This is an interesting insight in what it is like for someone to get hacked, and I have read quite a few from other games, but not FFXI, and to see it on a site like The Escapist, I would consider reputable, this is enough to make me start thinking about protecting my account like I would with say.. credit card info. The law really needs to catch up with the way the Internet is growing, and the amount of interaction people have over the Internet in something like a MMO, because we spend time with these characters, and to have them snatched away by some company looking for some quick money... It should be theft. Like if you were involved in Identify Theft, you work for your good name, any money you have, your credit rating etc. .. I wouldn't say it is as serious, but coming from me, I would say it isn't far off in this day and age. That's my two gil on this.

Well I'll totally have to agree.. I mean that account is your online identity.. I find it disconcerting that people take so long to build up their good rep and someone else can just change that in the blink of an eye.

Me too, and i have had a friend that that has happen to. its sad to see something like that, and then see SE or the other companies say "too bad so sad. nothing we can do"

I truly feel deeply sorry for those ppl who have had their accounts stolen. Especially from FFXI. This game isn't one of those MMO's that you can get on and accomplish major things in less than an hour. It usually takes massive planning and a ton of time. I actually knew someone, years ago, who had their account hacked and all the gil was stolen. They were told nothing could be done for them. How sad... Shortly after that, they permanetly left FFXI. And do you blame them?!? We pay money every month to escape this messed up reality of a real life we live in, only to have jackoffs hack our online happy fun time game. The people behind the scenes of these MMO's need to make sure our game info is safe and secure. If they can save everyting that we do in FFXI...gil, gear, quests, missions, etc., why cant they help those said people get those accoutns back? It seems to me that the way the game is designed, it saves everything we do every time something is done. From my perspective, it's like taking your money and running off with it, in a hurry. Something does need to be done.

Yeah, I agree. SE really should start using their heads instead of doing it all by their "policies." I have a friend who recently got his account hacked, 2 days after he got an Ixion cloak and a Kraken club. SE did get him his account back, but apparently they refused to give him back the Ixion cloak, his KC, his gil, and some other rare items that were stolen, because he accessed his account from a friend's house after he got the items, and apperently SE saw that as an "illegal access" of the account and rolled his account back to before he got the items. Even though my friend told them that that particular access was him at a friends house, they refused to do anything about it, and refused to roll back his account to after he got the items.

Wow.. just talked me out of getting a windows version. I've been playing the PS2 software on PS3... I haven't heard of any console players having this sorta trouble, but I suppose anyone who can be a target will be.

Un-fragging-believable. Bad enough that we have RL ID thieves, but now MMORPG ID thieves as well? What's next, the Internet Mafia? The only thing lower than the vermin who steal players' chara (and their items) are the bureaucratic pinheads that refuse to make changes to their rules to make it easier on victims to get their characters/items/meseta (game money) back. Does anyone else think we should spam SE's suggestion site with recommendations that they make their policies fairer to players like this poor woman?

Great article, I know I'd feel horrible if my account got hacked. Yeah another problem is if they change their policies, it would make it easier for people who sell accounts (against the ToS) to steal them back. So policy changes are a tricky business.

Have read this and other articals i woudl agree. we teh players of FFXI work very very ahrd for our gear/gils and what not. now u tell me someone can just hack an accoutn adn SE will sit there adn take there sweet time gettigny our accoutn back. I agree there needs to be major revisations to protectign ffxi accoutn data as well as several ingame measures as well. after SE has to rember we pay them to play the lest they can do is keep our chars a bit safer and not say "The safty and secearity of you computer is your respnoniability" that is true yes but event ehb est protected computers can be hacked. i wounder who SE woudl feel if something like that happned to them.

This disappoints me quite a bit. If they were still Squaresoft we wouldn't have this kind of problem. When they were Squaresoft they made great games and cared more about the gamer. Since they became Square-Enix it's like they quit caring and just want money. We are paying them so in turn they can give us something back in return. Just brushing off thousands of loyal gamers just shows how worthless they are becoming. I enjoy FFXI I won't lie but I play on Xbox 360 for fear that I will get robbed like these other people. It's very depressing.

A great yet depressing article. It saddens me how in essence our virtual identity can be stolen and ravished at the drop of a hat with little to no support from SE who created and maintain the game to "make the customers happy".

Of course we must do our part to beef up online security to nip problems in the bud by avoiding them and blocking them altogether. Secure browsers, anti-script, anti-spyware, anti-adware, and anti-viruses are a must. However, SE as the creator and maintainer of FFXI has an equal responsibility to shape their policy and provide service to help those who have been vitimized by heinous acts of idenity theft.

Really, how hard could it be to lock the account when logged on from a foreign IP address or changed account info and contact the user via email to confirm the user?

Like I have said before, and usually get a negative response, these types of games would be made better if they got rid of virtual money all-together! You can still craft. You would need to farm everything that you use to craft. Everything is EX. Gear drops and is crafted. Nothing is purchased (no food, no gear, nothing). You would make a trade/barder system if you absolutely wanted to. Since all money/points gained would be stored on the servers and only used to gain equipment for your character, it would require everyone to work for their characters. The only time hacking would occur would be to steal a character to sell. The thing is, your character would remain complete because nothing could be sold off and/or traded to other characters. Since this could not be accomplished, it would basically be a waste of time for hackers/gillsellers to even bother.

In all honesty , as long as Square gets thier money each month , they dont really care who has the account . they only care when some one is makin money off thier enterprise . Conversely , the Politicians don't care until it affect thems directly or they also can make money off it (see the story somewhere about how dumb a Politician is from Illinois) . With that said , there is nothing we as gamers can do except the things already available . If you use PoL on PC , Use the On Screen Keyboards as they are supposedly Keylogger proof . Change your password on occasion . Until one of these Hackers or Hacking Companies use the info they gain from hacking the account for more than the account it self i.e. credit card fraud or identety theft in the conventional sense (opposed to the MMORPG sense) we are all Effed in the Aye .

I personally know somebody who had their account hacked by an acquaintance and SE told them to deal with it. This person had to start over entirely from scratch on a new character which has taken them no small amount of time. Personally if I ever got hacked I would quit FFXI altogether because the attitude and reliability of SE has gone down near zero and I wouldn't put myself through the hell of 4 more years of getting back to where I am now. In the end, SE phails and we (the gamers) deserve better.

i know how this can be first hand. i was hacked about 6 weeks ago. fortunately, for me, just a few weeks before SE introduced the rollback process. i did not discover it until 8 or 9 hrs my character was last logged in. they did it all while i slept. by the next morning, i was already able to track every piece of gear they looted from me and sold and all from the same lv 1 character in jeuno. i tracked ffxiah for the next two weeks until my account was rolled back and found that it wasn't just 1 character attatched to the theft but 2 just for my stuff. i then found similar names over the next month or so. the amounts i had witnessed stolen in that period must have been 50M+. the sad thing is, u can report them, and sure they may be banned, but what good does it do when they replace it the next day with new payment and new ID and they do it by the doezen! i reported almost 20 names to the STF and i still see new ones all the time pop up under the same similar names with VERY obvious AH sales that scream RMT. the only true solution to this problem is to stop the need for gil to be on the market. RMT aren't the problem. you can't have supply without demand. this starts with the ones buying it

I've had the idea of SE just selling gil themselves for a while now, but I know it isn't going to happen. As I see it, depending on the price and even regardless of it (it would be legal gilselling) they could undercut the Gilseller companies, and those that wouldn't quit would probably become more desperate and thus easier to spot and weed out. Not to mention, it would add a little more money to SE's pocketbook, since that's seemingly all they worry about. It's still BS that you can only have your account saved once, luckily the one time I was likely almost hacked, I had a friend help me in tracking down the potential keylogger, got rid of it/them, and changed my password immediately after.

Simply put, SE, UPDATE YOUR RULES OF OWNERSHIP. You buy the game, register the keys, the acc is yours. They should, with every exp and or core game purchase, include a special code, that super cedes all processes, have it literally be inscribed on the disk itself, and this code will over write any proof of ownership ritual SE might have. Thus, getting your acc back IMMEDIATELY. Be it American, European, or Asian, middle eastern or Mediterranean, Ownership to something you pay for, is universal. So saying that its a traditional business practice of the JP, is just bull hockey.