#27 - July 25, 2012, 3:45 p.m.
Folks, we fight these every day.
Are there waves, yes.
Do individual reports help, absolutely.
You need to keep in mind what fuels that industry - gold buyers. They steal accounts then press them into service, so the best way to prevent these to begin with is...
1) Take away their incentive to be in Azeroth at all - don't give them money for gold or items. No market and they'd disappear.
2) Make certain your account is safe from theft and abuse - I highly recommend an authenticator.
3) Report the ones that you suspect with the ingame tools.
Also remember, even when these are removed - stolen accounts to them are just tools. One tool breaks, they pick up another. They don't have a vested interest beyond seeing how much profit they can squeeze from the account before it gets sanctioned. We see reports here all the time, players come back and find their account locked or banned.
They don't steal these to do 'nice' things with them. All that can be undone if a player was compromised, but they especially favor old accounts that are less likely to still have friends online that might notice their activity and alert us faster.
