Protect yourself from Keylogger Aggro

There has been an intrusion, everything in your bank and inventory has vanished, your characters stand stark naked and whoever did this didn’t even leave any linen cloth for your character to wipe their butt with – now that’s jacked. Before, you start pointing your fingers on whom to blame (if you share an account) maybe you should be pointing at yourself.

Yea, you know all about keyloggers and have heard this same song and dance forever now, but it’s worth repeating and taking some necessary precautions because too many people brush it off. Key-loggers steal account names and passwords by infiltrating most computers through clandestine URLS or hyperlinks; making it very easy to unknowingly contract one through e-mails that might look legit, UI addons, or even visiting a familiar forum that has been compromised.

In the last few weeks there has been a significant outbreak in “hacked accounts” on the World of Warcraft forums because the popular guild portal website was intruded by Chinese hackers that embedded an exploit through an iframe tag effecting hundreds if not thousands of visitors. Guild portal has taken the necessary measures to remove the exploit on their servers but the damage has already been done. This was an exploit that anyone may have avoided with a little defense, your computer is like that third flag in Arathi Basin, protect it!

Here is a few tips everyone should follow that are more or less just having some common sense.

Tell your friends about the increased activity in people losing their accounts, you don’t have to go on a neighborhood watch and freak or annoy everyone, but simply suggesting firefox over internet explorer might prevent a whole lot of grief, it would have in the guild portal case. (I don’t get much traffic, but it amazes me when I check the stats how many people still use internet explorer)

Make sure your system software is up to date: http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate
Microsoft regularly releases security updates since this is a never-ending battle and there will be no panacea (all cure) anytime soon for windows users. Better yet, if you haven’t done so, turn on auto updates in the security center under control panel. Sure, it’s annoying when it keeps asking you to update or restart your computer, but it beats the alternative of waiting to hear back from a GM for over a month while you end up using donations, if you even get your account back.

If you don’t have one by now, please get a free virus scanner - I use avast, avg isn’t bad either. I would recommend either one, but only pick one because you are bound to run into problems if you want to be over protective and try using both.

Avast: http://www.avast.com/
AVG: http://free.grisoft.com/

Stop using internet explorer. Get Firefox and install the no script addon for it. Pesky spyware is a problem, but most people I know use Adaware or Spybot, I was impressed with Microsoft Defender when it was in beta and still use that and recommend any. Be sure to run your spyware program at least once a week, set it up so it will scan at a time that is most convenient for your schedule - this only takes a few minutes to do and will save you from the nagging hassle of doing it yourself and forgetting about it - we all tend to procrastinate.

Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
No-script addon for Firefox (install ff first): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

Adaware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Defender: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

I know I left out firewalls, but these are just some simple steps that everyone needs to take; troubleshooting software firewalls can be a mess. If you take the necessary prevention steps above, you severely increase your chance at winning a roll against the exploiters.