password now! 30 minutes later playing wow with your new password in place ...
Tuesday to Thursday - Normal process ( hopefully, will see next week I guess )
Friday to Sunday - First time I login at boyfriends with laptop and bam, account locked please change your password ..

Rinse and repeat every week I happen to decide to pop into wow to do some addon stuff which I have been doing recently.

Apparently no option to change it in your account settings .. but I believe my current short lived annoyance will raise its head when I go home Monday and have to do this all over again with a different password.

[aapoo]

the worst part is that this happens even if you're using an authenticator to protect your account.

[Talyrius]

This new security feature has been in effect for quite some time now. It happens whenever you try to login from a different geographical location. Usually the locations have to be outside the range of a typical commute.

How many miles/kilometers separate the three locations you mentioned (home, boyfriend's, and work)?

If you continue to access your account from all three locations on a regular basis, the system should learn that connections from those locations aren't out of the ordinary. You should contact Blizzard if the account locking persists.

[Xrystal]

The distance is 30 minutes walk away between my house and his. I logged in at least once here before 4.3 and I would say within the last few months. Last weekend I logged into the website with little problems and the last time I logged into game here as I mentioned above no problems either. Thats why I suspect this part was switched on relatively recent. Although I might have been lucky the last time and didn't get the option appear.

And from about 3 years ago I was playing from a different country every 6 months without any problems. But I expect it was added since then.

But yeah, if its like the repeated authenticator login that starts off frequent and then not so frequent then it shouldn't be too bad. Will have to wait and see. But looking on the forums it seems to be something that started happening in the last week or so as someone posted a message 2 days about it and other people who regularly travel and play have only just hit into this new feature.

[Barjack]

I heard some rumours that Blizzard is able to disable this security feature for your account if you contact them on the phone, but I've not tried so I don't know if it's true.

It annoys me a lot since I often connect over a tunnel, and any time I didn't I'd get locked out of my account exactly as you describe (this is going back at least 6 months as well). So right now I basically have to make sure I always use the tunnel so that Blizzard thinks I live "there" permanently. Thankfully that solution has been pretty stable lately, but at times it wasn't and that was when I definitely thought about contacting them to see if they really could disable it.

I'm guessing people with VPNs and such experience the same problem.

[Petrah]

Originally Posted by ForeverTheGM This new security feature has been in effect for quite some time now. It happens whenever you try to login from a different geographical location. Usually the locations have to be outside the range of a typical commute. How many miles/kilometers separate the three locations you mentioned (home, boyfriend's, and work)? If you continue to access your account from all three locations on a regular basis, the system should learn that connections from those locations aren't out of the ordinary. You should contact Blizzard if the account locking persists.

I went from Tacoma Washington to Chicago Illinois and I never got asked to change my password nor was I locked out of my account. However, I believe this is due to myself and my boyfriend both using Comcast. I've never let him log in to my account, nor I to his. We don't even know one anothers passwords, and we both each have a physical authenticator.

However, after we left his house to go on our vacation, I did get locked out and asked to change my password. While I always stayed at Marriott hotels, they each used different ISP's.

[Seerah]

Hubby and I went home to visit over the summer and brought the laptop to play WoW in the hotel. He was locked out of his account, but I was not locked out of mine. We each have an authenticator. /shrug

[Flarin]

I live in Japan and when I first arrived (6 months or so ago) I didn't notice having any issues. I recently when to China on business and was asked to change the password. Korea as well - so for me it seems I will need to change the password often. It seemed like a simple procedure though - login to Battlenet, change, confirm, blah blah all done back in game within 10 minutes. I think with the authenticator it should be enough. Now, I say that - but I DO change my Battlenet email address every few months now "just in case". I was hacked before without any apparent lack of dilligence on my part - apart from not having an authenticator for 24 hours because it stopped working - and no smartphone at that time - so now I change my email address every few months along with the password. And the password is always something I find relatively easy to type but hard to decipher like j8Huts%Rj or something (of course that is not it, but you get the point) - I never use anything remotely resembling a word, I mix case and add numbers and % symbols.

Gmail is great in that they let you create as many emails as you like - and I NEVER give out the email to anyone but BattleNet - so if I get an email there its just Blizz spam.

[Ketho]

Originally Posted by Flarin And the password is always something I find relatively easy to type but hard to decipher like j8Huts%Rj or something (of course that is not it, but you get the point) - I never use anything remotely resembling a word, I mix case and add numbers and % symbols.

What do you mean "relatively easy"?