Contest: The Great Authenticator Drive

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I’ve heard a lot about accounts being hacked lately. I know a lot of players are concerned about it. The more people play WoW, the more potential profit there is in stealing our accounts for nefarious purposes … and the harder the hackers will try to do just that.

Now there are a lot of different ways to protect your account and none of them are perfect. Many people use a complex layering of protections: using a no-script plug-in for their browser, getting a good virus scanner, changing their password every month, typing all Blizzard links into their browser manually, setting up separate e-mail accounts with separate passwords for their Blizzard accounts  … and not sharing their account information, of course.

Keeping all of that straight can be a bit overwhelming, though, and it still isn’t perfect. In fact, a Microsoft researcher named Cormac Herley has studied the effectiveness of various security techniques and found that : “Most security advice simply offers a poor cost-benefit trade-off to users.” (Check out his fascinating paper in PDF form: “So Long and No Thanks for the Externalities: The Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users.”)

Luckily for us in the WoW world, we have one more option. The single most effective method to protect your World of Warcraft account is to use either a Battle.Net Authenticator or a Battle.Net Mobile Authenticator.

Basically, the authenticator makes it impossible to log into your account unless you have access to a particular physical item — either a key fob authenticator or a device like a cell phone running the mobile authenticator app. And that means that, for the most part, a hacker would have to steal your physical item before they could steal your WoW account — which is way less likely than managing to get a keylogger onto your computer. The authenticator still isn’t perfect — but it’s the single most effective protection we have.

Problem is, not everyone has the money to buy an authenticator, or the right cell phone or what have you to use the mobile version. The physical authenticator is USD 6.50 or EUR 6,99 — but if you don’t have the money then you don’t have the money.

So here’s the deal: I’m going to give away 12 authenticators: 6 for the US, 3 for the EU, and 3 for the Canada/Australia/New Zealand/Latin America region. (I have no idea why Blizzard splits them up that way, but they do.) This is a simple random drawing. I’ll split the entries up into lists from each region, randomize them, and then generate random indices into the lists to pick the winners.

Here’s what you need to do to enter:

  1. Leave a comment on this post. The first line must be “I want an authenticator! I am in the ___ region.”
  2. Fill out the blank with the letters US, EU, or AU. (I apologize to the players in Canada, New Zealand, and Latin America. You are still eligible! I just needed a two-letter abbreviation for the third region.)
  3. Make sure you use a valid e-mail address for the comment. That’s how I’ll be contacting you if you win.
  4. Post your comment before 23:59 UTC on June 7th, 2010. (That’s 7:59pm EDT on June 7th.)
  5. If you win, I will ask you for a real name and a physical address so I can have the authenticator mailed to you.

I will not share your name, e-mail address, or physical address with anyone, of course. I will post a list of the winners here, using the name you left on your comment, after the drawing.

I’ll do the drawing on June 8th and contact the winners shortly thereafter. Unless something goes wrong, I should get the authenticators mailed out on the 8th as well, but Blizzard says that it can take up to three weeks for them to arrive.

75 thoughts on “Contest: The Great Authenticator Drive”

  1. Ohohoh! I just got hacked and can’t afford one at this point in time… therefore *clears throat, stands up, and raises her right hand and says:*

    “I want an authenticator! I am in the US region.”

  6. “I want an authenticator! I am in the AU region.”

    Great idea! The shipping costs for authenticators have been a turn off for me (and that’s not counting the fact that a lot of the times when I’ve checked the Blizz store for them, they’re out of stock).

  7. “I want an authenticator! I am in the AU region”

    I hope it does not cost heaps to ship out to New zealand it’s a long way and i would not want you to become poor from this!

  8. “I want an authenticator! I am in the AU region.”

    Mania, you are my hero… Protecting accounts everywhere. :)

  10. Actually, I don’t know about the physical authenticator, but the same mobile authenticator works fine for me for both my EU and US accounts.
    Add to that the fact that Canada/oceanic realms also use the US Battle.Net, I find it highly unlikely that one authenticator won’t work in other regions as well. It’s probably just some legal import/export issue.

  16. I want an authenticator! I am in the EU region.

    been trying to buy one ever since they came out. 1st the shipping cost was 60 euros (!), and now they simply wont ship to my country :(

  18. If I can’t get it shipped direct, I may have to route it through my address — but I will get one to you if your name is drawn, one way or another.

  20. I do not want an authenticator, as I already had a friend in the US send me one to Australia. ;)

    I guess Blizzard’s rationale in separating out Canada/Aussie/NZ from the US, whilst using the same region of game and all is just to split up national/international sales or something.

    The only question I have is *why* Blizzard makes people in NZ/Australia pay an extra $20 in shipping, practically quadrupling the price? Not to mention it’s the same price they charge to ship out the plushies, despite the authenticator being a fraction of the size and all that. My only single gripe I’ve had about Blizzard, really!

    Still, good on you for having a separate drawing set for us over this way!

  21. @Tuscansalami: at least they do international sales at all these days – they didn’t ship outside the US at all originally. That said, I suspect you may be mistaken about the shipping cost. My housemate bought a physical authenticator recently and he didn’t say anything about paying more than the basic price (and I would have expected to hear plenty about it if shipping was more than double the price of the gizmo itself).

    One thing to remember about the authenticator is that it locks the whole Battle.net account, so you don’t need it just to play WoW, but also to play other games (which is just SC2 beta at the moment, but will apply to SC2 itself when it comes out) and to do any account admin related stuff through the website.

    You can log in to the forums without it though.

  24. Total cost for my authenticator was about $30AUD to get it shipped to Melbourne Australia. $20ish is postage plus a few bucks for credit card and foreign money ammounts. The device itself is about 5 cm long and weighs almost nothing but it came in a HUGE fedex envelope. Delivery was pretty fast, a bit over a week.

    The digital pet corehound pup makes it worth the price alone!

  26. I want an authenticator! I am in the AU region.

    Hmm, seeing a lot of people from the AU region, probably because of the crazy shipping prices >.<

  28. I want an authenticator! I’m in the US region.

    This is great. As it is right now my account is sitting with a nefarious authenticator on it put there by hackers, and I haven’t had the time to get it removed yet.

  29. “I want an authenticator! I am in the US region.”

    :) Saw your post on the forums, figure I’ll give it a shot, hehe.

    ~VelkynKarma

  31. “I want an authenticator! I am in the US region.”

    I saw your post on the forums. Go go random drawing rng. :)

  32. “I want an authenticator! I am in the US region.”

    It would really cool to actually win something useful! Here’s to hoping!

  36. I want an Authenticator! I am in the US region.

    Thank you so much for the opportunity, even if we aren’t among the winners!

  38. I want an authenticator! I am in the AU region.

    I appreciate the opportunity as well, thank you very much. :)

  40. I want an Authenticator! I am in the EU region

    noticed the post to like most thie is a fun thing your doing good luck to everyone!

  42. I want an authenticator. I am in the US region (aka Canada lol)
    Thank you so much for doing this haha and good luck everyone!

  45. I want an authenticator! I am in the AU region.

    I was dumb and forgot to get authenticator when I got the plush toys … $6.50 + $20 postage (plus exchange rate to A$) to Australia is rough.

  46. I want an authenticator! I am in the EU region.

    Great deal mania. thanks for looking after the wow community.

  49. I already got an authenticator, so no need to add me to the draw. One heck of a nice gesture there ‘though!

    The whole shipping problem with the authenticator is that legally it is an incription device and therefore can’t be shipped to outside the US. About a year ago customs on both sides of the big pond might have grabbed it even if a friend sends one to you, no idea if this is still true. There is no difference between a US or a EU version, only the point of origin and shipping addresses. I’m a EU player on the US servers and it took me a while to get all that figured out. Luckily the Blizzard stores don’t care which one I order from most of the time, so my plushies came from the US store (because of the code that IS region specific) and the authenticator was ordered at the EU store.

    NZ and Aussy players however are asked to pay through the nose for their security, but at least you can get one now if you need the physical device. Mind you, let loose an exchange rate on the US/EU numbers and you find that the EU version costs a bit more too. We just don’t have to pay someone to -swim- to our location!

  50. Ah, OK, I stand corrected on the shipping cost question. I’m fortunate enough to have a phone that can run the Mobile Authenticator app, so I completely dodged the issue.

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