Account Locked by Boy of 18

Just when you thought all of the stories about accounts getting hacked had slowly faded away, here comes another story of a new tactic that is out there to mess with your World of Warcraft account. So beware, and consider yourselves forewarned.

It was a typical, relaxing Saturday afternoon. We had spent our Saturday attending soccer games, doing yardwork, and then recovering from those activities. I logged in to Wow and did some mining just to pass some time. Everything seemed perfectly okay with my account. Nothing was wrong at all. Plus, I have an authenticator. My account isn't in jeopardy at all, right?

Furthermore, I keep the authenticator in a specific spot on my desk. It is well out out reach of our toddler, and the older children know that this is daddy's key to his online world, and I would severely beat anyone be sad if it were to be lost. (Yes, that was a joke.) It always goes back to that location. That safe spot.

So, after my farming, I was fixing some food. I noticed that I didn't put it back in THAT spot. It was just sitting there on top of the desk. To the best of my recollection, I meant to take care of it, but I didn't (or so that's how I remembered the story). But I didn't think much of it.

Not until I went to log on for our raid that night. I had been off to a meeting, come back, put the kids to bed, and was ready to log on for the night... but the authenticator was gone! It wasn't in it's spot. I replayed the events in my mind, and after retracing my steps, I knew that my 18-month old was to blame. My wife and I searched the entire house. (Big props to her for looking so hard, btw.) At one point, our oldest woke up, and we asked her about it as well, and she didn't know anything. I did log on to vent to let everybody know why I was late, and then eventually that I wasn't making the raid because of my "locked" account.

After quite some time searching, and even looking into calling Blizzard to disassociate my authenticator with my account (they're only open weekdays from 8am to 8pm FYI), I decided to give it up for the night. Hopefully I could figure out a way to coerce my 18-month old (who doesn't talk much, but can understand basic commands) to retrieve the authenticator for me.

The next morning after all the kids got up, I had this vision of the Brady Bunch where everybody searches for the authenticator that "Tiger" ran away with, and "Cindy" finds it in the dog house or something. Nice thought, right? Yeah... didn't exactly happen like that, but all the kids did search... mostly. And we didn't find it.

Then Sunday afternoon, I went to get dressed for church, and what fell out of my suit pants? The authenticator. So, due to my own failing memory, I had locked myself out of Wow and our raid. As a side note, I still have to make up for getting upset at my son and blaming him. But on the plus side, he's 18-months, so he didn't really get what was going on anyway. lol.