SE Statement on Recent Hacking

[Rezeak]

One of my friends got hacked too and in my opion yea the hacker did it but it's SE fault to the most part not to have a system for this.

Also Playonline when released was a awsome barrier between hacking FFXI but now 5 years on i'm sure there are pple out there that know almost everything about this program and hence it fails and is out dated

Secondly if SE made it possible to say lock an recovery email address then if say a person gets hacked they could use this email address to get a new password like forums do and then once this is done they will be contacted by a GM once they login to investigate the reason rather than having to phone up Tech surrport or make a new account.

Anyhow point is u wouldn't sell a house that has no locks on which basically what SE is doin by not updating there sercurity systems over the last 5 years and not having a simple systems to do things which i guess they will now considering the scale of this thing.

[xizro345]

As far as I know since the security flaw in the LS community site I haven't heard of anything regarding SE's servers. Besides, the hackings had nothing to do with POL.

[Dragonblaze]

some of the people on this site are unbelievable..... just cuz you werent hacked you think its on the people that got hacked....i created a forum acc. jus to have a saying in this lol.

I was lucky enough to not get hacked, but i've visited somepage.com before but it was a long time ago and i just didnt like the site and found alla to be better and was using alla b4 i found FFXI.wiki.

Now i quit FFXI for a min and tried wow mainly cuz i was bored of FFXI endgame, came back jus cuz i missed FFXI lol. But WoW's service is much better, they even ask for the opinions of the players on how to make their expansions better which FFXI doesnt, players wanted a new tank class or new healing due to theres never any around when forming a pt, cept we got hit with more support classes.

Sylph: NIN75 BRD75 WAR37 DRK37 WHM37 BLM17

Some peepo dont even dl third party shiet but go to the site just to get info on how to do a quest or info on some armor. I'm very up to date on security but now a dayz just going to a site compromises your comp. To shrug someone off and say stop visiting these sites is just unbelievable customer service, what if ffxi.wiki gets hacked with the same shiet some day and your acc gets stolen then what.....bet you wont being saying the same shiet some peepo are sayign now.

[Yunchang]

Scenario 1:
SE's registration servers are hacked due to a lack of proper security protocols, and some players' credit card information is compromised. The players' FFXI accounts are stolen, and items and gil on the characters are lost. The credit card numbers are then used to fund RMT vacations to Bangkok and spent on 12-year-old ladyboy prostitutes.

Loss: FFXI in-game property, IRL credit card numbers and funds
Fault: SE's lack of proper security measures

Here, SE would be responsible for all losses incurred, and should compensate the players accordingly. Thankfully, this has never happened.


Scenario 2:
SE's official linkshell website is hacked due to a lack of proper security protocols, and some players' account information is compromised. The players' FFXI accounts are stolen, and items and gil on the characters are lost.

Loss: FFXI in-game property
Fault: SE's lack of proper security measures

Here, SE would be responsible for all losses incurred, and should compensate the players accordingly. Seeing as how this happened a little while back and we are no longer hearing about it, this can be assumed to have been resolved sufficiently.


Scenario 3:
A third-party non-endorsed/affiliated website is hacked due to a lack of proper security protocols, and malware installed that takes advantage of a security flaw in an unrelated program (Realplayer). The vulnerability allows the rogue company to compromise some players' account information. The players' FFXI accounts are stolen, and items and gil on the characters are lost.

Loss: FFXI in-game property
Fault: Third party website, unrelated program

Here, SE has no responsibility or obligation to anyone affected by this scenario, as they have no fault. "Customer Service" would be a reason for SE to replace any compromised in-game assets, but this would be solely determined by SE's discretion.


Scenario 4:
A third party (friend, family member, linkshell mate, etc.) obtains a players' account information through social engineering/misplaced trust. The players' FFXI accounts are stolen, and items and gil on the characters are lost.

Loss: FFXI in-game property
Fault: Third party

This happens roughly daily, according to the posts around here and other FFXI forums, and we all know what happens here.


What you're hearing now is the initial reaction to a new wave of security breaches. Unfortunately, SE has no fault here, and are not obligated to do anything for the victims.
Several people have been brandishing the concept of "good customer service" as a reason for SE to compensate those affected by this, but these same people have forgotten that customer service is ultimately a decision of the company; both in its utilisation and its form of compensation.
It is understandable that the victims are upset by the loss of their assets (which is ALL that was lost -- time invested in the acquisition of said assets is the "cost of business", and was spent whether or not said assets ever dropped on that particular NM hunt/Dynamis run/etc). But attempting to hold the company responsible for the loss of your assets through the actions of unrelated outside parties is futile.

[Juso]

What you're hearing now is the initial reaction to a new wave of security breaches. Unfortunately, SE has no fault here, and are not obligated to do anything for the victims.
Several people have been brandishing the concept of "good customer service" as a reason for SE to compensate those affected by this, but these same people have forgotten that customer service is ultimately a decision of the company; both in its utilisation and its form of compensation.

I think you're confusing obligation with Customer Service.

SE isn't obliged to release updates.
SE isn't obliged to combat RMT.
SE isn't obliged to do jack.

Is it SE's decision to provide Bad Customer Service? Sure.

Do Companies that provide Bad Customer Service keep recurring business? No.

Should we, as customers, expect better? Yes.

[xizro345]

Exactly what you're expecting? Refund or what?

[Daemun]

There's a few things that concern me on this thread.

Firstly, the thought that nothing has been "stolen" from those who have been hacked is wrong.>>
Those who pay SE for the ability to play FFXI do so with the continuing thought that they will get to keep the progression they have made with characters in game. They also pay SE for the entertainment and ability to communicate with others while online.
When an account is hacked and these people are no longer able to access their characters>>That forward progression has been stolen from them. The 12.95 or more for that month that they sent to SE has now been at least in part stolen from them since they are no longer able to get the entertainment they have payed for.

With that said, yes it is up to SE to do something because technically their current approach is like purchasing a ticket at a movie theater to find your seat has been stolen and the theater says, "Well I can kick out the person that stole your seat, but you have missed 30 min of the movie you can either watch the last 1:45 or you will need to purchase another ticket to see the movie in its entirety and there is no guarantee that this won't happen again."

Secondly, this would be covering their ass since they would lose long term customers, and these customers that would no longer be paying SE, would also make public outcries about the terrible customer service, losing potential future customers and if the outcry gets loud enough to make it to any form of public media, the stock price of the company would drop (if only by a small percentage for a short time).

So by taking care of customers they are taking care of stock holders. They must if they want to keep their doors open (not saying FFXI will close down SE, but a general disregard for customers has proven fatal to many companies in the past.) they will do their best to satisfy a customer who has been wronged with they things they have willingly paid SE for.

Third, is it SE's responsibility to manage Third party websites and increase difficulty in changing POL account information>>yes and no.

Yes, it is the customer's responsibility to take necessary measures to keep his/her account in good standing and in an un-compromised state. If a customer does this, it is the company's responsibility to guarantee and back up its service to those customer's as much as it feasibly can.

No, SE cannot control 3rd party websites in any way unless the 3rd party website is hurting the profitability of SE. Are these sites doing this? (the one's offering RMT services and allowing for hack viruses) yes, therefore it is viable and just for SE to seek legal action upon these sites under the grounds that these sites are infact costing SE resources to have to track, maintain actions (in other words having to pay employees to do such) and are, because of the actions of these websites losing long-term customers due to frustration that would not exist had these websites not behaved in the way they have.

They even have a case on IGE and the like: These companies are earning profit off of SE's intellectual property. If they have not (which I would hope to be certain that they haven't) worked out a deal with SE to share profits from gil, PL or account sales, they are infact taking money from SE if SE wanted to offer these services. Since SE owns the sole rights of this intellectual property (ex. the gil that their programmers wrote) only they have the right to sell this property (which they have opted not to), including everything a person can get in game for only a base monthly charge and leaving this acquisition up to the gamer and their hard work.

[atalantia]

Scenario 2:
SE's official linkshell website is hacked due to a lack of proper security protocols, and some players' account information is compromised. The players' FFXI accounts are stolen, and items and gil on the characters are lost.

Loss: FFXI in-game property
Fault: SE's lack of proper security measures

Here, SE would be responsible for all losses incurred, and should compensate the players accordingly. Seeing as how this happened a little while back and we are no longer hearing about it, this can be assumed to have been resolved sufficiently.

When this happened, SE returned the characters to the original server and didn't charge for either transfer. But the also didn't return items. This was mostly the work of Taj.

To Dragonblaze-- Thank you.

As I said before in one of the many other threads about this topic, most of the people here were not affected, do not know many people affected, and were not the primary targets.

Some of the early posters show in their signature that their highest job is 37. You probably have 100K max and if you lost your account, would take 2-3 weeks to recover from new.

The RMT doing this are dropping anything they cannot sell (r/ex items) and getting rid of merrits. If I suddenly lost 100 merrits... that's 1 million exp. Even in the best TP burn out there, its a minimum of 50-60 hours to regain that.

I also say again -- what if the wiki was the one serving up the trojaned ads. People here would be pissed because they were the primary target. If the wiki infected 100,000 people, would everyone still be complaining about a 3rd party site? I can guarantee this thread would have a totally different tone.

To those saying why should SE do something, there is an excellent reason -- because WoW does. WoW goes 1 step furthur than what has been mentioned, if an account is stolen, anyone that recieved items from that account is banned. WoW was hit at the same time as FF. The site thottbot was compromised. For the record, Thott is the old EQ player who created the whole concept of "Dragon Killing Points", "DKP" or just "Points". I haven't heard anyone from WoW complaining about how blizzard handled the incident.

[Anodrac]

It's so easy to put blame on victims instead of finding a solution or compromise for the real issue. The issue is not really whether SE is responsible for the hacks but what they can or should do about it.

If the people defending SE policy on the issue so far would be the ones that had been hacked, i'm sure their response would not be, "Well, their goes 3-5 years of my effort in the game. That's ok though. It was my own fault. I'll just count it as a loss of my time and money and go on with my life.", but yet they are expecting the victims to do just that.

Previous poster made a good point about the difference with WoW customer service and SE "Customer Service". It has been an ongoing problem and this issue just reiterates that fact. When i've called due to connection issues, the first response is "contact your service provider first", even when my internet is fine and only their site and service is down. Now, with the recent hackings, the comparison is even more pronounced in difference when people get responses from SE like "you shouldnt go to third party sites" , when they themselves encourage you to when you need answers for an in game system where things are so vague, youd be lucky to stumble upon any way to continue a quest by their "clues". Point is this: WoW can returned your character to a previous state after an investigation. The fact that SE will not even investigate is just a direct /slap in the face to its loyal subscriber base when the majority have already left for WoW or other MMOs.

Fact: Hackers have exploited 3rd party FFXI sites. Fact: SE is not responsible for your computer or compromises therein. Fact: SE is responsible for claims on your account with them. To say that they are not, is just ludicrous in my eyes. Thats like saying, "We offer you this service but if someone else takes over your account without your permission, (That's too bad.)." Second poster summed it up quite nicely.

In conclusion, and sorry for long post, but several people in my ls have been hacked, those of you that havent been hacked, your opinion is moot. Those that have, we need to rally behind and ask SE to do what is proper and investigate as WoW does, which isnt asking for a lot.

[Ailena]

As others already said SE doesn't have to act in any way in case of an account. As there isn't any fault on their side.
AS we already know hacking come mainly from two cases

1 : You go on a third party tool website and get a keylogger. You are even more likely to get some nasty stuff if you actually download and use a third party tool as they basically change your client program. You have been warned , SE is telling you don't go to non official website , don' t use third party tool. If you like so much your little character don' t download some !@#$%& to improve it.

2 : You receive a mail saying something like " We need your personnal details " and you are stupid enough to give them. Here again SE told you don't give your details for any reason. And I wouldn't be surprised that some people even gave their details in game to people they thought trustworthy. WHo never heard of idiots lending some fantastic gears to somebody " I trusted him I was my friend is game" and being scammed like newbies...

With a minimum of security and intelligence you just can not get hacked.
I am tired of people creating a fear of hacking. SE didn't make this announcement because there are so many people who got hacked , IT STILL IS RARE , they did it because the ones who got hacked are a bunch of idiots who just insulted GM or cust service agent without even trying to understand anything. SE enix just defended themselves from a handfull of idiots.

ANd to those who spit on gilsellers and third party tools, yes they are the ones who hack the accounts obviously. I hardly imagine a player bothering hacking others just for his own char. But don't forget that gilsellers exist because there are gilbuyers and third party tools exist because there are players who doesn't want to play the rules.

To those players who are unable to get their own gils or who prefer using bots rather than playing the normal way, I say you are the ones destroying the games not SE. You want to stop gilsellers ? Ban every gilbuyer.
RMTs are breaking every rules to serve some players who later on will cry over their hacked account. Yes FFXI can be a pain of a game to play but hey nobody forces you, if you do not play the game as it is then don't play and if you quit because you got hacked , well too bad for you.

Finally for those arguing that for WoW yu would be way better protected, I d just remind you that there are ten times more players and probably 10 times more employees taking care f it.

I am not saying that SE customer service is perfect but well get back to earth.

[Rurouni_zanza]

I find it funny and a bit hypocrite that people are complaining about SE not doing their job, not doing enough, etc, etc, etc.. and yet they still play FFXI and buy next expansions.

People.. get a reality check. Instead of bitching about the company with all malice intended.. realize that you are playing their game. If you don't like the game or how it's being runned.. then quit! Trust me, we don't need people that b!tch and complain all the time.

[atalantia]

I find it funny and a bit hypocrite that people are complaining about SE not doing their job, not doing enough, etc, etc, etc.. and yet they still play FFXI and buy next expansions.

Expansion came out the week before this happened

People.. get a reality check. Instead of bitching about the company with all malice intended.. realize that you are playing their game. If you don't like the game or how it's being runned.. then quit! Trust me, we don't need people that b!tch and complain all the time.

Those who are unhappy with how this whole incident was handled still like the game and enjoy playing. We don't want to quit, we don't want to feel like our time was spent to make some RMT company extra money for the Christmas buying season. Some of the people who lost their account had 400+ Days of playtime.

People also seem to miss one very key point

If you visited the website with a fully patched browser, fully updated spyware, and fully updated virus protection, you still could have gotten infected. It was a trusted website. Somepage has been around longer than the wiki. It was an exploit via RealPlayer. There is a chance that Real was installed by the computer vendor and people never even knew it was there, or thought it was removed. People running up-to-date on everything, and running with firefox could have gotten the exploit.

The reason everyone brings up WoW is because it is a very popular MMO. Many people have left FF for WoW. It has become the mark by which all other games are measured. It is a legitimate comparison. Unless you would prefer we compare it to EVE? When EVE detected a hack in their system, they shut all the servers down for 48 hours, is that better?

As to WoW, see this reply for what a GM said to do if you get hacked

https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=85662250&postId=854849953&sid=1#1

And the official line for what to do if you lose control of your account

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20460

Seriously though, minimal effort to lock an account. If one receives items from a compromised account the items could be returned to the rightful owner. 10x the player base might mean 10x the support staff, but also means 10x the problems. The WoW help desk is open from 8am-8pm PST.

Finally, stop blaming the victims, and stop thinking that everyone who thinks SE screwed up is wrong.

[Daemun]

Atalantia>> I read the Blizzard web pages and they handled theirselves like a professional, oh wait, they are so that's the way it should be handled.

Not, "Well sorry but you must have been engaged in 3rd party usage or RMT activities, or even handing out your account information, so we will give you your character back if you can verify all account information (including someone elses Credit Card # that hakced you) but that's as far as we will go. If you complain about this too much, we will band you."

But yea, SE isn't Blizzard and hasn't had 10 years and 3 versions of MMORPG tenor under their belt, so we can have some patience with them, they just need to extend the same courtesy to us, because on a small level, we pay their salaries. And unlike their offline games, they get continuous money from us, some people spending $50-60 a month solely on FFXI characters.

To all who have been hacked (legitimately), I sympathize for you greatly. I hope that you get redemption in some satisfying form.

[Lambtor]

If you don't like the game or how it's being runned.. then quit! Trust me, we don't need people that b!tch and complain all the time.

The people with accounts that were compromised did stop playing. And SE does seem to be the type of company that considers its repeat customers an annoyance instead of an asset. If everyone who ever thought SE's customer service was ever lacking had decided to quit and never return, the servers would have been shutdown for this game a long time ago.

[Rezeak]

I'm not saying it's directly SEs fault but in my opion it is there job to offer some form of protection towards viruses i mean look at windows for example when someone writes a virus that explotes that they don't just go /shrug sux to be you if you get it. They activly try to release updates and fixs.

Ok i know SE doesn't have the amount of money WoW have for customer surrport but on the other hand there are cheap solutions to some problems like for example a page of writing explaining how to setup a firewall / spybot blocker / virus scaner so that you when you use FFXI the risks you take are minimised.

Then for a little bit of server power they could have a password recover system.

Then up from that better customer surrport but thats limited when your using a flawed system

Anyhow what i'm saying is that no it's not SE fault (even if there sercuity for FFXi is outdated >>) that pple got hacked ect but it is SE fault that the pple that got hacked couldn't promtly get a new password or lock there account and minumise the damage done to them.

As for pple saying stuff like if you hate how SE do things quit well thank for the offer but i'll have to pass cause i'll play on and complain if SE fail at something in hope they will improve that as they have done eventually i mean web access to PlayOnline info looks like a step forward and could lead to a more sercure FFXI

btw i don't hate SE overall i just hate how they wait for something like this to happen then do something about it