This is to let you all be aware of the following post (Forums Requiring Authenticator Code ) on the general forums, and what to do if you have an authenticator being placed on your account without you knowing it.

We basically saw two primary issues here in the Tech Support forums:
1. People on your account posting links to malicious sites, trolling and getting you banned or something of that nature.
2. People pretending that they were you and were hoping to sneak a fast one and have us remove your real authenticators so they can get in and wreck your account.

#2 is easily detected as we can look up your accounts and have logs of who attaching what, but it's more of a time waster as we can be helping out other people. #1 is more of a problem, and you should have the same level of protection if you have an authenticator on all World of Warcraft access that can get you in trouble.

This is probably why you came to the Technical Support forums as we used to provide an extra service here to help speed up account recovery: what happens if someone attaches an authenticator to your account without your permission, and how do I get it off now?

We had recent changes and upgrades to Battle.net Account Management lately that puts an additional roadblock in the way of attaching an Authenticator to your account. Since Thursday, 7/22/2010, we now require that you have access to your actual email account in order to add an authenticator. The process works like this.

• Log onto Battle.net Account Management (http://www.battle.net/account/)
  
• Click on Settings, then click Manage Security Options
  
• Click on Add this authenticator
  
• [new]--->Required confirmation link sent to your Battle.net account email address
  
• You log onto your email account itself, look for an email titled Battle.net Account Authenticator Addition from noreply@blizzard.com with a link to loop back to Account Management. This contains a one-time use token.
  
• Add a mobile or keychain authenticator
  
• Now you have an authenticator
  

You can't have an authenticator put on unless you have access to your email account. If someone is putting an authenticator on your account, it also means that they have access to your email account. If this happens to you, secure BOTH your computer and your email account first before proceeding with getting your account back or they'll keep doing password resets and adding authenticators to lock you out.

The computer - scan it with an updated virus scanner or a couple to get more opinions on what is on the computer, and then do a malware/spyware scan as well. Please make sure to do a full scan and not a quick scan. http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?articleId=20569
It's always possible that the computer you're on is clean but you simply logged onto another computer that isn't. In that case, you won't find any known ones on your computer. It could also mean that your antivirus and malware scanning software doesn't know what the virus/keylogger looks like and it flew under the radar.

The email account - Once the computer is clean, change your email account's password. If the malicious person changed your email address' password, you need to check with your email provider on how to recover your password. Please do not use the same password as your Battle.net account name. Most of the people that got your stuff in the first place grabbed it from either a malicious program being put on your computer or thru scam/lookalike sites. They can simply just try to log onto your email account with that password and see if it lets them in.

Regaining access to your Battle.net account and getting your characters/items back - [[ Account Compromise Info Center ]]

General security - http://us.battle.net/security/

Sure. Never hurts :)

Hotmail accounts and ninja-linking - http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26262867663&sid=1#11