My Origin Account hacked

[Tricky]

On Thursday afternoon my EA Origin account was hacked - assume the password was brute forced - and it was nicked by someone who is crap at BF3 (Hamster spies were on his trail!). They changed the email address, password, renamed my profile to Like_a_Boom and started playing BF3 (rather badly).

I spent a frustrating few hours that evening trying to work out what was going on, then trying to contact EA support (although you need to be able to log in to Origin to live chat to them!) and searching their rather useless help system for advice. Half the links they provide for reporting issues or getting help were broken or timing out. Eventually I managed to get through to an agent on live chat who wasn't that helpful - unfortunately those agents can do very little and use only one piece of information to verify the account which is Date of Birth. Unfortunately, I entered the wrong DoB when I set up an EA account in 2005 (for BF2 I think!) so they couldn't verify that I owned the account.  I then did a bit of Googling and read that someone else who was hacked managed to get an agent to escalate the case and verify using their shipping address. So I live chatted to a second agent who was more helpful (to an extent) and said that he could see I owned the account (by asking various questions) but that he would have to escalate it to 'next level' support and they would contact me by email although if I wanted a quicker resolution I could ring up a UK support team.

So I rang up this morning and spent 20 minutes on hold but then got through to a helpful chap who verified my details using my product key, purchase details and credit card number (last 4 digits). That was fine - so he's deactivated the account and reset it back to my email address so the hacker is going to get a surprise if he tries to use it again - or if he's in the game now, when it changes map. He also added a new security question/answer that I specified, and amended my Date of Birth on their records.

What happens now is I have to ring up again in 2 hours and they will send me a password reset email and then I'll be able to get back in. Apparently I won't need to hold when I ring back - they put more agents on at 10am and they had 3 agents idle and zero queue when I'd finished my call.

So hopefully this will get sorted out today.

If anyone ever needs it the UK number is 0870 243 2435. Although it costs to do so, you'll find it to be less hassle than trying to deal with EA live chat agents online who can't do a lot. Albeit, if EA have your correct date of birth then live chat agents should be able to sort you out.

I may have been at fault for the original account loss due to an insecure password but the Origin system allows anyone who guesses it to change your details far too easily without any verification. Steam seems to be far better at this. A basic email verification check would be a good start!

[RichardWhitely]

Good its almost sorted

Origin really needs something like steamguard - or even just let me use my SWTOR authentication token on the rest of my origin account! That would stop all hack attempts in their tracks. It's a bit silly when my SWTOR account is locked down tight, but the origin end is still sitting almost wide open for anyone to guess the password and then change it. They wouldn't be able to use SWTOR as they physically need my authentication keyfob but they could still play the other games tied to it. Hum...

[Tricky]

And it's back.. just going through putting all the settings back to normal now.

[RichardWhitely]

and now rik has got hacked, he shall be henceforth known from this day as AmiGO404 from Russia

[Tricky]

What a bummer!

[JohnnyFind]

Glad you got it sorted, just a shame it's such a hassle.

See you on the battlefield.